it does appear that there is no end to this individual’s
capacity for infantile mischief, and for needless,
mind-boggling provocations, such as his recent
‘literary’ intrusion on my peace...PROF WOLE SOYINKA
OBASANJO, AN IRREDEEMABLE HYPOCRITE —WOLE SOYINKA
Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has described
former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, as an
irredeemable hypocrite and a liar who takes delight in
denigrating people.
Soyinka, in his reply to the attack on him by Obasanjo
in his latest controversial book,
I had fully attuned myself to the fact that our Owu retiree soldier
and prolific author is an infliction that those of us who share
the same era and nation space must learn to endure.
I had fully attuned myself to the fact that our Owu retiree
soldier and prolific author is an infliction that those of
us who share the same era and nation space must learn to
endure. However, it does appear that there is no end to this
individual’s capacity for infantile mischief, and for needless,
mind-boggling provocations, such as his recent ‘literary’
intrusion on my peace.
Professor Wole Soyinka today
Perhaps I ought to interrupt myself here with an apology
to some mutual acquaintances – ‘blessed peacemakers’
and all - especially in this season of ‘peace and goodwill
to all men’. Please know that your efforts have not been entirely
in vain. I had a cordial exchange with Obasanjo over the phone
recently – engineered by himself, his ground staff and/or a
chance visitor – when I had cause to visit his Presidential
Laundromat for the first time ever. During that exchange,
I complemented him on making some quite positive use
of landed property that was acquired under morally
dubious circumstances, and blatantly developed
through a process that I denounced as ‘executive
extortionism’. That obscene proceeding has certainly
set a competitive precedent for impunity in President
Jonathan’s recent fund-raising shindig, editorialized
in THE PUNCH (Dec. 23, 2014) as “Impunity Taken too Far”.
So much for the latest from that directions - we mustn’t allow
Handing-Over notes between presidents to distract us for too long.
To return to our main man, and friendly interventionists, you may
like to note that I went so far as to engage him in light banter,
stating that some of his lesser sins would be forgiven him
for that creative conversion of the landscape – a conversation
that he shortly afterwards delightedly shared with at least
three mutual acquaintances. I promised a follow-up visit
to view some mysterious rock script whose existence,
he informed me, was uncovered by workers during
ground clearing. The exchange was, in short, as good
as ‘malice towards none’ that any polemicist could
hope to contribute to the ongoing season of peace and
goodwill. Obviously that visit will not now take place,
any more than the pursuit of vague notions of some
creative collaboration with his Centre that began
to play around my mind.
That much I do owe you from my report card. Perhaps
you will now accept that there are individuals who are born
incorrigible but, more importantly, that some issues
transcend one’s personal preferences for harmonious
human relationships even in a season of traditional
good will. The change in weather conditions sits
quite well with me however, since we are both acquainted
with the Yoruba proverb that goes: the child that swears
his mother will not sleep must also prepare for a prolonged,
sleepless infancy. So let it be with Okikiola, the overgrown
child of circumstance.
One of the incessant ironies that leapt up at me as I read
Obasanjo’s magnum opus was that we are both
victims of a number of distasteful impositions -
such as being compelled again and again to seek
justice against libel in the law courts. I felt genuine
empathy to read that he still has a pending thirty-year
case instituted by him against his alleged libelers!
Judgment was delivered in my favour regarding
one of the most nauseating only this year, after
surviving technical and other procrastinations,
defendant evasions and other legalistic impediments
for nearly as long as his. That leaves only a veritable
Methuselah on the court list still awaiting re-listing
under the resurrection ritual language known as de novo.
Unfortunately, not all acts of defamation or willful
misrepresentation are actionable, otherwise, my
personal list against this newly revealed
fellow-sufferer would have counted for an
independent volume of the Nigerian Law Report since our
paths first crossed during the Civil War. My commitment
to the belief in the fundamental right of all human beings
NOT TO BE LIED AGAINST remains a life obsession,
and thus demands, at the very least, an obligation of
non-commission among fellow victims.
I must therefore reserve a full, frontal dissection of Obasanjo’s
My Watch for later, most especially since the work itself is
currently under legal restraint and is not readily accessible
to a general readership. So, for now, let me single out just
one of the most glaring instances of this man’s compulsive
career of lying, one sample that the media can readily
check upon and use as a touchstone – if they do need one -
in assessing our author’s multifaceted claims and commentaries
on people and events. I refer here to the grotesque and personally
insulting statement that he has attributed to me for some inscrutable
but obviously diversionary reasons. In the process, this
past Master of Mendacity brazenly implicates an innocent
young man, Akin Osuntokun, who once served him as a
Special Adviser. Instead of conferring dignity on a
direct rebuttal of an ignoble fabrication, I shall simply
make a personal, all-embracing attestation:
I despise that species of humanity whose stock-in-trade is
to concoct lies simply to score a point, win an argument, puff
up his or her own ego, denigrate or attempt to destroy a fellow being.
