Mike Ikhariale

The immediate genesis of that literary vituperation is my didactic intervention contained in the Vanguard of Friday May 10 2002 and other national dailies to his grossly misleading article which was published in the Guardian of 24^th May 2002 where he sycophantly argued that it was right for some politicians to have trooped to Ota village to beg the President to run for a second term. He tried to support his claim by citing false and poorly digested examples from overseas in the fashion of some writers that habitually periscope distant and poorly understood foreign concepts to make their point ostensibly in the "country of the blind". He did not stop there; he went on to lampoon the Nigerian Press for exposing the shameful trek to Ota and ended up labeling them as "e-journalists".

While it may not be necessary to go over all what he said in support of that disgraceful visit, in brief, the Chief contended that simply because it was constitutional for Obasanjo to seek re-election, therefore, those who went to beg him, including some state governors, did the right thing. Needless to say that, rational public opinion both in Nigeria and abroad took strong exception to that loathsome political aberration. My abuser must therefore know by now that he is in dwindling company as far as that Ota ignoble event is concerned.

While it is apparent that he does not know me at all, on the contrary, I know him pretty well. Others who truly know me must confirm that I do not easily write rejoinders because for someone with my literary disposition, that would be practically impossible as my public oriented essays and serious intellectual works are all over the globe. But given the monumental falsity that liberally laced what Akintiilo wrote against me, it is only fair and proper that I reply him, no matter how dismissively, in the interest of the unsuspecting public and also in the exercise of my basic ‘right to reply’.

To prove that he was a little off course in that piece, I counted about 47 times that the Chief, who boasts that he is an accomplished writer and publisher, childishly and tautologically mentioned my name "Ikhariale" in a two-page A4 essay! Maybe he missed his elementary English lesson where pronouns were taught. This is a man claiming that he refuses "to be drawn into mudslinging". If his piece is not mudslinging, then he is in a different world far from this one of mortal rationality. Perhaps the professor in me is getting the better part of my evaluation of his very defective essay. Certainly, anyone who could fall into such elementary pitfalls in prose and lexical presentation ought to be humble enough never to refer to someone else as a "pseudo-scholar".

One would have expected that a man who has picked up the gauntlet to fight his perceived enemy on the pages of the newspaper would also try to do so with some modicum of literally decorum, some finesse, if you like. For example, he ignored the substance of the argument, namely, whether or not it was proper for politicians to troop to Ota just to beg President Obasanjo to re-contest the presidential election. Instead, he launched a wholly amateuristic tirade on the person of Ikhariale who, by all accounts, is indisputably above his immediate moral and social league. When an adversary abandons the live issues at stake and proceeds on a personality-heckling frolic, it is enough evidence that there is a mismatch somewhere.

All that was required of him was to convincingly vitiate, if he could, the essence of my criticism of the Ota visit as logically as possible and not indulge in the obviously boring rigmarole he subjected his readers to in his vain effort to demonstrate his animus belli. No positive purpose is served spending valuable space telling us that he is a successful pamphleteer in Nigeria, as we all know how people who were able to ‘succeed’ during the military regime in Nigeria did it. In one word, it was cronyism unlimited and Akintiilo in particular was a noted flagbearer in that ignoble pastime. That critical distinction between the two of us should provide any objective assessor of the whole show the essential reductio ad absurdum in the challenge that was implied in his rather uncouth rejoinder.

Chief Akintiilo may, in the context of Nigeria philistine worldliness, be rich; he may be presiding over a thriving monthly pamphlet, which in his rather low sense of judgment is a "leading industrial publication", the Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Monthly. But it remains my prerogative to tell him what I honestly feel about it and, of course, from my perspective and level of articulation, I sincerely rate the publication as a mere trashy pamphlet! He may not like my evaluation, and in any case, students do not normally like their professors’ assessment until years after they have managed to graduate from the class! Of course, people of his ilk and level or those below him may well see that publication as the best thing to have left the press but I regret to say that I see it quite differently from my vantage position. It is just that his best is not good enough. Period.

If it is the same English language that we both use, he should have known that the word "urge" is a stronger counterpart of "beg". If he disagrees with my categorization of the Ota visit as begging, I am unable to say what he meant by his preferred term, "urging". He might have a customized dictionary for himself which the rest of the world has no access to. In any case, Akintiilo may be a hero before his workers and siblings but he is certainly a mismatch in this his self-appointed project of comparing himself to me. I must not be understood to be implying that I am myself above mistakes. Not at all. The simple point that I am pressing on is that, as between the two of us, he remains a distant non-starter.

