As the 2019 election draws nearer, it is not unexpected that political jabs, jives and mudslingings will fly around. It is like the proverbial day of the feast on elephant, when different knives of different sizes and shapes are seen!
However, the write-up against the Vice President by Shaka Momodu in Thisday of Friday, April 27, 2018, was nothing but a Shakabula (a local dane gun) aimed at an Omoluwabi Yemi Osinbajo.
The write-up was well grounded in invectives, contradictions and rabble rousing, akin to a writer that grabbed his pen as soon as he woke up from the wrong side of the bed!
Why one may not say that the Shakabula was procured by the corrupt people of the immediate past, or its bullets supplied by them as a form of corruption fighting back, it was clear that the writer was evidently pained by the recent revelation and insistence of the Vice President on talking about the abysmal looting of the nation’s treasury by the immediate past administration. The writer, instead of disproving the argument if he could, merely chose to resort to indecent name-calling.
The writer was mad that the Vice-President was, in the writer’s words, “appeasing, pleading and making general statements on the need for unity” in reaction to the threat order issued by some Arewa youths to people of Igbo extraction living in he North to vacate the region”. The writer would have preferred the Vice-President to order the rains of bombs and bullets on the youths! He has forgotten or pretended to forget, how “appeasing, pleading and making general statements on the need for unity” to the youths of the Niger Delta by the VP in his shuttle diplomacy within the Niger Delta brought normalcy, peace and stopped attacks on oil pipelines in the Niger Delta restoring the nation’s economy back to life.
At another point, Mr. Shaka solicitously turned to Prof. Osinbajo’s volunteer-advocate, complaining about certain cabinet members not thinking high of the VP, even when the VP has neither complained nor solicited for the patronizing venture. Not one dint of evidence was even supplied for this laughable claim. One believes that the VP is too sophisticated for such cheap divide-them tactics.
If Mr. Shaka has any grouse with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Babatunde Raji Fashola, or anyone for that matter, as seen in the write-up, the way out is to just put all his bottled-up anger together and explode them on the Vice-President for reasons best known to him. What logic!
In his desperation to paint Professor Osinbajo bad, Mr. Shaka, in an act of duplicity resorted to religious extremism, by not only calling to question, but also attacking the faith of another person. How then was the writer different from the uneducated religious extremists and members of the dangerous, dreaded and bestial Boko Haram terrorists?
If INEC, according to Mr. Shaka had recently “admitted that the Edo and Ondo governorship elections were heavily corrupted”, was that not an indication that the present government gives free hand to the electoral body as against what obtained in the recent past? How did Osinbajo personally comes in, if not for the personal vendetta of the shadow-boxing writer?
The Vice President, is no doubt, a plus to the present administration. And even Mr. Shaka knows that. But it is the ripe mangoes that are the target of sticks and stones. Like I said in the opening, many of Mr. Shaka’s insult-laden articles are to be expected as 2019 draws nearer. The VP therefore needs to develop a very thick skin and not be distracted.
One is not surprised that Mr. Shaka quoted the Bible in his desperate innuendo on “false prophets”. After all, Shakespeare said “the devil can cite scripture for his own purpose! An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek”.
Since he has exhibited some knowledge of the Bible, he will do well to read Exodus 20:16.