However, even within such deplorable species, a special pit of
universal opprobrium is surely reserved for those who even lack
the courage of their own lies, but must foist them on others.
When an old man stuffs a lie into the throat of an age-mate of his own children
- omo inu e! - we can only pity an irredeemable egomaniac whose
dotage is headed for twilight disgrace.
D.O. Fagunwa, the pioneer Yoruba novelist, was a compulsive
moralist. I suspect that he may have exerted some influence
on our garrulous general, resulting in his pupil’s tedious,
misapplied and self-serving deluge of moralizing. It seems
quite likely indeed that the ghostly, moralistic hand of Fagunwa
reached out from the Great Beyond, sat his would-be competitor
forcefully before a mirror and bade him write what he saw in that image.
I invoke Fagunwa because, at his commemorative colloquium in Akure
in August last year, I drew my audience’s attention to a
remarkable passage in Fagunwa’s Igbo Olodumare.
The passage had struck me during translation and
stuck to my mind. I found it uncanny that the original
creative moralist, Fagunwa, had captured the psychological
profile of a being whom I have been compelled by
circumstances to study as an eerie creation, yet this was
a character Fagunwa was unlikely to have encountered in
real life at the time that he produced that work.
The section comes from an account of a visit to the abode
of Iku, Death, the terrifying host to Olowo-aiye, the narrative
voice of the adventure. Iku, the host, had been admonishing
his guests through the histories of seven creatures who were
not permitted a straightforward passage to Heaven or Hell,
but were subjected to admonitory punishment at the halfway
house to the abode of the dead. The most horrendous tortures
were reserved, it would seem, for the last of the seven such
‘detainees’, and I invited my audience to ponder if they
could identify any prominent individual, a public figure whose
life conduct seamlessly fitted into Fagunwa’s portrayal, which went thus:
“The seventh…. is not among those who set out to improve the
world but rather to cause distress to its inhabitants.
It was through manipulations that he attained a high position.
Having achieved this however, he constantly blocked the
progress of those behind him, this being a most deplorable
act in the eyes of God, and rank behaviour in the judgment
of the dwellers of heaven – that anyone who has enjoyed
upliftment in life should seek to be an obstacle for those
who follow him. This man forgot the beings of earth, forgot
the beings of heaven, in turn, he forgot the presence of God.
The worst kind of behaviour agitated his hands – greed
occupied the centre of his heart, and he was a creature
that walked in darkness. This man wallowed in bribery
, he was chairman of the circle of scheming, head of the gang
of double-dealing, field-marshal of those who crept about in
the dark of night. With his mouth, he ruined the work of others,
while he used a big potsherd to cover the good works of some,
that others might not see their attainments. He nosed around for
secrets that would entrap his companions, and blew them up into
monumental crimes in the eyes of the world. He who turns the world
upside down, places the deceitful on the throne, casts the truthful down
– because such is a being of base earth, he will never stand as equal
among the uplifted.”
My co-occupants of the High Table, in side remarks, and those who
came up from the audience afterwards to volunteer their answer
to the riddle, without exception named one individual and
one individual only, even as I remained non-committal.
Indeed, one or two tried to put up a defence of that nominee,
and I had to remind them that I had named no one! Fagunwa
wrote largely of the world of mongrelized creatures but, as I
remarked, his fiction remains a prescient and cautionary
mirror of the society we inhabit, where beasts of the forest
appear to have a greater moral integrity than those who
claim to be leading lights of society.
In this season of goodwill, we owe a duty to our immediate
and distant neighbours: CAVEAT EMPTOR! Let all beware,
who try to buy a Rolex from this indefatigable watch peddler
. His own hand-crafted, uniquely personalized timepiece
has been temporarily confiscated by NDLEA and other
guardians of public health but, there is no cause for despair.
Such has been the fate of the misunderstood and the envied,
avatars descended from the heavens before their time, the
seers, and all who crave recognition. Our author invokes God
tirelessly, without provocation, without necessity and
without justification, perhaps preemptively, but does he
really believe in such an entity? Does our home-bred
Double-O-Seven believe in anything outside his own
Omnipotency? Could he possibly have mistaken the
Christian exhortation – ‘Watch and Pray’ for
his private inclination to “Watch and Prey?
This is a seasoned predator on others’ achievements –
he preys on their names, their characters, their motivations
, their true lives, preys on gossip and preys on facts,
preys on contributions to collective undertakings
…..even preys on their identities, substituting his
own where possible. Well, hopefully he may actually
believe in the inevitable End to all vanities?
So, let our Great Immortal, the Unparalleled
Achiever, Divinely appointed Watchman even
on the world that is yet to come remember
Fagunwa’s Iku, the ultimate predator whose
visitation comes to us all, sooner or later.
Chei! There is Death o!
PROF WOLE SOYINKA
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