By: Dominic Kidzu.
In Africa all ideologies, puritanical claims and presences to high education/class collapse in the face of tribe and religion. Which is why someone once opined that morality is sociological and regional in Nigeria. If a thief or drug lord is a member of my tribe or religion then he could really not be such a thief or drug lord after all, he is not so bad because ‘he is stealing on behalf of our people’.
I watched Soyinka struggle to condemn Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed on Arise Television early in the week and any vestige of respect I still had left for him as a moral pylon went out of the window in a flash. That man actually had the shamelesness to associate Datti’s admittedly trenchant statement with words such as fascism and treason.
This is the same man who at 31 invaded a radio station in Ibadan and put a Barreta pistol to the head of a broadcaster preventing him from reading the victory speech of a declared winner in the Western Nigeria elections of that year.
“Give me those tapes, give me those tapes or else” Soyinka threatened the alarmed broadcaster. He then forcefully collected the tape and gave a substitute tape to be slotted for broadcast. In the tape this same man had recorded the following message. “Akintola go! Drop your stolen mandate, leave town and take your reprobates with you. Let them leave now before the people decide to wash the streets with their blood.”
Today because his kinsman has been declared president even though under the most egregious circumstances, this man who probably thinks that we don’t know him inside out has lost his dense verbiage against electoral fraud and is now looking for soft targets to help legitimate what is probably the most criminal elections in the history of the unfortunate federal republic.
Surprisingly, the usually ebullient Malabite Abati and sharp witted co-hosts on the show gave him soft passage by not critically examining the incongruence between his past stand and actions, and his current proclamations. Datti Ahmed made the right call and has not by that invited insurrection upon the wobbly republic because it is not difficult to see the unfairness in being in court over an election in which your opponent is pre-emptively sworn in as president and commander in chief. Unless, of course, you are in the cameleonic mould of Oluwole Soyinka.
