Category: Opinion

I learnt an enduring lesson on the day General Sani Abacha died. It was June 8, 1998, and death had laid its icy hands on the maximum ruler, and the scepter had fallen from the grip of the king. I was deputy editor of National Concord, the newspaper owned by Basorun M.K. O Abiola, the man Abacha not only inveigled out of his mandate as democratically elected President, but whom he had also locked up in military gulag for five years.

Mr Dele Alake, who was to become Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Lagos State for eight years, was editor, but he had travelled on the fateful day. So, the lot fell on me to produce the newspaper, as the deputy editor. Dr (Mrs) Doyin Abiola was Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief.

Naturally, on a great news day like that, an editor would leave his office, and be on the shop floor, ensuring that the newspaper was swiftly produced. Time was of the essence, if you would partake in the harvest of sales the next day. So, I was in the computer room downstairs, editing the news stories as they were typed at the speed of light. It was there that Dr Abiola met me, as she prepared to go home about 7 p.m. She said something that both baffled and amazed me:

“Editor, no gloating. We have every reason to rejoice that Abacha is dead, but no gloating. Just present the news as professionally as possible. Don’t gloat!”

I thanked her, and she left. Her instruction continued to ring in my ears, and was followed to the letter. Those who read National Concord the next day would recall that there was no sense of triumphalism, no newsman’s orgasm of any kind, in the treatment of the story. Just professionally done. “Don’t gloat!”

Did Doyin Abiola have reasons to instruct her newspaper to preen and gloat about Abacha’s death? Every. He had given the impression that he would take over power, and hand over to Abiola, who had won the June 12, 1993, presidential election, which the military annulled. Instead, he locked the man up in solitary confinement. Doyin did not see her husband for five years. Also, Abacha had shut down Concord Press for about two years, causing the company grave economic afflictions. Under him, Kudirat Abiola, one of Doyin’s mates, had been murdered, shot down in the streets, allegedly on the orders of the state. And many more evil deeds. Dr Doyin Abiola had every cause to waltz, and do a jig, at the death of Sani Abacha. But she did not. She even told her editor: “Don’t gloat!” I never forgot, and will never forget that lesson. It is human, and it is also divine.

Between January 19 and March 10, of this year, President Muhammadu Buhari was away in London, first on routine holiday where he would do normal medical check-ups, and then, it became a medical vacation, in which he had to ask for an indeterminate number of days. Yes, who is he or she that never falls sick, let that person cast the first stone. As the President frankly confessed on his return, he had never been that sick in his life. Human, just human. Presidents, kings, queens, potentates, wealthy people, are also human, aren’t they? They itch as well, and scratch as hard. Sickness, not only death, is often a leveler among all mortals, young, old, poor, rich, dull, brilliant, ugly, beautiful, everybody.

And we know what attended the President’s medical sojourn from certain quarters in the country. Wild news. Hate news. Rumour. Evil thinking. Even, gloating. They did all kinds of photoshops, and spewed all kinds of evil stories. They passed round outright wickedness on WhatsApp, and those of us who debunked their evil tales became enemies. They tried to tag us with all kind of labels, saying we were liars and deceivers. But wise was the man who said: “The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.” Or our own Professor Tam David-West, in his book, Philosophical Essays, also said: “Truth like the cork cannot sink. It cannot be sunk. It always floats.”

When President Buhari spoke with me on phone from London on February 25, I was elated, and issued a press statement, detailing our conversation. Many Nigerians, good people from a great nation, who could get hold of my phone number, called. They would ask if truly we had spoken. Once I confirmed, they broke into tears of joy, crying like babies. They brought tears to my eyes many times. Till this son of hate, a purveyor of evil and tragedy, called. He identified himself as Jude (I decide to withhold his other name for now). He said: “Mr Adesina, you claim to have spoken with President Buhari. When are you going to stop this political deceit? How can you speak with a man who is long dead, and you are deceiving the public that he’s still alive?”

