Obviously, these PDP people are not Athenians; otherwise you won’t find the serially lying Ologbondiyan among them
God knows I have reasons to gloat right now. Lazarus Obeta, writing from Aba, even graciously called me his MAN OF THE YEAR. He wrote:”Femi, you are my own man of the year. You have always stolen my heart with your write ups but your: ‘We Cannot Thank God Enough For Giving Us Buhari’ is the award winner. I read it over and over and could hardly stop. How I wish we have more Femi Orebes in this country. Wishing you and your family the best this new year.” And from Jide Popoola came:”Egbon Femi, I just finished reading your piece ‘We cannot thank God enough…’ Excellent, revealing & so spot on. I fully agree with your conclusion. However, am not particularly excited about Buhari.
Why?
Because of the way he initially sidelined Asiwaju Tinubu. It was really annoying because I voted PMB in 2015 because of Jagaban”.
.For bragging rights, let me quote Presidential Spokesperson, my dear aburo, Femi Adesina: “Compliments of the season Sir. Thanks for your piece in The Nation today”. Nor can I forget that Professor Tam David West called, warmly commending the same article. . I could have readily gloated, if my exertions here, most of these past 14 years, have been aimed at self glorification, and not to constantly remind Nigerians, in general, about where we are coming from since Obasanjo’s days as President, into what dungeon PDP’s 16 – year stranglehold drove
Nigeria; what would have been, had President Jonathan won in 2015, but much more importantly, where Nigerians would find themselves if Atiku gets elected President.
So desperate was the Jonathan team that on top of the 2.1 B dollars military funds they stole, their oil scam empress, quaffed a whooping $115 M (N23bn) bribing INEC officials to alter election results. Nor can anybody put an accurate figure to the millions of dollars Jonathan himself inundated Southwest palaces with.
No wonder they don’t want us to talk about the past. But talk we will.
Even now that many in that oddity of a party have migrated to APC, I still cannot beat back the urge to liken both parties to a precise form of what Neil Postman did in his: MY GRADUATION SPEECH, first brought to my attention by Dr Kola Junaid of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile -Ife.
Happy reading.
“…I have chosen as my topic the complex subject of your ancestors. Not, of course, your biological ancestors, about whom I know nothing, but your spiritual ancestors, about whom I know a little. To be specific, I want to tell you about two groups of people who lived many years ago but whose influence is still with us. They were very different from each other, representing opposite values and traditions.
The first group lived about 2,500 years ago in the place which we now call Greece, in a city they called Athens. We do not know as much about their origins as we would like. But we do know a great deal about their accomplishments. They were, for example, the first people to develop a complete alphabet, and therefore they became the first truly literate population on earth. They invented the idea of political democracy, which they practiced with a vigour that puts us to shame. They invented what we call philosophy. And they also invented what we call logic and rhetoric. They came very close to inventing what we call science, and one of them-Democritus by name-conceived of the atomic theory of matter 2,300 years before it occurred to any modern scientist. They composed and sang epic poems of unsurpassed beauty and insight. And they wrote and performed plays that, almost three millennia later, still have the power to make audiences laugh and weep. They even invented what, today, we call the Olympics, and among their values none stood higher than that in all things one should strive for excellence. They believed in reason. They believed in beauty. They believed in moderation. And they invented the word and the idea which we know today as ecology.
About 2,000 years ago, the vitality of their culture declined and these people began to disappear. But not what they had created. Their imagination, art, politics, literature, and language spread all over the world so that, today, it is hardly possible to speak on any subject without repeating what some Athenian said on the matter 2,500 years ago.
The second group of people lived in the place we now call Germany, and flourished about 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths.
They were spectacularly good horsemen, which is about the only pleasant thing history can say of them. They were marauders-ruthless and brutal. Their language lacked subtlety and depth. Their art was crude and even grotesque. They swept down through Europe destroying everything in their path, and they overran the Roman Empire. There was nothing a Visigoth liked better than to burn a book, desecrate a building, or smash a work of art. From the Visigoths, we have no poetry, no theatre, no logic, no science, no humane politics.
Like the Athenians, the Visigoths also disappeared, but not before they had ushered in the period known as the Dark Ages. It took Europe almost a thousand years to recover from the Visigoths.
Now, the point I want to make is that the Athenians and the Visigoths still survive, and they do so through us and the ways in which we conduct our lives. All around us-in this hall, in this community, in our city-there are people whose way of looking at the world reflects the way of the Athenians, and there are people whose way is the way of the Visigoths. I do not mean, of course, that our modern-day Athenians roam abstractedly through the streets reciting poetry and philosophy, or that the modern-day Visigoths are killers. I mean that to be an Athenian or a Visigoth is to organise your life around a set of values. An Athenian is an idea. And a Visigoth is an idea. Let me tell you briefly what these ideas consist of.
To be an Athenian is to hold knowledge and, especially the quest for knowledge in high esteem. To contemplate, to reason, to experiment, to question-these are, to an Athenian, the most exalted activities a person can perform. To a Visigoth, the quest for knowledge is useless unless it can help you to earn money or to gain power over other people.
To be an Athenian is to cherish language because you believe it to be humankind’s most precious gift. In their use of language, Athenians strive for grace, precision, and variety. And they admire those who can achieve such skill. To a Visigoth, one word is as good as another, one sentence in distinguishable from another. A Visigoth’s language aspires to nothing higher than the cliché.
To be an Athenian is to understand that the thread which holds civilized society together is thin and vulnerable; therefore, Athenians place great value on tradition, social restraint, and continuity. To an Athenian, bad manners are acts of violence against the social order. The modern Visigoth cares very little about any of this. The Visigoths think of themselves as the centre of the universe. Tradition exists for their own convenience, good manners are an affectation and a burden, and history is merely what is in yesterday’s newspaper.
To be an Athenian is to take an interest in public affairs and the improvement of public behaviour. Indeed, the ancient Athenians had a word for people who did not. The word was idiotes, from which we get our word “idiot.” A modern Visigoth is interested only in his own affairs and has no sense of the meaning of community.
And, finally, to be an Athenian is to esteem the discipline, skill, and taste that are required to produce enduring art. Therefore, in approaching a work of art, Athenians prepare their imagination through learning and experience. To a Visigoth, there is no measure of artistic excellence except popularity. What catches the fancy of the multitude is good. No other standard is respected or even acknowledged by the Visigoth.
Now, it must be obvious what all of this has to do with you. Eventually, like the rest of us, you must be on one side or the other. You must be an Athenian or a Visigoth. Of course, it is much harder to be an Athenian, for you must learn how to be one, you must work at being one, whereas we are all, in a way, natural-born Visigoths.
Obviously, these PDP people are not Athenians; otherwise you won’t find the serially lying Ologbondiyan among them.