By Wale Adeduro
The APC Presidential primary election has come and gone. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, with tremulous hands, has received the flag of APC for the 2023 Presidential elections. However, myopic hirelings are still stabbing the untainted image of the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. His offence is that he dared to aspire to become the next President of Nigeria just as their principal, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
With broken chords the traducers of Osinbajo continue to play the music of betrayal. They believe they are shaming Osinbajo but the world knows that Osinbajo did not lose the election to a better candidate.
All the APC Governors who scurried out of the State box immediately Osinbajo made his speech during the APC primaries to teleguide their states’ delegates not to vote for Osinbajo equally know that Osinbajo’s competence as Nigeria’s next President is not in doubt. It is now in the public domain how millions of dollars and choice properties in the United Arab Emirates influenced many privileged APC political actors to mobilise their cohorts against the dream for a new Nigeria, as represented by Osinbajo. These political perverts forget that lie, however far it runs, shall ultimately be overtaken by the truth.
Despite losing the APC Presidential primary election on Wednesday 8 June, 2022, Osinbajo is not a loser. Osinbajo is the flagbearer of the teeming masses of Nigeria who desire a shift from money politics and unbridled corruption. A movement for a new Nigeria devoid of primordial hegemony has been conceived. Osinbajo is undoubtedly the forerunner of a new Nigeria that will be born in his active lifetime.
Minions and hirelings who insist on crushing Osinbajo do not know that Nigeria’s erudite Vice President and Professor of Law is made of sterner stuff. He is a man of convictions who cannot be cowed by mockery and blackmail. He is also not in the class of grasscutters.
Grasscutters are peculiarly vicious. My wife and I once had a strange experience with grasscutters. We bought three grasscutters, a male and two females, for experimental domestic breeding, on one of our trips to Songhai Institute, an innovative integrated agricultural farm in Benin Republic.
A few days after we took the three grasscutters home, we had to travel for some days. Our staff member who was saddled with feeding the grasscutters, for some inexplicable reason, forgot to serve them breakfast and lunch on a certain day. By the time he went to feed them later in the day, he didn’t see any of the three grasscutters. He saw the freshly constructed kernel littered with bones and splattered with the blood of the grasscutters.
When we returned and discovered what happened I put a call through to our mentor at Songhai Institute. His explanation was shocking. Caged grasscutters, when denied the opportunity of feeding on grass, eat one another. It is a case of eating whoever denies an individual the opportunity of feasting, however unethical the meal is.
It is therefore not surprising that Engineer David Babachir Lawal, has gone to town with shining daggers to eat Osinbajo for lunch. The infamous former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) was sacked for fraudulently awarding a grass-cutting contract to his company, Rolavision for the sum of N544 million in 2017.
The disgraced and sacked SGF believes that Osinbajo recommended his sack so he has waited all this while to take his pound of flesh and crack the bones of the unblemished Vice President of Nigeria. The millionaire grasscutter and former SGF who has also been charged for not being able to account for the sum of N220 million meant for the welfare of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in the North-East should hide his head in shame for being the first SGF to be expelled out of office with ignominy in Nigeria.
Everyone knows that Lawal is a drowning man struggling tooth and nail to use Osinbajo as a straw to keep his head above stormy waters. Lawal is also running from pillar to post, despite his pretensions of doing otherwise, to be chosen as Tinubu’s running mate. That was why he, in his clumsy writing, replete with the bile of a grasscutter, advertised that he is a “Christian” and called Osinbajo “a demon”.
His statement portrays his ignorance and betrays his claim to Christianity. Otherwise, he won’t be addressing a human being as “a demon”. Every baptised Christian knows that demons are spirit beings and not human beings. Lawal should be forgiven because he has been overwhelmed by a seething rage against Osinbajo. His reasoning has been overcome with the bile of the grasscutter that he has become.
No matter how hard he tries, Lawal should know that a disgraced and unrepentant fellow cannot represent Christians in national politics. APC would be making a costly mistake to choose a grasscutter as the running mate to its flagbearer. If, as SGF, Lawal was caught with his hands in the cookie jar, would he not disappear with the cookie jar if he (God forbid!) becomes Nigeria’s Vice President?
City People Magazine, an indelicate entertainment publication, has also gone to town with a screaming headline in its current edition, “Why Yorubas Won’t Forgive Osinbajo”. Such a ridiculous headline only tells you that some people are just lining up to take their own share of the largesse from the infamous bullion van.
Meanwhile, Yoruba leaders of thought, as far back as 2019, had been reported by Vanguard newspaper as warning that, “whatever negative that happens to Osinbajo politically is an affront to the Yoruba race regardless of his political affiliation.”
In what way has Osinbajo, with his enviable pedigree and sterling performance as Nigeria’s President, offended the entire yoruba race? Warped minds are postulating that, by aspiring to be Nigeria’s next President and contesting with Tinubu, a fellow Yoruba leader, Osinbajo has committed an unpardonable offence.
These developments are not strange. It is the way of dubious Nigerians. If Osinbajo had won the election as the presidential flag bearer of APC Nigerians would have been bombarded with flattering headlines such as “Osinbajo: The Rise and Rise of a Yoruba Leader” or “How Osinbajo Stopped Money Politics in Nigeria”.
It is however comforting that right thinking and forward looking Nigerians know that a new Nigeria has begun. In football, there is a concept called “return match”. In due season all those who believe in a new Nigeria will celebrate victory during the impending “return match”. Professor Oluyemi Oluleke Osinbajo (GCON) is still coming.
▪︎Dr. Adeduro is a Productivity Consultant.
