For Dare Olatunji
I am delighted at your Tuesday’s back page treatise in The Nation about Hon Obahiagbon. We were colleagues at the House of Reps between 2003 and 2007. He was as interesting as being colourful. Looking forward to a possible reply from him to your piece which hopefully you will cause to be published. Yours too makes the heart ‘light’. From Hon Leo Awoyemi
I am a regular reader of your column every Tuesday. I can claim that I am so fanatical and addicted to it, I don’t take my breakfast not until I have finished reading your articles every Tuesday but I nearly regretted reading today’s column entitled “To Patrick Obahiagbon From a Kindred Soul”, Apart from serious headache that I encountered when reading, I couldn’t comprehend even a line in the whole episode. Please next time try to come to our own level. From Pastor Esan Ajibola JP, the Obalowa of Ona-owa, Oke-Ayedun Ekiti,
Your piece on Obahiagbon shows regrettably the loss of people’s voice in the National Assembly. We will definitely want him back as a senator to represent Edo South while Samson Osagie should hold his seat in the House. The two of them are vibrant and passionate on national issues. Dare you are also not lacking in high sounding words like Obahiagbon. Kudos! From Pastor Sam from Benin City
I read your article last Tuesday’s The Nation with a mind of dexterity. This is annaximaness kind of English. Even Shakespeare would have loved to sit in your class. Thank God that the honourable member did not use the drum of his lexis to pull down the House of Reps complex. My humble appeal is that he should make his handout ready as soon as he finishes his talk each time, to enable us queue in his school of thought. From Sly Upoh, Calabar.
Olatunji Dare has made my day by awakening my grammatical and oratory sensibility. Indeed, he has woken me from the neocolonial economic and esoteric depression forced on us by the uncanny, unwitty and blatantly callous regime at Abuja. For Obahiagbon, his early political transition from the hallowed chambers has denied the assemblage of oratory glamour, verbal acuity and intellectual competitiveness. From Baba Ejiga, Kaduna
Sir I am won’t to believe that this piece “To Patrick Obahiagbon, from a kindred soul comes from you. Because I cannot make any meaning out of this write up. This is not your style. Do I have to consult the dictionary in order to understand it? Sir do come to our level, I have my respect for you sir. From Ojo A Ayodele, Emure Ekiti
Please tell Honourable Patrick Obahiagbon to return to the house because I personally miss his big grammar. Let him please return, I love his sense of humor. From Noble, Port Harcourt.
Sir, don’t you think we should install you as the new Igodomigodo. This write up is so well packaged and I believe you can hold forth while we await the grand master to finish his assignment in Edo State. Nice write up, kudos. From Austin
Dear Prof, while the Entertainment lasted in the House, NEPA or whatever name it now bears, hardly allowed me to enjoy Igodomigodo. Like you, however, I equally miss the man the Comrade Governor put into incommunicado. From Temitope Vincent, Akure
Dear Tunji, you made my day with your piece on the man I choose to describe as the grand commander of noble speech, whom we have really missed for too long. But I read Obahiagbon in almost every line of your work. We need more of such pieces. From Peter Betiang, Obudu, Cross River.
Sir, what a way of identifying with Pat Obahiagbon. I was going to put the paper aside after the first paragraph until something told me that you were simply ‘impersonating’ Pat. From, Eyitayo Ogbonyomi, Kaduna.
Sir, I was attracted to House of Reps for four years because of him. I bought a diary because of his uncontested verbalisation. He is my global grammar teacher. Those that went to grammar school are millions of miles behind him; did he attend the same school with K.O.Mbadiwe? Edo people should release him for national assignment. He is not for state consumption. From Hyrak Nlerum, Port Harcourt
Your head and hair splitting but tintiltating write up in today’s The Nation newspaper is nothing short of a grammatical lexicon-poison!! Talk of dizzying heights!!! Even the addressee of that article would have a hard time digesting it let alone throwing up some of it in file at the Comrade Governor. I definitely don’t envy His Excellency in this situation. Permit me to plead that you rest your case on this lexicon poison on this one adventure and find other avenues to fraternize with your kindred spirit. This appeal is to ensure that your readers who do not wish to be lost in this lexicon wilderness continue to enjoy your lucid articles as of old. From Fayemi Olayinka.
