2017: Diary of a columnist (III)

“As the speech defines the occasion, and as the occasion defines the speech, great moments of decision making (like that by Shakespeare’s Hamlet when he said “To be or not to be”), are not attended with the distractions of unmerited anecdotes. Buhari (after his return from London) had occasion to address matters touching on the survival of the State itself (the IPOB threat). He would have done great disservice to the occasion if he bored the nation with the details of his health condition. Such inanity, –at that material time- would have availeth neither him nor the tribulated State. Nor would Buhari have made the desired impact if he had delivered his words that day by ‘number’ and not by ‘weight’ -like he did”. –From ‘THE STUFF THAT SPEECHES ARE MADE 08/31/17’

OSINBAJO’S TO THE RESCUE
“…even as Buhari’s Inaugural Address seems to be his best ever, it will not be the only great speech to come from his government… (because) Vice President Osinbajo’s Eid-el-Kabir lunch speech at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, was another excellent one since that inaugural address by his principal -that is if it has not bettered Buhari’s best-ever. Osinbajo’s had all the qualities of a great speech: it has ‘metre’ and it has ‘verse’; it has its own unique ‘figurativeness’ and its own blend of ‘metaphors. Plus it is rhetorical without exerting itself to be so. And with ‘sacrifice’ as one of its major themes, the VP’s speech was pleasantly auspicious for the occasion: from its prophetic “This is a nation that will show forth in culture, in technology and in commerce”, to its divinely-descriptive notion of Nigeria as “God’s investment in the black race”; and from its emphatic “Our manifest destiny is to be a great nation”, to its divinely predictive “great nation that God is about to give birth to”. –From ‘ON OSINBAJO’S EID SPEECH -09/06/17’

THE COWARDLY DOG
“Revolutionaries would say ‘give us liberty or give us death!’ but Kanu would say: ‘give me Biafra or I’ll kill you all!’ And you wondered, if he was this mightily strong, shouldn’t he have just taken Biafra off the map instead of demanding that we give it to him? Besides, as he was this violently ‘mutinous in peace’, would you not have thought that Kanu should be mightily ‘bold in war’ too? But no; even before the beagle of war was blown, and the alarum of battle sounded, the man whose ‘sneeze’ had allegedly given ‘cold’ to the ‘zoo’ he called Nigeria, had already fled. Kanu had caught the ‘courage’ of the ‘cowardly dog’. Or as the Hausas would say: ‘yaa ari ta kare’! To prove that he is after all a coward.” –From ‘KANU: A PARODY -09/21/17’

Read Also: 2017: Diary of a columnist (II)

MYOPIC ‘CAN’
“The earliest Western Church had a clear reputation for fighting ‘usury’ (interest) or ‘riba’ as it is called in Arabic. And even though the medieval Church had inadvertently mis-conducted itself to pave the way for usury to become the primum mobile of all capitalist transactions, in fairness to the Christian West it continues to remain –till today- receptive to superior alternative currents of ideas including from Arabia from whence it once benefited. But by a curious –nonetheless ridiculous- twist of irony, the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, strains secular logic in defense of ‘usury’. And which makes CAN laughably less catholic than the Pope -hating everything ‘Islamic’, so much that it is prepared to embrace everything anti-Christic! In truth non-interest banking is as biblical as it is Islamic. Just as ‘head-covering’ (or hijab) for the female also is.” –From ‘RE-VISITING ‘CAN’S DESCENT TO THE MEDIEVAL’ -10/05/17’
THE THREE ‘R’s
“There is urgent need for the reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction of the Igbo nation, starting from the convening of a ‘National Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, where these questions would be answered to the satisfaction of all Nigerians. With full immunity from prosecution, all the actors, past and present, their heirs or assigns, can come and tell their own side of the story, by way of accepting responsibility for their actions or inactions, and seeking forgiveness. This has worked well in many countries of the world and is ideal for beginning the process to preserve Nigeria’s unity; not by sweeping it all under the carpet and pretending it never happened, or by stopping the study of history in schools, and definitely not by the brutal suppression of agitators. This is where Mohammed Adamu’s considerable writing and opinion making skills are needed”. –From ‘STILL ON ‘KANU: A PARODY’ -10/11/17 (RIGHT OF REPLY BY Emeka Ukpabi)’

