More reactions have continued to trail the contents of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s controversial autobiography, My Watch, which an Abuja court ordered security agencies to confiscate wherever it is being sold. The latest criticism is coming from Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, who is one of the personalities the former President slammed in the three-volume memoir.
Obasanjo had described the literary icon as a misfit, writing that “For Wole, no one can be good, nor can anything be spot-on politically except that which emanates from him or is ordained by him. His friends and loved ones will always be right and correct no matter what they do or fail to do. He is surely a better wine connoisseur and a more successful aparo (guinea fowl) hunter than a political critic.”
But in a piece titled ‘Watch And Pray, Watch And Prey’, the playwright described Obasanjo as a shameless liar stating “I despise that species of humanity whose stock-in-trade is to concoct lies simply to score a point, win an argument, puff up his or her own ego, denigrate or attempt to destroy a fellow being.
“However, even within such deplorable species, a special pit of universal opprobrium is surely reserved for those who even lack the courage of their own lies, but must foist them on others.”
Prof. Soyinka also criticised Obasanjo for openly condemning his former Special Adviser, Mr. Akin Osuntokun, who is “young enough to be his son.”
“For now, let me single out just one of the most glaring instances of this man’s compulsive career of lying, one sample that the media can readily check upon and use as a touchstone – if they do need one – in assessing our author’s multifaceted claims and commentaries on people and events.
“I refer here to the grotesque and personally insulting statement that he has attributed to me for some inscrutable but obviously diversionary reasons.
“In the process, this past Master of Mendacity brazenly implicates an innocent young man, Akin Osuntokun, who once served him as a special adviser. Instead of conferring dignity on a direct rebuttal of an ignoble fabrication, I shall simply make a personal, all-embracing attestation:
“When an old man stuffs a lie into the throat of an age-mate of his own children – omo inu e! – we can only pity an irredeemable egomaniac whose dotage is headed for twilight disgrace.”
The Nobel Laureate described Obasanjo as an hypocrite for pointing accusing fingers at the present administration for the culture of impunity and massive corruption in the country. He noted that the controversial Obasanjo Presidential library was acquired through ‘executive extortionism’ just as President Goodluck Jonathan recently got over N21bn at a dinner/fund-raiser last Saturday.
“That obscene proceeding (Obasanjo’s Library Fund-raising) has certainly set a competitive precedent for impunity in President Jonathan’s recent fund-raising...
“So much for the latest from that direction – we mustn’t allow Handing-Over notes between presidents to distract us for too long.”
“In this season of goodwill, we owe a duty to our immediate and distant neighbours: CAVEAT EMPTOR! Let all beware, who try to buy a Rolex from this indefatigable watch peddler,” he said.
“Our author invokes God tirelessly, without provocation, without necessity and without justification, perhaps pre-emptively, but does he really believe in such an entity? Does our home-bred Double-O-Seven believe in anything outside his own Omnipotence?
“Could he possibly have mistaken the Christian exhortation – ‘Watch and Pray’ for his private inclination to “Watch and Prey?”
1 comment:
OBJ the hypocrite
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