Dare, thank you for the resuscitative grammatical re- exposition of virulent lingual Obahiagbonism in your condemnation of Jonathanistic thrust in governance. Your position on that is the perceptive nature of your cranial digest and its experimental diagnostic competence or disgenuity; all falling within personalised configuration of the subject under diagnostic spectrum which is subjective under accepted international practices. Such a lens could be clouded by surrogatism or personally induced sky bound vicious hatred for the diagnosed human instrument in contentious aggravation of belied facts against the reviewed object to support reviewer’s agrarianly fertilized misrepresentation of his target-object. So much for that. And on Obahiagbon’s new job, how are his workers going to cope with his grammar; to make things work right? Oshiomhole and his sense of humor can be thrilling sometimes. From Lai Ashadele.
For Segun Gbadegesin
Thank you for your comment in the last page of The Nation dated 11/04/13 refers. Since the Nigeria Constitution will become due and lapse by 2015, I think our leaders’ focus should be working toward creating a new one rather than amending or attaching memorandum to it. By 2015, the present constitution becomes invalid, null and void. Thanks. From Anonymous
Segun! Blame it on Richards Constitution of 1946 which put the entire North under one Caliphate but divided South into three with Lagos kept as British colony. Remember South was then one third of North to correct this we must insist on six or 12 zones each with veto power to remove any law that is inimical to it. best regards .From Prof A.E.Obot
Sir, all I can appeal is that you please maintain your stand and tempo of this write-up. Ninety percent of the southerners at the conference are timid. They prefer to settle for the crumb. Imagine how the northerners speak! From Akinlayo. A. State of Osun.
Anybody who wants the present political structure which tends to arrest development among progressive Nigerians for the conservatives to meet up, is an enemy of the nation. Every nation of the Nigerian state should be given the constitutional right to develop at her own pace without being remotely controlled from Abuja. That is the beauty of a federal democracy. From Dr. A. E. Iheke, Aba, Abia State.
Sir, we await your thesis. I will like you to look at the problem called Nigeria from Awolowo’s view that Nigeria is a mere geographical expression, because of mistake of 1914 and that of the visionary realist Major Gideon Orkar. From Fabian, Enugu.
For Tunji Adegboyega
Just read your satire on rebasing. The fact is that some of you in The Nation Newspaper, until death will never see anything good in your country, because a good number of you have become sadists because of what you will eat . God will surely judge. From Omot, Jnr.
Why do we like propaganda in this country? Unemployment, kidnapping, all sorts of unpalatable stories are thriving in the country and the president is telling us that our economy is now the strongest in Africa. How did they arrive at that? I do not think a reasonable person will believe this government because when they see white they call it red. How do we even believe somebody who said 16 is greater than 19? The whole world is laughing at us but our leaders seem not to be bothered. Rebasing my foot! From Hamza Ozi Momoh, Apapa, Lagos.
The day a man decides to deceive himself is the day he heads in the opposite direction of progress and accomplishments. We are being ruled by people who take pleasure in believing what they know is not true. That someone can allow his name to be mentioned in connection with that statistical nonsense is a pointer to the reality that these people have all lost a sense of value. God save Nigeria from these people who celebrate failure. From Simon Oladapo, Ogbomoso.
You have said it all. There is no hope of survival for a child who fails in an examination but goes ahead to forge a result that he came first in the class. Someone said that failure properly perceived is an opportunity in disguise. Rather than letting the world know how helpless we are, our leaders keep hiding behind one finger by hawking the impression that an economy that is on life support like ours is doing pretty well. Self-deceit is the worst form of deceit. From Favour Ifeanyichukwu Jnr, Abuja.
Re:’Okonjo-Iweala’s hour’ No matter how large or big a GDP is, it meant production and population only. And further, what type of production? Primary, secondary or tertiary? Ours that is large is primary, raw economic production of oil, agriculture and consumers of telecom. Then our poverty level? Abnormally high. Again, infrastructure? Exceptionally unbefitting. We should not be carried away with rebasing as our living standard remains poor. Corruption uncontrolled and manufacturing 15 percent! Where is that largest economy? Perhaps Madam Okonjo-Iweala has a magic that would turn our economy into growth! But where must she have kept such magic in her four-year economic coordination? From Lanre Oseni.
Tunji, I sincerely want to know if you are not linked with Dare Olatunji, the satirist. Why do you want ‘Satellite Dish’ and not the common one? I misunderstood Dr Dare. You will be, too. Anonymous.
‘Diezani here, Diezani there, wetin dis Diezani do?’ (your column of March 30).The woman sef dey chop money o(Laughs). God bless you my brother. From Valentine Ojo, Abuja.
Great satire on Diezani Alison-Madueke. With her and others in government having a frolicking time serving us, any wonder crude oil price is increasing, we are producing more barrels but less and less money is accounted for. That is government magic. All the billions approved each week for projects disappear into thin air. From H. Dee.
