Another loud fart from Lagos

By Lasisi Olagunju

H. G. Wells warned a long time ago of the advent of characters in media business who could become buccaneers of opinion and insensate wreckers of good beginnings. Most journalists will likely see the statement as potentially inciting against free press but when viewed against today’s surfeit of rancid, partisan media dishes served in libellous plates with smiles, one would excuse Wells. 

If one is a journalist in Nigeria, one big lesson one has got to learn early in one’s career is never to mess oneself up as one goes up. This is because the road one thinks leads to the top may actually lead downstairs or even nowhere. When daylight meets one outside improperly dressed, there is the tendency for one to be mistaken for something else.

When an otherwise glorious career goes nose-down like a plane about to crash, the victim becomes amenable to all sorts of thoughts and actions. In some cases, anyone, no matter how detestable, who offers to help with softlanding becomes an instant master. That is the situation deciphered whenever I read  Sam Omatseye’s pieces in The Nation, the latest being his “Like His Master” on the back page of the same newspaper on Monday 28th April,2008.

What could have made fire brand Sam of the Concord fame to become corridor-hound of some failed politicians barking at every figure pointed out to him as the enemy? What downturn in fate would make a man tread a path just because the leader so directs and must be pleased?

Sam called Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola all sorts of names in that piece because his bosses are bitter they were roundly defeated in last year’s governorship election. Sam had to jettison all forms of etiquette to marshal his points. He had to go very personal, even abusive for his dog to deliver the slave-errand given him by his bosses. And one thought the smart journalist would go beyond the abusive theatrics to address the main issues he himself distilled for discussion. He wanted the world to believe that his boss’s boy, Rauf Aregbesola, won the April 2007 election and was rigged out. He wanted to help the fellows who brought bombs to Osun state as a weapon of politics redefine their act of terrorism.

Could this clever journalist really be said to be in touch with the reality of the situation he wrote about? Why would he decide to write that particular pre-emptive stuff, thinking the world would, like zombies, look his way and join his chorus? Why can’t this “democrat” tell his boss to let the judiciary do its bit on Aregbesola’s complaints before shifting the battle to the media? What fascism is there in enforcing the law on the bomb incident while cowards run into their wife’s pillow -cases even when no one pursues them?

Is it not true that there was a bomb blast on June14, 2007 a few meters to the office of Governor Oyinlola in Osogbo? Even before the police ask questions, Sam is already firing his own? Why the hurry when he can tell the felons, if he knows them, to come clean by walking up to the police to state what they know or do not know about the incident? Sam is helping his bosses carry their anger because the surviving suspect deposed to an affidavit and his mother explained the circumstances surrounding the making of the affidavit to the press. If Sam disagrees with these too, then I refer him to page 7 of his boss’s campaign stuff, The Nation of same day with his piece. Truth has a way of escaping the most vicious gag.

Obviously Sam does not know the person called Olagunsoye Oyinlola if the goal of that attack was to irritate or disorientate him. Oyinlola is too seasoned to look the way of irritants like Aregbesola’s dismissal of his gallantry in Somalia as the Commander of Nigeria’s contingent there. Has Sam heard of the palm trees of Ijaye before? If he hasn’t, then let him go and ask these trees how efficient Bashorun Ogunmola was on the battle field? Let Sam help Aregbesola ask the United Nations, the Nigerian Army and even Somalians.  Let him find out how a commendation letter from the world body got Oyinlola the Lagos job even without any prior personal relationship with Abacha.    

The ‘democrats’ in Lagos have absolutely no respect for the judiciary just because it would not crumble under their very heavy compromise-schemes. Has Sam become so out of touch with the reality that he has not known that the Court of Appeal has also joined in ruling against Aregbesola? Can’t this otherwise discerning fellow see that something must be fundamentally wrong with a case in which the plaintiff is the one asking for a stay of proceedings?

Good old Sam talked so gleefully about the so-called ‘forensic evidence’ of Aregbesola as if it is not a certified product of fraud. Can’t the otherwise wise Sam ask questions about why Aregbesola had to tell lies to get things done in his favour. Why say on oath that you were at an exercise when you were not? Can Sam find out if indeed Adrian Forty is a forensic expert or a handwriting expert? What gave Sam the impression that the dismal showing of Forty in Ondo and Ekiti had not been given judicial notice? Why can’t these Sam people leave the judiciary to do its work? Or is the media battle just more rewarding than the one in the court room especially if it is sustained enough to make one an editor at last?

I suggest Sam tells his bosses that it is not sound judgement to fight from so many fronts. Even the old woman squeezing oil out of palm nuts at her ‘refinery’ knows that a step after the other prevents avoidable falls. Let the judicial referees blow their final whistle before the rugby-like media match starts. That one is long expected.

Olagunju is Chief Press Secretary to Governor Oyinlola.