Emilokan: What really is the fuss?

• Published date: 14 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

I,like a number of other Nigerians woke up on New Year's Day to read the letterman's (President Olusegun Obasanjo as christened by Musikilu Mojeed) new year missive in which he officially endorsed a presidential candidate as well as attempted to paint a gory picture of the present state of Nigeria.

True to his abrasive nature, the ex president now turned chicken farmer embarked on his saintly admonition in an 'ajoro jara joro' manner , showing no concern for the diplomacy that a former leader of any nation should exhibit or possess. Not even the outgoing administration of Muhammadu Buhari would escape his vitriolic prose, Obasanjo wrote the letter like as if he was writing to an enemy or set of enemies. Well, the presidency and a number of other interested parties , notably the All Progressives Congress, APC and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP did respond in kind, rubbishing whatever set of narratives the new year letter had sought to pass on too millions of Nigerians.

My grouse with such a letter stems from Obasanjo's condemnation of Bola Ahmed Tinubu's deployment of 'Emilokan' an anaphoric exclamation made while the presidential candidate of the APC addressed party delegates on reasons why he felt that the job of being president was his to fill up.

Obasanjo had in his dreary letter, condemned

Tinubu's Emilokan declaration as the wrong attitude and mentality for the nation's leadership and that such claims could not form the same pedestal to reinvent and to reinvest in new Nigeria.

He ended by saying that no individual could claim that he had the absolute solutions to the nation's problems, stating that 'the solution should be in 'we' and 'us' and not in 'me' and 'I'.'

Hold the phone! This is the same Obasanjo who since times after the civil war has always adapted a messianic persona when it comes to matters affecting the nation.

This is the same Obasanjo who had in 1999 campaigned under the theme, ' I have done it before and I will do it again'. Obasanjo had also in 2007 told Nigerians that the election to bring in a new president from his party was a 'Do or Die affair'.

What is if I may ask wrong with what many may describe as an ecstatic declaration such as Emilokan? How different is it from Obasanjo's own slogan in 1999 or even Martin Luther King's ' I have a Dream' speech, since the solution according to Obasanjo should be in either 'we' or 'us'.

Everyone knows that electoral contests, particularly in democracies such as ours come with a number of flavors...