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| Professor Adesanmi |
If somebody is deliberately packaging cowardice and foolish pro-PDP/Jonathanian shenanigans (which come complete with a huge dosage of animus, tribalistic hatred, and ugly anti-Yoruba ethnic baiting) as the only bar of public ethics and morality in town, I could decide not to reward such infantilism with an audience or a response - especially as their stock in trade is to stoke up any kind of public roforofo for increased visibility and relevance as opposed to any genuine interest in Nigeria. I have no time for this and the Jonathanians with whom anybody is playing footsie should equally be contemptuous of such silly strategies. 2015 is too serious for anybody to work insidiously to advance your cause while lacking the courage to embrace you publicly.
This post is therefore for those of you who should know better but have been inundating me with questions and phone calls. After this post, don't ask me questions about the antics of somebody whose latest stock in trade is dredging up old articles, denuding them of context and nuance, and throwing them at an audience he is sure is too much in a frenzy now to even stop and think about what they are reading and ask critical questions about what the author has consistently advocated without fail in his public work in the area of civics. All in a day's work of mischief-making on behalf of PDP and Goodluck Jonathan while pretending the opposite. Again, let us reassure them: it is okay to openly campaign for Goodluck Jonathan and PDP. They have done it with Wole Soyinka's essays. They have done it with Tunde Bakare's essays and interviews. I should be mightily honoured that they are doing it with "Eebu O So" and admitting me into this stellar company. I am surprised that they have not yet dredged up "Aiye, APC, Vigilance". They are bad students. Their research is not complete. Let them go back and rootle the archives. There is plenty more where 'Eebu O So' came from.
And so the essay is thrown at you and instead of knowing what to say, you are inudating my email, FB inbox, office voicemail with hundreds of messages. Haba! Well, I shouldn't blame you. In line with the mischievous pro-Jonathanian designs of our latest non-aligned national moral warrior-in-chief, online magazines and blogs have seized upon it as an endorsement of Jonathan. They have even retitled it and released it, fooling people into believing that it is my op-ed for this week. It doesn't really matter: the points and admonitions made therein remain valid and 100% applicable to any Buhari/APC follower, supporter, sympathiser.
The moment the APC was born, my commitment was to a politics of vigilance that could lead to a different kind of followership. I wrote. I screamed. I lectured. I warned you that no Nigerian political party or actor should ever deserve the reward of an uncritical and unquestioning followership: not Buhari, nobody. I warned you against the dangers of becoming marionettes and obedient robots like the Jonathanians you critique. In essay after essay after essay, including the one that fools and idiots and recirculating for mischief, I warned you to create a different model of followership. Many of you unfriended at the time. Virtually all of you re-friended me when you understood my point: in the arena of civics, maintaining your right to question, to engage, to "price the market" of any politician selling himself to you, is more important than anything else. I warned you that only by so doing could you send a clear message to the leadership of APC that the seeds of third force committed to a different engagement of Nigeria has been sown within the party and it must grow. I warned you that if you must follow Buhari, do not do it in the sickening, Stockholm-Syndromed manner of the Jonathanian. In certain posts, I held out Innocent Eboigbe Ehiz and Petra Iyabo Akinti Onyegbule as examples of how to be a Buhari supporter: ready to question Buhari, open to questions about Buhari. They are not robotic.
Today, some latter-day dilettantes insidiously working for Jonathan/PDP are clowning all over the internet claiming that the inability of APC to become a viable alternative is the reason why you must demission from 2015. Such foolishness. Where were they when I was engaged in this crusade for precisely that end? So, please, there is no inconsistency anywhere. I warned you against a particular model of followership in those essays. I am still warning you agaist that model today. If, tomorrow, Buhari/Osinbajo win and you become marionettes intolerant of critique and civic questioning, you will have rendezvous with my koboko in future essays. And let nobody confuse you with my statement that I am not on the Buhari train. They are being stupid and clever by half.
It is a statement you have encountered often on this Wall and it should come as no surprise to you. That is a statement I always made in the specific context of choices, options, and possibilities within the APC platform. I toyed with Fashola/Ezekwesili. I toyed with Oshiomhole. I toyed with all kinds of younger possibilities. When Sam Nada-Isaiah announced his candidacy, I embraced it. On my way to Minna, I saw his billboards flouting the law and critiqued it on this Wall. Somebody in their campaign was surprised and posted it here that I was criticizing my preferred candidate. I used it as a teachable moment. I told him that it is consistent with what I have been preaching. Your right to ask questions and to critique is one of the holiest canons of civic sentience and participation. The surrender of this right should never ever be mistaken for loyalty. Any political actor who asks you to surrender that right or expects that of you should be cast out of the window. That goes for everybody - including Buhari and Osinbajo. But, Buhari/Osinbajo have not asked you to relinquish this right, have they? In fact, when you asked Buhari to explain the source of his 27 million, he did but they went after him, didn't they? The only explanation they would have accepted from Buhari is: "I stole it". That would work because they have been commanded to believe that stealing is not corruption.
Of course, while supporting Sam Nda-Isaiah, I also made it clear time and again that whosever emerges as the APC nominee would be my candidate to replace Jonathan in 2015. I have no time for the foolishness and laziness of those preaching demission from 2015 because of their love affair with hyperbole and illogic which suddenly makes the sins of a party that has never ruled at the centre greater than all the sins of the single party that has ruled since 1999. And if they are whinning and clowning that the APC does not offer them this and that and it has been taken over by Tinubu (regrettable but not regrettable enough for me to countenance Jonathan or work secretly for his continuation), ask them what they ever did to raise and nurture the so-called third force that could have prevented this turn of affairs - beyond clowning around for attention on social media. And you, allowing yourself to be confused by mischief-makers, you were the one I tried to sensitize and conscientize in those essays. I told you that you - somebody called you the collective children of anger - could massively register in that party and be a third force and stop her mad embrace of migrating despicable characters and the emergence of tainted Godfathers. This can still happen and I hope you remain alive to that responsibility. But there is an immediate, more urgent task on February 2015. Anybody hee-hawing that you should demission from that task because APC is Satan should be ignored. They are working for Jonathan because Jonathan is invariably the only other alternative.
So, please, folks, stop inundating me with questions over the obvious foolishness and mischief of closet PDP/Jonathanians. You are forcing my hand to reward nonsense with undeserved attention. In fact, if anybody rears his head into this thread, ignore it. Let them go and have fun as usual on their own Walls. Pay them zero heed here. They are welcome to come here for a monologue. The day they are bold enough to embrace the option they are working for, we can engage. For now, I have no time for any clowning Osaka-Osoko. Go and work to send Jonathan back to Otuoke in 2015 and ignore distractions. In doing that, avoid the model of followership I landed my koboko on in "Eebu O So".
Proverb to bones and silence.
The end l'opin sinima.
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