You’ve made a career of lying, Soyinka replies Obasanjo

NOBEL laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, yesterday,
gave a rebuttal to former President Olusegun
Obasanjo’s latest book, My Watch describing it as
a narrative by a career liar always determined to
crookedly project himself above his true standing
among men.
Affirming his general detestation of such men,
Soyinka said the Obasanjo brand was compounded
by the inclination of even foisting the lies on
members of the younger generation.
Obasanjo had in his book flayed Soyinka as a self
serving critic who he said always sought to shine
out among men claiming that the Nobel Laureate
is a “misfit as a political analyst, commentator or
critic.”
He had written “For Wole, no one can be good, nor
can anything be spot-on politically except that
which emanates from him or is ordained by him.”
Continuing his assessment of Soyinka, Obasanjo
had said: “He is surely a better wine connoisseur
and a more successful “aparo” (guinea fowl) hunter
than a political critic, not to talk of what he would
do as a politician,” adding “I take him seriously on
almost all issues except on the political particularly
Nigerian politics.”
Soyinka’s treatise
Replying, yesterday, in a treatise, titled Watch and
Pray, Watch and Prey, Soyinka said: “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.
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 (December 23,
2014) as “Impunity Taken too Far”. So much for
the latest from that direction – we mustn’t allow
Handing-Over notes between presidents to distract
us for too long.
Creative conversion
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.
Resurrection ritual language
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.
Twilight disgrace
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.
Creature that worked in darkness
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.
Season of goodwill
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!