I didn’t argue with the man (though I was tempted to call him sonofagun, the son of a gun). I held my peace, let him finish his orgy of evil, and calmly cut off the phone. Doomsday prophets. Evil thinkers. Peddlers of mischief.

Then, on March 10, the President returned. Ecstasy and pure rapture from good Nigerians, who had been praying and supplicating unto God. Mai Gaskiya was back. The honest man had returned. Ramrod straight, man of integrity. He had been spared by God, and restored to us. Oh, glory!

Did you listen to that short speech that President Buhari read on his return? Did you listen to his off the cuff remarks? Was there any gloating? None. Did he rub it in on those who had peddled evil news, fake news, hate news? No. That is maturity. That is how to be the father of a country. And I remembered Dr Doyin Abiola: “Don’t gloat!”

Do you know what some other people would have done in the same circumstance? They would have taken evil minded people to the cleaners. But not President Buhari. They would have made snide remarks about peddlers of hate news, calling fire and brimstone to fall upon them. But not our President. He would have been justified if he did so. The Good Book says, “He that digs a pit shall fall into it. He that rolls a stone, a stone will roll back at him. He that breaks the hedge, a serpent shall bite him.” So, President Buhari would have been justified, if he gave evil people some jabs. But he did not. What a heart!

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.

How did that Jude Somebody feel when the President returned? He even bears Jude, a Christian name. How embarrassing! But he was full of bile, in the gall and throes of bitterness. May God forgive him. Amen.

With President Buhari’s health saga, some truths have been brought to bold relief once again. Anybody can be sick. Big or small man. A man of power, or a man of no consequence. Let us therefore be conscious of our mortality at all times. I can testify, from my many private discussions with him, that President Buhari is a man keenly aware of his own mortality at all times. A worthy example to follow.

Another lesson. Life and death are the sole preserves of God Almighty. Despite all those concoctions and contraptions, fake pictures, false stories on WhatsApp, mendacious newspaper reports, President Buhari came back alive. Who says anything that God has not said? There are many devices in the heart of man, but it is the counsel of God that shall stand. The counsel of God has prevailed concerning Nigeria, and concerning our President. Let us learn the eternal truth. No matter the devices in the heart of man, the counsel of God stands. It is not me that says so. It is straight from the Good Book.

From March 10, when President Buhari returned, purveyors of evil have disappeared. Vanished! Utterly transmuted, like Brother Jero, in that work by Wole Soyinka. Even on social media, where they had held sway for many weeks, they evaporated. Like a beaten dog, they had their tails between their feet, and ran for cover. But should we rejoice? “Don’t gloat!”

There is nothing we have, that we did not receive from above. So, why boast? Why gloat? Rather, we should be thankful to God. The President has thanked millions of people who prayed. And they continue to pray. Olorun da Baba si fun wa. God, please, spare Baba for us. Let him take us to the Promised Land. A land that is secure, free completely of Boko Haram, flowing with milk and honey. A land where corrupt people get their just desserts, ending behind bars. A land where human life has value, where wanton killings stop, where justice and equity covers the space, like the waters cover the sea. A land where mischief makers repent, and turn to God.

Where is that Jude Somebody? I kept his number. I feel like calling him, saying “Son of a gun, how now?” But I shouldn’t do it. And I won’t do it. Because I remember Dr Abiola’s instruction: “Don’t gloat!”

• Adesina is Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari

The saying that “A library is lost when an African elder dies” is partly true in the death of Professor Benedict Ebele Obumselu in the early hours of Saturday March 4, 2017. At 86, Obumselu was an African elder and much more. In him and with his demise,more than a library was lost, indeed, several libraries were lost, for Obumselu was an inimitable scholar, literary critic, raconteur, intellectual muse,political actor,soldier of conscience,patriot and distinguished professor of the history of ideas.  His death, in an uncanny way, signals the end of an era of unrivaled scholarship and profound intellectual exertions devoted to the upliftment of the human race especially the African continent which he traversed sharing experience and imparting knowledge.

