If Babachir David Lawal, a former secretary to the government of the federation, had ridden quietly into the sunset after his removal from office in 2017, he would have been long forgotten. He may lack the depth many Nigerians thought he was capable of, particularly having once assumed a high-profile public office, but he is devious enough to recognise that he needs to sustain his bitter remonstrations to maintain political relevance. He has kept up the flurry, excited that impressionable newsmen have found his postulations irresistible and worthy of adorning newspaper front pages. But if you are going to be very loud, why not add some glamour and substance to it? Not Mr Lawal. He inflicts himself on the public, and does so with bitter and provocative efficiency. Last Monday on television, he was in the public face again excoriating President Bola Tinubu whom he described as arrogant and pompous, and also pontificating on the 2023 presidential election, and stereotyping and psychoanalysing the Yoruba. Casting himself as the ultimate demolition man, he constantly feels a burden to ladle out bucketfuls of invectives now and then to every passerby, especially the ones who would fetch him newspaper headlines.
Mr Lawal has sadly not lived down his removal in 2017 as SGF over allegations of misappropriation of funds voted to alleviate food scarcity in the Northeast. First suspended by President Muhammadu Buhari in April of that year, he was eventually removed seven months later, because his stay in the administration had become a liability. He still smarts from that job loss and public disgrace. In any case, he severely left the late president out of his misery and has instead trained his guns almost exclusively on President Tinubu. Some Nigerians resent the president, particularly his political contemporaries frequently outsmarted by him, but few among them ever decribe him as arrogant. It is okay to dislike the president, indeed for no reason at all, but if a reason would be cited, it should at least contain some logic. But hear Mr Lawal on President Tinubu: “He is arrogant. The guy has an arrogance that belies definitions…The problem with Bola Tinubu is that he thinks I’m the one that offended him. I didn’t offend him; he offended me and he is full of himself, and he thinks that he is now so-called president…I believe he didn’t win the election.”
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Similar to how some parts of Nigeria demonstrate dreadful unease when it comes to the Yoruba, the former SGF also swallowed the common stereotype of the Yoruba as arrogant and imperious. According to Mr Lawal, “The problem with the Yoruba – and I still repeat it – is that when you support them and they win, they turn around to convert you, behave as if they have subdued you, as if they have conquered you. They will not count your support…When I used to say that all the time, even when we sat in his house, they would say, ‘No, it’s not like that’…We that are not Yoruba—we regret it, because when you go there, they throw us out.” It is pointless trying to debunk Mr Lawal’s assertions. That view of the Yoruba is widely held in the Southeast, mused over in the South-South, and during the decolonisation process in the 1950s, northern political leaders felt the sting of Yoruba imperiousness. But the mistake the critics make is to ignore the fact that the Yoruba are no fan of one another either. Their elite ridiculed and conspired against Obafemi Awolowo before independence and in the First Republic, treated MKO Abiola with contempt until he won the 1993 election, and as ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo among many others have shown, the Yoruba have been the chief antagonists of their own causes more than anyone else. By making President Tinubu the archetypal Yoruba, the SGF clearly shows how little of the Southwest he knows.
Perhaps the worst fallacy Mr Lawal committed was his insistence that Mr Obi won the 2023 presidential poll. He did not present any proof other than to say he had proof. Yet he was in the Labour
Party during the poll, but did not think it fit to lend his proofs to Mr Obi to prosecute their outlandish case in the courts. In addition, he lied about contributing to President Tinubu’s election when he was all along fanatically promoting Mr Obi. The newspapers and social media will obviously continue to indulge Mr Lawal for some time to come. Indeed, the country will give a hearing to anyone with a modicum of talent for abuse and who can pillory the president. Mr Lawal will receive premium mention for his continuing and irrational characterisation of the president, for his pedantic consideration of social, political and economic issues, and for his rage against, and unsparing hatred for, the Yoruba, a trait shared by some geopolitical zones and persons. Do the Yoruba even know how deeply resented they are?