Those who went to Ota were definitely junior to President Obasanjo in the Order of Precedent of Nigeria. And if a good student of English were faced with the choice of using the term ‘urge’ or ‘beg’ to describe the event that took place at Ota, the choice of ‘beg’ would definitely have been the most appropriate answer. In any case, the later declaration by the President at Abuja recently that he had indeed been "persuaded" to run again ought to conclude the guesswork for the unsure examinees. I am therefore unable to see the basis for the verbal gymnastics that he has opted to indulge himself in all with a view to sustaining his satanic argument that the Ota visit was above reproach.

I know it has for some time now in Nigeria been fashionable for all sort of people to denigrate teachers and university professors. This unedifying pastime of rabid anti-intellectualism contextually suited the military juntas’ strategy to stifle all rational dissent against their misrule and quite tragically, Akintiilo and a few others fell for the bait. But if he thought he could do that to me, I am afraid, he is surely in a fool’s paradise. With all humility, I can say as far as Nigeria is concerned, that I have paid my dues professionally as a lawyer and vocationally as an intellectual, and it does not require the likes of Akintiilo to validate these open records. I am proud of my job as a law teacher and one million Akintiilos cannot deter me from the vocation that is in many respects also my life. May I humby request of my abuser, Chief Akintiilo, what really is his professional background, because it is common knowledge that no special education or apprenticeship is required beyond the ability to ‘lick Oga’s boots’ and sing others’ hosannas to perform the role he has so ably assumed? Striped of its immorality and overall turpitude, his type of vocation is, for all intents and purposes, a vocation terra nulius, an all comers’ affairs.

The Ota visit unfortunately reminded the world about the banal style of the late Sani Abacha and I still stand by my assertion, as I did then, that putting pressure on the President to do what is his inclination to do is only a crude imitation of the ordeal that Abacha put the nation through during the shenanigan that preceded his self-succession bid. Why Akintiilo cannot get this is itself an indication of the warp mentality that fuels the begging culture. He disagrees that anyone can be rented. And for himself in particularly, that "there is nothing that I want from this government and/or the next I do not have already..." Hmm! That may be true but I will request of Chief Akintiilo, to please check again for there are a few important items missing from his personal Balance Sheet, i.e., (a) honor and (b) integrity! It is the nature of the human moral compass that you are not allowed to run with the hare and hunt with the hound all at the same time. In other words, the failure to stand up for something morally and ethically viable is an indication of the willingness to fall for everything including Naira and kobo.

Parasiting ones way to the bank may be music to the ears of the very poor, the unprincipled and the damn ignorant. But it does not put you anywhere enviable before those who can tell the good from the bad. Everything about the Chief reminds me of the deep moral abyss Nigeria has fallen when it was the vogue to rank a person simply according to what he "have already" while certified thieving urchins are conferred with chieftaincy titles and honorary degrees. And to be candid, I want to suggest that Akintiilo should go immediately for an ethical mirror and have a better private view of his disgusting public image and personality. That may make him a little bit humble.

If not for a guilty conscience, there was no place in my piece where I remotely suggested that he had been bought. The concept of endorsement as a quid pro quo merchandise came into the discussion only to debunk his claim that the governors and others who went to Ota to ‘see the King’ where too much to be bought. I repeat, anyone can be bought if the price is right. It is a sad part of the human moral depravity, especially in Nigeria, where 419 affluence and blood money are preferred over knowledge and service, that people would do anything for money. Goody-goody pontification on this matter will not help him because even the blind can read the motive for the unusually spirited defense of the odious begging or urging which took place at Ota.

For someone whose only business is the publishing of a periodic pamphlet that is latched firmly on the oil industry, the singular government money-spinner in Nigeria, to deny official patronage, directly and indirectly, is the greatest booboo of our time. Without NNPC and its affiliates, the Chief would probably have been doing something different today. Let him tell us how many copies of his fabled magazine he prints and puts on the newsstand or distributes by any other means at each edition. So, let us not deny the obvious.