My quest for literary excellence had compelled me to seek out Obumselu.  The year was 1982 and my youthful creative juice was bursting by the seams. I had completed two manuscripts and needed the validation by an expert before rushing to publish.  And to Obumselu I turned. He came highly recommended especially as one of my two manuscripts was a volume of poems “Cries Of The Soul” which needed the deft touch of a master.I was thrilled by the realisation that the master whose guidance I earnestly sought after was the same Benedict Obumselu whom the great poet Christopher Okigbo acknowledged in his incomparable book of poems “Labyrinths” for “criticisms that continue to guide me along the paths of greater clarity”.  On our first meeting, I was bowled by his approachability and willingness to be of help.  So began a father and son, apprentice and master, idol and worshiper – kind of relationship that lasted till his demise.

In my interactions with Obumselu, I saw a man greater than I had imagined, who to those who should know, was the greatest African literary critic of his generation.  While covering the 1987 International Literary Conference in Calabar for the Nigerian Chronicle, I had interviewed one of the guest speakers Professor Michael J. C. Echeruo, on the issue of ‘Rigor And Rigour’ in the context of African literature. Echeruo, then Vice Chancellor of Imo State University, had commented that Obumselu was easily the most rigorous African literary scholar around.

If the Echeruo encounter was somewhat sedate, as most of the interview was conducted in his moving car, not that with Chief Bola Ige which had a tinge of hilarity to it.  Sometime in 1989, I had notified Obumselu of my intention to visit Ibadan in the course of a research work I was undertaking.  He had, inter-alia, requested that I give his regards to Ige, the orator,poet, philosopher, politician and former governor of old Oyo State, whom Dr. Stanley Macebuh, then Managing Director of The Guardian, had in an incisive piece of writing nicknamed  the ‘Cicero At Agodi’ in attestation to his brilliance and erudition.  On getting to Ige’s law office, I was amazed by the sheer number of people waiting to see him.  Eager to return to Lagos and discouraged by the multitude waiting to have audience with the famed politician and distinguished  lawyer,I merely dropped a note for Ige at his secretary’s desk and left.  I had barely made it to the staircase when Ige came out, bare footed,in search of ‘the man from Ben Obumselu’. The Cicero was practically racing after me.

Ensconced with him in his office, Ige, whom Chinua Achebe described in “The Trouble With Nigeria” as ‘one of the brightest and most accomplished members of my generation’ stated in the course of our brief discussion that his eagerness to meet with me stemmed from the high esteem in which he held Obumselu whom he described as the brightest in the Ibadan of their days.  Months later, I had met the literary scholar Prof. Theo Vincent at the University of Lagos where he was Dean of the Arts Faculty. I had innocuously told him that“his colleague Prof. Ben Obumselu sent his regard”.  Vincent, who later became Vice Chancellor of University of Port Harcourt, demurred and insisted that “Ben Obumselu is not my colleague, he was my teacher and still is my teacher”. Renowned musicologist, traditional ruler and laureate of the Nigerian National Merit Award, the highest award for intellectual accomplishment in Nigeria, Professor Laz Ekwueme once described Obumselu as “The Professors’ Professor”. So much for the well deserved acclaim,reverence and plaudits that Obumselu received from the cream of Nigeria intelligentsia.

The point has been made in some quarters about Obumselu not being very present in published works.  In fact, Prof. Adebayo Williams had in his seminal contribution to a book of essays in honour of Obumselu stated that “Obumselu’s career can be formulated in terms of three interlocking paradoxes: presence determined by absence; inclusion generated by exclusion; and the thundering eloquence of silence”.  He went on to assert that “One searches the fetid entrails of decaying libraries for the magnum opus in vain; one interrogates the murmurs of mummified footnotes in frustration and futility; one wades through the intertextual Babel in increasing desperation as false trails lead to labyrinths of ancient scrolls and the excavator turns into the excavated”.  “What confronts one” he noted “are the powerful teasers, the occasional remarks, the brief but formidable interventions and, of course, the haunting apparition of the great scholar missing in action”.Elsewhere,Williams,a master of scintillating prose had described Obumselu,fittingly,as ‘the great African literary critic,iconic man of letters,scholar-warrior and pioneer Africanist intellectual’.

