Tea Break In Naija

Written by Wole Soyinka Wednesday, 23 June 2010 17:33

While this intervention has been triggered off by an ‘op-ed’ in your online journal by one Remi Oyeyemi, I have to let you know that I have taken the trouble to respond more out of a concern for the editorial responsibilities of your journal than anything else. This is not the first such abuse of SAHARAREPORTERS and, curiously enough, a former occasion had to do with the same subject I.B.Babangida. I shall begin by acknowledging the extreme generosity of your contributor in allowing me one full week of grace to respond to an interview I had never seen, nor knew anything about. In his article, the sanctimonious Oyeyemi has again graciously imposed a deadline, albeit unspecified. I shudder to think what would have happened if a concerned reader had not sent me a link, wondering what this was all about. Virtual decapitation?

Now, to some pertinent issues: I remain in ignorance also of how the Nigerian media reported the Edo incident. Beyond my brief comment on return to Ikeja airport, I declined to give any interviews on the incident. I left the airport before the AC delegation. By agreement en route from Benin, they would do the talking. My only interest was to return to my US engagements without further loss of valuable time.

There is a deplorable tone of pomposity, of dictatorial conceit in Oyeyemi’s article that sets one’s teeth on edge. Here is an article premised on a profusion of ‘ifs’, ‘maybes’, ‘mightbes’, ‘it is possible that’, ‘alleged’, ‘reportedly’, yet filled with conclusive judgmental expressions and smug censoriousness. Setting up oneself as a judge of political moralities requires a more rigorous approach to the marshaling, and presentation of suppositions and facts. You do not impute a ‘cover-up’ on such feeble, convenient, purely speculative terms – and over such trivia!

A surprise encounter, totally unexpected that took place in the presence of, and involving at least thirty others in the reception room of a state governor is not, by any stretch of imagination, an encounter to be tendentiously described as taking place ‘behind closed doors’. This was in the ‘public domain’, and it is presumptuous for anyone to require that I give an account, as a public duty, to what was clear to everyone in that formal and open space as a fortuitous encounter, and one with all conversation audible to all, including a swarm of reporters and photographers that accompanied Babangida into that lounge.

However, Ibrahim Babangida, in the account offered by Oyeyemi, was absolutely correct in one aspect. I have no personal problem with him or with any other individual to whom I openly identify as a political adversary. Babangida does however have a huge problem of political deficit with me, and with the nation, and that is the albatross that constitutes his problem. I affirm that, if the State House stewards had offered me tea with IBB, I would have declined, but it would only have been to request something a little stronger, since I am no tea drinker. I am happy to note that Oyeyemi’s strictures do not extend to having a drink with anyone on the other side of a profound political divide.

The purists of political contact are welcome to their position, but they should learn to mind their language. ’Behind closed doors’! Is there no longer any respect for truth?

As already stated, I indeed met and exchanged ‘pleasantries’ with Babangida. When I discovered what had brought him into Oshiomole’s visitors’ lounge – in company of at least some twenty-odd other guests, including Governor Sylvia of Bayelsa – when I found that he had been invited to the rally, and that David Mark was also invited as Guest of Honour, I organized my leave-taking as fusslessly and efficiently as I know how, with a fortuitous timing that enabled me to hitch a ride in the chartered plane that brought AC leaders to Edo. I especially did not want to embarrass my host, Adam Oshiomole, who – I still feel - had invited me with less than expected candour and error of judgment. I find Oyeyemi’s article pretentious, pompous and irresponsibly misleading. SAHARA REPORTERS could have punctured this soufflé by contacting me and drawing my attention to Babangida’s interview. They know how to find me. Other media have taken similar action in the past, sometimes only to decide not even to publish my response when they judged that the issue merited no more than transient curiosity - in journalese, considered unnewsworthy.

“But he owes the rest of us the TRUTH (my emphasis) that this was what transpired, and that he changed his mind after having tea with him (IBB) that he did not want to be seen in public with him. Misleading (?) the public that he turned back from Benin airport when this was not what happened…” writes Mr. Remi Oyeyemi.

Whose truth is this? Obviously Oyeyemi’s, not that of anyone else who was present in Oshiomole’s visitors’ lounge, the airport, the Ikeja arrival lounge, or listened to my brief statement with the media at Ikeja. Since when did the Oyeyemi of the world appropriate the right to interpret events at which they were not present, and assign a ‘truth’ to the state of mind of the characters involved. What are the credentials of Oyeyemi as a mind-reader? Has he spoken to Oshiomole? To his staff who organized the event? To the team which whisked me to the airport? To Akande, Tinubu, Fayemi etc etc to whom I spoke while organising my exit from Oshiomole’s guest house? Is any of that melodrama of any real interest to busy and serious-minded people? Who is this faceless individual to compose his own spurious scenario in his feverish mind and attempt to foist it on your readership?

Tea is beginning to assume mythological proportions in Nigerian affairs - sadly and tragically, from Tam David-West to Moshood Abiola. Perhaps this is responsible for the fictive ‘tea-party’ of Oyeyemi’s imagination. If the fact that my arrival in Ikeja in an aircraft with AC leaders confused the press awaiting the retreat, that element, that ‘weighty atom’ of tea leaves – even if it were real - is so disproportionate to the main issue, which is that we all declined to participate in that rally, that I cannot find the energy to pillory the media on its account. What remains is not even a storm, but mere froth in a phantom teacup.

Did Babangida really say we had tea together? I am learning of this weird claim for the first time. So what should I do? Sue him for defamation? Oyeyemi owes it to his readers to unravel the earth-shaking details of this tea session. Was it with milk? Cream? Sugar? Biscuits on the side? After all, Oshiomole’s visitors’ lounge was constantly filled, from the beginning to the end. Someone must have noticed some sinister details. The stewards must remember whom they served tea, and in whose company. Oyeyemi should do his homework. Obviously these are weighty matters on which the future of the nation depends.

Please, spare yourself and us the likes of those who throw around words like ‘truth’ and ‘integrity’ until they have learnt to respect their adjunct – ‘responsibility’.

Wole Soyinka