Days back, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, the chief spokesperson to the president-elect, Mr. Bola Tinubu, trolled the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, for referring to Papa Ayo Adebanjo as Daddy in his best wishes to the grand nationalist at 95. Obi was born on 19 July, 1961, still months away from his 62nd birth anniversary when Papa clocked the enviable age. Though I couldn’t lay my hands on the age of Josephat Obi, the father of the wave-making politician, it can be safely assumed that he had Peter in his 30s. Plus or minus, that should put Papa Josephat and Papa Adebanjo, in same age grade. So, how should Peter have addressed Papa? Oga Bayo himself is just four years older than Obi, born on 20 June, 1957. Outside the 2023 politics of endorsement, is Papa Adebanjo not Daddy to him? Well, upbringings are different, despite cultural values. The one sired in a supposed environment where sons, according to fable, roused their fathers with pestle, appears to have gone through a genuine rebirth at different phases of his life, to understand honour, better than an assumed Yoruba Omoluabi.
Onanuga rhetorically asked if Obi was under some curse, for employing the word ‘Daddy’ again, obviously seeking traction to the fading controversial conversation between Obi and the lead pastor of Living Faith, Papa David Oyedepo, where Obi, in reverence for the man of God, responded with Yes Daddy and allegedly tagged the election, a jihad.
No, Oga Bayo, Obi isn’t cursed, for sticking with the Daddy homage. If anything, the Word of God, the Holy Bible, says he is blessed of God, if he was genuinely honouring the man of God and not just playing the Pentecostal, for votes. The danger in taunting such a fellow or cursing him, is inviting God’s direct wrath and it is a palpably dangerous thing when the enemy of man, is God.
Only the Spirit of God can tell who a man is and I say without equivocation that Obi has been helped of God, to wear humility as a second skin. Proverbs 6:16-19 list six things God hates and the first, is pride. James 4:6 then goes ahead to show how God relates with the proud and the humble; “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” Except, Oga Bayo wants to lie, he himself, will testify that something beyond the social media is propelling Obi. It is called grace.
By God’s design, His prophets and priests are Fathers or in modern tongue, Daddies, to kings, who in the context of politics, are power-seekers and rulers like Obi, Atiku Abubakar, President Muhammadu Buhari and even the president-elect. In fact, in Exodus 7:1 God says he made Moses a god to Pharaoh, the Egyptian ruler. In 2 Kings 6:20-21, the king of Israel, called Prophet Elisah, his father, after the man of God helped the nation conquer its enemy in a miraculous way; “When they had entered Samaria, Elisha said, “O LORD, open the eyes of these men that they may see.” Then the LORD opened their eyes, and they looked around and discovered that they were in Samaria. And when the king of Israel saw them, he asked Elisha, “My father, shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?”
Beyond the demarketing politics of the leaked audio, I guess the Onanugas and Keyamos, fronting the cheerleading orchestra, trolling the Labour candidate, possibly capitalized on the age difference between Obi and Papa Oyedepo, born 27 September 1954, (making him 68+), to further ridicule the regard exhibited and extended to the man of God by the politician. Even at that, the calendar age gap between them, still qualifies the man of God as big uncle to Obi, if both are tied by consanguinity, in an average Yoruba communal set-up and Mr. Onanuga, who grew up in rural Okemesi under a bricklayer father, should know this, even if Festus Keyamo’s cultural upbringing, would not afford the minister, the same outlook, to communal relational.
I guess the Yes Daddy aspect of the leaked audio, would not have become an issue if it was Obi and Daddy G.O of RCCG, because the trolls know that even presidents had been calling him Daddy, years before he hit 80. This assumption of mine, isn’t even given anymore, in the rage of toxic politics and intoxication of power. A friend recently told me he had to consider his sanity vis-a-vis continued presence on the social media. He is Ibo. All innocence is gone in Nigerian politics. Nothing is off-the-mark again. The gloves are completely off. If you don’t want to get hit, don’t get involved.
Years back, I remember the national indignation when a South African radio commentator, appeared to disparage Professor Wole Soyinka, a presumable national asset. Today, he is being ripped by his own, for his obvious partisanship, poorly draped with iconoclastic interventions.
Ruth Maclean of New York Times in a piece published on 25 September, 2021, claimed WS gave as conditions, when EndSARS protesters begged him to join their marches, an electric wheelchair that was tear-gas proof, with a fully-stocked bar! Soyinka was 86 at the time, so a wheel chair request is understandable. Since the conducts of a lot of police officers always suggest the predilection to act, before think, the tear-gas-proof chair, also seems reasonable. But the fully-stocked bar? Haba Professor! Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Even for a hopeless hedonist who revels in wine-bibbing, a national task of riding the space of death merchants, couldn’t have been a 17:59 (quoted by a brewery as drinking time) moment. Prof, simply didn’t want to rally against what he railed against and possibly became a suspect among youths, from that point.
In his unusual bravura against the Obidients, Professor Soyinka isn’t in the right, though his age and past activism, should count, in encountering and countering him. Forgiving young people of their natural exuberance while demonstrating the adult stuff yearning for expression in them, becomes easy, the moment an average remonstrating elder, sees his past, in their present.
Jesus dared the fatwa-pronouncing mob of Scribes and Pharisees, in John 8, that caught the woman in adultery, to cast the first stone, if they were without iniquity. Thankfully, they allowed their conscience to judge them and reasoned with their legs. In 1965, when Prof. at gunpoint, forced a detour in the announcement of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections, at the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio, he was just 33 years, burning with patriotism, expressed through criminality. But he became a hero for it, just like Nelson Mandela, secured immortality leading a terror group, uMkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). Posterity rewarded Mandela for fighting on the side of the oppressed, just like Soyinka, grew into deification from that supposed sadistic voyage of 1965. Who knows what tomorrow holds for today’s young people, he is tagging fascists for raucously kicking against election fraud, just like those who called him a common criminal at 33, for pulling a gun for election integrity, never knew they would worship at the altar of his mercurial halo.
Dave Umahi, Ebonyi State governor, days back, suggested Tinubu, his party man, is God’s anointed, for Aso Rock after Buhari, saying, “there is no power that will remove Tinubu from being the President, because the time God would have stopped him, God allowed him. Because God allowed him, no man can stop him”.
Maybe it was the same ‘simple’ egba f’Olorun (leave matter for Matthias) message Prof. wanted to pass across, doing all the Patrick Obayagbon stuff. This Prof. sef.
Lanre Adewole