MAD MAN OR VISIONARY?
“Gaddafi was a man of dual racial origin, -an Arab and an African; a bona fide member of two continental bodies: the Arab League and the African Union. He was author of ‘The Green Book’ –a mystery book containing an ingenious Afro-Arab philosophy offering the world a ‘Third Universal Theory’ or a practical alternative to Western capitalist-democracy and Eastern European communism… Said one oriental writer: “Whereas Plato’s ‘The Republic’ still remains the blueprint of a utopian society waiting to be experimented, Gaddafi’s ‘Green Book’ is itself the product of a practical revolution which has radically transformed Libya”. The American media especially had persistently played up Gaddafi’s often nationalistic, afro-Arab ideology to propagate hostile information designed to portray him as ‘mad’ and to divert the attention especially of the Arab world and Africa from his message.” –From ‘GADDAFI: TRIBUTE TO A REVOLUTIONARY -10/18/17’

PROFIT AND PROFITEERS
“Wailers are either unrepentant pro-Jonathans or they are unapologetic anti-Buharis. Or both. They are generally pro-looting –some unabashedly so; others in a dissembling, hypocritical manner. Or they are pro those who are known to have looted –either for beneficial, geo-political or ethno-religious reasons. And these are ‘Wailers by choice’ only. There are also ‘Wailers of necessity’: the looters themselves; or those who fear they may be accused of looting. ‘Wailers of necessity’ have to either wail by themselves or spend humongous amount to promote wailing. It is the only way they hope to distract the ‘eagle’ from swooping; or to keep the hangman’s noose away from their fattened necks… But there are also ‘Wailers by circumstances’. And these are partisan, dye-in-the-wool PDP apologists. They may not have ever looted. They may not have ever benefitted from looting. But like the restless hyenas that they are, they are driven by an avidly-jumpy gene that gives them hope they just might be tomorrow’s lucky looters.” –From ‘WAILERS’ VERSUS ‘HAILERS’ -10/26/17’

THE LIMIT OF PREJUDICE
“All the theories around Buhari’s alleged cronyism and nepotism especially concerning appointments and the claim of ‘excessive’ indulgence of favored appointees, center around ethnicity, religion and geo-polity. They allege that the President favors only the Hausa-Fulanis, Muslims and especially core Northerners –provided they are Muslims. And from this premise Babachir then becomes a perfect anti-theory for the reason that he is neither a Muslim, nor Hausa, nor Fulani, nor Hausa-Fulani. And yes, Babachir may pass for a ‘core Northerner’ –coming from the far North- but he does so with qualification: he is a core ‘Northern Christian’, one of a Northern minority groups that anti-Buharists allege he (Buhari) hates, -and maybe who equally hate Buhari.” –From ‘BABACHIR, ‘CABAL’ AS ANTI-THEORY -11/02/17’

ONE BAD APPLE
“El-Rufai’s ‘teachers’ should confound both popular wisdom and the sayings even of the masters. If, as the saying goes, ‘one bad apple spoils the bunch’, well then what’ll twenty one thousand bad ones do -to the bunch, and to innocent fingerlings that should feed from the bunch? Or if, as Robert Green Ingersoll wrote that “One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests”, what then will twenty one thousand ‘bad’ schoolmasters be worth? Said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The man who can make hard things easy is the educator” –namely the teacher. But then what do we make of El-Rufai’s 21,000 ‘educators’ to whom evidently even the easiest things appear to be the hardest? Who’ll teach who, between the teacher and the pupil?” –‘TEACHERS OR CHEATERS? -11/16/17’

SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL
“As he turns sixty, -and even as he watches the sordid entrails of his six-year misadventure in governance daily exposed- former President Goodluck Jonathan, still rides on his high political horse, claiming as always that while he was in office, he saw no evil, he heard no evil and that he did no evil. And you wonder who is deceiving who –between the false priest himself and the gullible congregation that lives in denial or that truly cannot tell the ‘dubious’ from the ‘divine’ in the political life of Jonathan. What is ridiculous however is not that they call him a ‘hero of democracy’; but that Jonathan too carries on as though he is the ‘Ataturk’ of a disputed ‘modern’ Nigeria. And you do not know whether to be amazed or to be amused by this comic display of inanity.” –‘ JONATHAN @60: LEST WE FORGET -11/23/17’

‘COWARDICE’ IS A CHOICE
“When a trembling, dagger-wielding Macbeth, in Shakespeare’s tragic play ‘Macbeth’, says to his avidly ruthless wife “If we should fail”, the villain of implacable ambition, namely Lady Macbeth, only charges: “screw your courage to the sticking place and we’ll not fail!”. Screwing his ‘courage to the sticking place’ is what Atiku has consistently been doing. It is a mettle which even Macbeth has to be nudged by a woman to cultivate. But it has always come in handy with an Atiku; -the courage to mount his gilded horse of ambition, and to soldier on; never cowardly asking, like Macbeth, “If we should fail”; because he knows always that as much as a chivalry charge can fail, it can also succeed.” –From ‘ON ATIKU’S AMBITION -11/30/17’

THE CHARITY OF HIS ‘SILENCE’
“Over the years Obasanjo has managed to shape up to be a portent augury for or against those who aspire to be presidents of Nigeria. If you cannot get his open endorsement… at the very least you should endeavor to negotiate the charity of his silence -so that a divining Obasanjo does not pronounce his potent augury against your candidature. The charity of Obasanjo’s silence alone on the candidature of any politician is electorally mojo enough in itself to take to electoral battle. You cannot aspire to be Nigeria’s President and afford the ruthlessness of Obasanjo’s open denunciation. What Jonathan and the rest of them should do (rather than hope that Obasanjo will ever forgive Atiku) is to prepare Atiku to de-mythify this myth about Obasanjo and not waste their time angling to profit from it. By Obasanjo’s rules of war, Atiku is not entitled to his forgiveness. Let alone his open endorsement. Hell, Atiku may not even be entitled to the charity of Obasanjo’s silence.” –From ‘STILL ‘ON ATIKU’S AMBITION’ -12/07/17’

WHO’S JERUSALEM? -12/14/17
“…identifying ‘Palestine’ today as a post-Abrahamic, post-Israelite or post-Judean creation, is both anachronistic and historically fallacious because the ‘Palestinians’… had been there at Canaan as people of the ‘Jordan River’ long before Abraham arrived from what the Bible says was Ur of the Chaldea (Iraq), some 1500 years before Christ was born. When he arrived Canaan Abraham had met these people… and had to settle down amongst them to father Isaac who the Bible tells us sired Jacob, who would be called ‘Israel’ and who was therefore to begin the lineage of a God’s own people, namely the Israelites. And down the line to the birth of Judah, who would be the progenitor of the Jewish tribe, the precursor of the Jewish religion, and the father of the Judean nation. Meaning that the people of the ‘Jordan river’ (or the Canaanites who would be Arabized as the future Palestinians), and the cities and towns of that community of the ‘Jordan river’ had all existed long before the birth of Israel, Israelites, Jews, Judaism, or Judea.
Concluded

Read Also: 2017: Diary of a columnist (II)

QUOTE: Buhari’s Inaugural Address seems to be his best ever, it will not be the only great speech to come from his government… (because) Vice President Osinbajo’s Eid-el-Kabir lunch speech at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, was another excellent one since that inaugural address by his principal -that is if it has not bettered Buhari’s best-ever. Osinbajo’s had all the qualities of a great speech: it has ‘metre’ and it has ‘verse’; it has its own unique ‘figurativeness’ and its own blend of ‘metaphors. Plus it is rhetorical without exerting itself to be so. And with ‘sacrifice’ as one of its major themes, the VP’s speech was pleasantly auspicious for the occasion.