NOT YET ELEYINMI
Victor Ireotoi argues that Senate President, Bukola Saraki, deserves respect
After reading Sam Omatseye’s article entitled: Not Yet Eleyinmi, published September 3, 2015, my mind raced to one of those condemned criminals nailed to the cross with Our Lord Jesus Christ on a day everyone in the eyes of wrath-filled, hateful and self-righteous Jews, is sinner worthy of death.
The Bible alluded to the two robbers being known to every Jew as thieves and so earned little or no sympathy as they were led to the cross. For, to everyone, it could be safe to say that the robbers having ‘killed’, dying by crucifixion was by all means charitable. But as always, the ways of Lord Jesus Christ are different from the ways of men, the reason Christ was touched when the one who realised he was guilty as charged and sought escape from the damnation that awaits sinners by pleading to be remembered by Christ in His kingdom. Apparently, the ‘guilty’ armed robber knew it was needless acting saint when he is guilty as charged. To everyone, the saint and sinner, too, the armed robber’s confession and sudden change of attitude was not about the certainty of death, but the life thereafter.
Interestingly, his partner in crime, typical of people who though their ‘sins’ are common knowledge, acted with impunity, gleefully daring everyone, including Christ. We all know how the story ended.
Indeed, Omatseye’s Chief Eleyinmi in the now rested Village Headmaster television series was a perfect fix in comic relief. What Omatseye, however, deliberately hid from his reader from his study of Chief Eleyinmi, the ‘perfect’ character in the Village Headmaster series, is the fact that there is a little funny bone in almost everyone, but in those who pretend not to have been caught in the comic mix. As I read the article, it presented no difficulty guessing at his mindset as it was equally easy to understand Chief Eleyinmi’s role in the series - which was to get people laughing.
Omatseye’s target in the article was the Senate President and former governor of Kwara State, Dr Bukola Saraki. All he aimed at was to paint Saraki in bad light. He laboured to create a black sheep out of Saraki. For him, Saraki deserves no applause, not even the minutest of respect, after emerging Senate president with the support of lawmakers who were poised to ensure no external forces interfered with how the National Assembly decided on who holds what position or conducts its legislative businesses. And, because the lawmakers’ move seemed like a shock ‘coup’ against the greeddriven ambition of some “party leaders”, who in the guise of party supremacy, are attempting to compel everyone to buy into their template, like it or not, Saraki should hang. Or, better still, the Senate president should be seen as the ‘bad’ guy for trying to contest the political stage with those whose idea of good living is interpreted from the prism of insatiable crave for wealth and personal possessions. Indeed, one can understand Omatseye’s dilemma. With unpretentious bias for politicians yet to adapt to the emerging reality of collective responsibility, Omatseye, unlike Chief Eleyinmi, is certain to lose a sense of humour. Not when he must deliver, willy-nilly, or seen to have delivered hard punches through his column, on imagined and real enemies of his paymasters, particularly those, who, like Saraki, are seen as being in competition with their ideas of change and could potentially whittle down their crave for federal might. Perhaps, this was what Omatseye set out to achieve - to attack Saraki with or without reason so long as it earns him a meal ticket.
Unfortunately, he forgot that no one is ever powerful until he learns from his personal weaknesses. Or, was it not said that he who must come to equity must do so with clean hands? While Omatseye deserves my sympathy for his apparent subservience and for always draining his conscience of every film of reason as did the condemned criminal, who out of sheer naivety and ignorance, challenged the Lord Jesus Christ, only a desperate mind could have swirled furiously the way Omatseye did against an enemy, not even when the name is not Saraki, without first considering the antecedents of his pay-masters.
Yet Omatseye could still be forgiven for his views, especially as serving a boss like his; an obvious case of a desperado with an awkward past, comes with so much challenges. Really, no one expects him to rock the boat not when doing so would destroy his meal ticket, but one expected him to separate party’s position from individual’s, particularly as everyone knows how some individuals’ desperation to control the Senate hurts the unity in the party and National Assembly at the time. Curiously, Omatseye would rather the crisis at the National Assembly continue for eternity. The reason in their warped imaginations as portrayed in his article, the ongoing reconciliatory efforts by the All Progressives Congress (APC), would amount to nothing except their masters are presented as the one determining how and what gets let off, not even President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB)!
In Omatseye’s attempt to present his boss as an all-powerful saint, he ended up in wild orgasm of lies and ridiculously regurgitated his boss pains over his failure to determine who eventually emerged as Senate president. And, like a few other columnists and rented academia, the loss of fairness apparent in Omatseye’s cocktail of lies have helped add some hitherto respected media houses to list of megaphones laboriously trying to sell a particular interest.
But if anything, perhaps, it is the attempt to always present Bola Tinubu’s position as if it were APC’s or President Buhari’s that is most sickening and nauseating to say the least. It is probably for this same selfish reason that some press think that the world should lose its head whenever it is not about a particular region as if nothing is supposed to work or should ever work unless you have their lankies.
Surprisingly, in moments when journalists all over the world set agenda, Omatseye has his hands tied to doing his master’s work, good or bad. One expected Omatseye to recall facts of the investigations over the murder of Chief Funsho Williams in cold blood and query why the murderers and conspirators have yet to come to justice, but he is busy talking about power-grabbing or how Saraki was at Abuja Praying Ground and how President Buhari could not ‘kiss’ him. Rather than tell Lagosians and Nigerians how most projects and appointments were done in Lagos State under the Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola’s administration or respond to the controversy surrounding revenue collection in Lagos and ownership of the company superintending over revenue collection, Omatseye chose to ignore the main for the insignificant. Today, in a bid to rubbish all the good records of Fashola in whose administration, Lagos truly witnessed true dividends of democracy after eight years of “planning” by Tinubu, he is busy talking about how an innocuous invitation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to Saraki’s wife, unsettled the Senate president.