By Adeoba Michaels
The Punch backpage lady columnist, Abimbola Adelakun’s Thursday piece on Gbajabiamila describing the Speaker of the House of Representatives as manipulator is shallow and jejune.
I am an ardent reader of Adelakun’s column. Sometimes her polemics are logical but most times she shoots from the hip like wishy-washy article on ‘Gay Jesus’ where she strove vainly to justify the sacrilegious film on Netflix under a misguided liberalism.
Her usual poor intellectual rouble rousing also reflected in the salvo fired at Gbajabiamila. Let’s me state for the records that I support holding the feet of elected leaders to fire and ensure they deliver what they professed during electioneering to the people but not a mischievous interventions and reckless name calling.
Adelakun, as a back page columnist of a leading newspaper like The Punch needs to do more while gathering materials for her column.
It is sheer lack of thoroughness on her part to have built her vitriol argument on what was reported in the media without cross-checking from other sources the verbatim speech of the news subject.
We have seen in many instances where reporters paraphrased statements of news subjects and quoted them out of context. For instance, we read in the news where a reporter claimed that a certain member of Lagos State House of Assembly said all politicians use charms and talisman which was obviously the invention of the reporter.
The lawmaker had to protest to the newspaper and requested for retraction but the damage was done already.
In the case of Gbajabiamila, these were his words, verbatim” The National Assembly is not a rubber stamp.This is a new dispensation. There will be checks and balances. There will be separation of powers. We will agree with the executive if we have to and we will disagree if we have to”.
The above statement never suggested being stooge of the executive. And for Abimbola to have said Gbajabiamila brought up an argument nobody made is also shallow. Surulere constituents are Nigerians, in rendering stewardship, the lawmaker should respond to the deep-seathed sentiment that 9th National Assembly is lackey of the executive arm without prodding!
Whilst it is good for leaders to encourage leaders to build structures and enact policies that will take vast majority out of poverty, giving out grants to petty traders and artisans is not a bad idea.
In this context, it is also unfair for Adelakun to have brought the matter of the tokeism and empowerment of constituents into the mix. It is a distraction to the theme of her article. Did she want to knock Gbajabiamila over the purported “I will not fight executive” statement or shade the concept of empowerment?
Whilst it is good for leaders to encourage leaders to build structures and enact policies that will take vast majority out of poverty, giving out grants to petty traders and artisans is not a bad idea.
The blanket statement that many never moved out of squalor after such intervention is pedestrian. Many people have used those interventions as springboard out of poverty.
Again, Adelakun claimed that Gbajabiamila reduced “the multitude of democratic gains due to them as Nigerian citizens into few items of charity he was gratuitously throwing in their direction”. Perhaps, Adelakun underestimated the sophistication of Surulere residents and cosmopolitan Lagosians in demanding more than items from elected lawmakers.
- Michaels, is a public commentator sent this piece from Lagos
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