I have waited for almost a week for a rebuttal to come from former President Olusegun Obasanjo that the statement credited to him at an event in Ibadan recently was not his.
But no such rebuttal has been obtained.
It is to be assumed, therefore, that the statement was indeed made to the effect that all those rooting for a second term for President Muhammad Buhari must be mentally sick and therefore should have themselves examined by psychiatrists.
Let no one tell me that is not what he meant. To suggest an examination for an adult by a paediatric doctor would have been inappropriate as it would still have been insulting to that adult. Neither could the ex-President have been talking of an examination by a specialist in bone-related ailments when the statement so irky to the Owu high chief, was a brain-induced thought and not one produced from the creative legs of a star sprinter or a squash racquet player or a footballer.
To be sure, I am not a lawyer to be soliciting for anyone else on this matter but I have a right and a duty to speak for myself, as I make no bones about my preference for Buhari, for a second term in office, given the mind-boggling revelations unearthed by his regime about the unimaginable malfeasance that had been perpetuated by public officers in previous administrations that might not even have excluded Obasanjo’s.
For example, I’m informed that Buhari is following the trail blazed by Obasanjo on this vexed issue of corruption; and I want to recall the shackling, hands and feet, of a whole inspector general of police of Nigeria, Mr Tafa Balogun, by his very junior subordinates for alleged or proven (?) embezzlement of money put under his charge. I’m not so sure those caught in the commission of treason got worse treatment ! Yet, we are now hearing that what appeared humongous thievery of our commonwealth then, now pales into insignificance when compared to the worst robbery committed against the Nigerian people by functionaries of some previous administrations; now exposed by Buhari’s anti-corruption agency, set up by Obasanjo in his time.
Some commentators, perhaps uncharitable, are pressurising the Buhari government to beam the searchlight on Obasanjo and others over the Halliburton scandal that reverberated across the world from the United States, just as it is uncustomarily, by Nigerian standard, exposing the backside of the Jonathan Presidency. Or, what more remains for ex-president Jonathan himself to be skinned, if his wife is being exposed and stripped bare of any presidential privilege and protection, as we are all witnessing and regaling about.
They are even insinuating that fear that Buhari on his next return to power, may go after all his predecessors, is behind the unrelentless campaign to get Buhari defeated at the next presidential poll. In addition, a poser has gone viral on social media, just buttressed by the Gani Fawehinmi of this season, Mr Femi Falana, a senior advocate of Nigeria, like Britain’s Queen’s Counsel, that what miracle was responsible for Obasanjo, who said he had only a paltry sum in his account when he came out of prison, less than 20 years ago, to be the proud owner of the assets linked to him now?
I’m not bothered about the mud being splashed on former President Obasanjo since he has chosen to step out of the statesmen’s corner to the murky terrain of partisan politics. As his favourite follower, Olagunsoye Oyinlola once said of Professor Wole Soyinka: if an elderly man in flowing white apparel chooses to fondle a chicken on his laps, he should not complain if the chick defecates on his white dress. That was when Bros Kongi lampooned Oyinlola over an arts institute being sited at Osogbo in Osun State at a time not long ago.
Oyinlola, a witty Yorubaman, who has a penchant for using Yoruba idioms and anecdotes to drive home his messages, is used to regaling his listeners about overbearing people to whom one is not really beholding: ” Eni to ba ba Baba jeun, ni pe ni Baba L’Ayeye; Eni o ba ba Baba jeun, Mojeed Agbaje ni o pe loruko”. That was a coinage of a time to press the point of importance of an Ibadan high chief in the scheme of things in the hilly city reputed to be the largest in all of Africa, san Cairo.
Now talking language, I believe it is beneath Obasanjo’s statesmanlike status to use words as “anyone wishing Buhari’s re-election should have himself examined”. What for? Why?
I’m a fan of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in some respects, part of which is his famed bravery or is it foolhardiness now? but this time, I take strong exception to the language he employed in attacking Buhari supporters and I say, with due respect sir, that it can still be refined.
Before I am done, it should be said of President Buhari too that he still has time on his hands to act decisively of the herdsmen’s menace across the land and fine tune his presidential administration, in other lacking areas, so that he doesn’t unwillingly equip his detractors with the ammunition with which to shoot down his second term ambition.
Back to the man a former military governor of Lagos state, then Navy Captain Okhai Mike Akhigbe once derisively called “chicken farmer”, I am not persuaded from dissuading our youths to reject the temptation to be lured into hating Buhari, in spite of the indiscretionary slip of tongue about them recently. I want to believe that most of the anti-corruption measures of the present regime are to provide an assured future for our youths. Which is why I ask them to take to heart what Proverbs 22:24-25 says of vested interests who are so vengeful in their anti-Buhari utterances:
“Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.”