Perhaps, Obumselu has not loomed large on the nation’s present intellectual landscape partly due to the pervading philistinism which elevate cant and mercantile publications to high art.  Obumselu remains alive in profound contributions,though scattered in various places and in various forms, they speak to the depth and breadth of his brilliance and craftsmanship.  For him,the mantra ‘less is enough’ and quality not quantity appear to be the watchword.  To Obumselu “every attempt to publish must be a bid for immortality”.  “And immortality in this regard”, he once explained to his former student Professor Isidore Diala “is not really asking to be remembered two hundred years hence…But one must be making a case that is memorable because it is new and central to our conception of humanity”. Diala had deduced that Obumselu “finds it upsetting that given compelling professional demands to publish, in the hands of university lecturers, publications, which ought to be visible symbols of the generation of new insights, often degenerate into mere noise making”.

In Ben Obumselu is exemplified the truism that the ridge like gulf between the merely talented and the supremely gifted is the camaraderie, candour, urbanity, erudition and simplicity the latter evinces. That, to me, is the Obumselu that counts!  Indeed, his life of distinction had revolved along his many roles as a scholar, critic, intellectual muse, soldier and teacher.  He obviously took his teaching role seriously and succeeded in helping to nurture some of the best that Nigeria has known – Theo Vincent, Dan Izevbaye, Stanley Macebuh, Molara Ogundipe, Ken Saro-Wiwa,Jim Nwobodo and Isidore Diala,his later day student,who once noted that Obumselu’s models of exemplary teacher/student relationship are primed  relationships between Socrates and Plato, and that between Christ and his disciples. It is remarkable that neither teacher of immortal ideas left behind any writing of their own, and regards their disciples’ perpetuation of their masters’ teaching through writing as exemplary love and self-forgetful action.

An aspect of Obumselu that is hardly projected is his later life business pursuits.On leaving the Ivory tower,he teamed up with Africa’s foremost economist Dr Pius Okigbo to set up a frontline publishing firm;Torch Publishing Company.He approached business with balance of emphasis that put profit and the public good on the same scale.Under his watch,Torch Publishing flourished while still offering realistic nay altruistic trade terms that helped in ensuring the successes and sustained growth of a host of businesses including the then fledgling ThisDay newspaper.Earlier on,he had,at the behest of Clarkson De Majomi,publisher of The Mail,learnt a helping hand in the revitalisation of the then ailing newspaper.He was to undertake a similar task for the now rested The Post Express at the instance of it’s publisher and business mogul Chief Sonny Odogwu.At Compact Communications Ltd,a resourceful marketing communications consultancy, atop its top drawer Board of Directors he sat,he was pivotal to the several special publications the company produced.His ‘Introduction’ to the publications were the readers delight.It dripped of the fascinating writing style that Professor Molly Mahood,pioneer head of the English department at Ibadan,had noticed in those early days as “unique and mature”

On his return from a medical trip to India last year, I had expressed concern about his failing health.  Obumselu, not one to be desolate, tried to cheer me up and avowed that he had lived a fulfilled life.Even while bugged down by illness,he continued to give of himself to good causes geared at the upliftment of the Igbo nation,Nigeria and our shared  humanity. I had visited Obumselu at his hospital bed the Sunday preceding his death and he was in the good company of his devouted  wife, Fidelia and one of his daughters, Chiebuka. Not even the evident pain concomitant of the malignant ailment that ravaged him could stop him from discussing books.  He did not forget the last assignment that he gave to me which was to scout for the best bookshops in Lagos.  On learning that I will be travelling to Ibadan the next day, he admonished that I should drive carefully so as to return safely to my loved ones. Responding, as I bade him bye, I thanked him for his unfailing fatherly care and noted that I will be exceedingly pleased to see him in robust health on my return.  I did return few days afterwards to be assailed with the grim news of his passage. Adieu the quintessential scholar and humanist!

• Oduenyi, a company executive is adjunct Faculty at the School Of Media And Communication, Pan Atlantic University, Lagos.