Those who supported the Ota trek do not love Obasanjo any more than those who queried it. It was just a question of the level of the individual’s political morality. Now that the President has formally declared interest in the re-election project, this is the time to properly endorse his candidacy. And many are actually doing so. It is obvious that Akintiilo does not love Obasanjo more than anyone else and, in any case, didn’t the scriptures which I believe the President now reads fervently warns that it is not those who shout "father, father" that truly love the Lord? After all that we have been through as a people, Nigerians should be able to smell sycophancy now even from a kilometer away and under any sophistry.

I will conclude by drawing attention to Akintiilo’s condemnable and outrageous practice of name-dropping. What point was he making by writing that he took part in the election of Ray Ekpu? In his own vain words, "I was actively involved in the last electoral process that produced Mr. Ray Ekpu as president of NPAN". Is it that he too is also a reputable journalist or what? Or that Ekpu now owes him a bottle of gin for the favor? If a man has nothing valuable to say, it is far more honorable to keep quiet rather than running ones’ mouth in a way that can only embarrass others unnecessarily. For God’s sake, editor Ray, we all know of. But who is A-k-i-n-t-i-i-l-o?

Now there is some semblance of democracy in Nigeria, everybody has suddenly turned a freedom fighter. No serious and patriotic individual would have, in the face of the dictatorship and oppression then plaguing the nation, set up a publication just to watch the greasy oil industry for that would have been a mundane venture and an unpatriotic misapplication of talent in the face of a grinding military tyranny. That was a period that tried the souls of men and tested their patriotism. That era in Nigeria needed a Tempo magazine, The News, Tell, Newswatch and other combatant pro-democracy newspapers that accepted the prevailing social responsibility to liberate our people from the clutches of dictatorship NOT a junky magazine soothing the ego of Nigerian ‘oil sheiks’. Akintiilo and his wayward pamphlet looked away, groveling at the feet of the powers that be just to ‘avoid poverty’! Now the same man is shamelessly talking about pro-democracy "struggles". Nonsense!

That he could even in the relative tranquility of the moment still confuse me with some citizens who might have fled the military dictatorship is a laughable confirmation of the newness of his arrival on the scene. That I am temporarily abroad is only in fulfillment of my intellectual obligations to the world beyond Nigeria.

While for several years I wrote a weekly anti-military, pro-democracy column, The Polity, for the very Vanguard Newspaper which he now mounts its revered pages to insult me; while I served on the Editorial Board of the National Concord during the heydays of the June 12 struggle, battling Abacha; while I chaired Editorial Boards of national newspapers, debating and combating dictatorship; while I advocated for democracy and constitutionalism at the risk of my life and livelihood all in addition to my teaching and research as a chaired professor in Nigeria, the ‘Chief’ (a slip for thief?) was busy ‘making money’, publishing his rubbish which solely and shamelessly parasited on the evil dictatorial government’s oil industry.

I have nothing personal against Obasanjo’s second term bid, what with all the funny characters now coming forward too. I am sure the President himself knows that already. What I disagreed with those who went to beg him at Ota for is the fact that they were spoiling the game for the man. It was wrong then, wrong now, and will be wrong in the future if such a show of shame is replayed. And I have no doubt that President Obasanjo is aware that he does not need the likes of Akintiilo, fair weather friends for that matter, to achieve his aim. Instead, they are only making avoidable enemies for the man as we have seen lately.

So, Chief Akintiilo did not need to print my name almost forty times within two pages to prove he is for Obasanjo. I fell insulted for a person of such disposition to want use my name to ventilate his dubious reputation. If he truly thinks he is one of those that matter, let us see what he wrote or said in favor of Obasanjo while the man was away in prison. On the contrary, I wrote a series of articles, made several TV appearances denouncing the military junta. Those who follow me know that I have not relented on this track, as it is not yet uhuru for our long-suffering people. Back numbers of our national dailies and taped recordings of telecasts are witnesses to the fact that I am my own man when it comes to matters of principles. These are hard evidences that must mute my critic if he is indeed a man of honor. Instead he is ranting away with reckless abandon. That may explain why he thinks he is rich and I, the teacher who refused to join in the evil party, am mostly likely not. Little minds.

So who is this man now talking about the "struggle" and "pseudo-intellectualism", hoping to ride on my back to genuflect before the Obasanjo presidency? Go ahead. Perhaps I should really ask him again, as Fela would have asked, Mr. Akintiilo, who are you re?