It is often proven that education is not a cure-all recipé for ignorance. Educated men and women – be they lawyers, doctors, nuclear physicists, or forensic scientists – sometimes display egregious ignorance whenever they try to venture into areas that immediately expose the underbelly of their ignorant disposition or absurd idiocy.
I am certainly not a great fan of President Bola Tinubu. I have been speaking for the opposition since 2019 till date. I am also neither from Kogi State nor have anything in common with former Governor Yahaya Bello who I have had cause to criticize seriously in the past. Let me clear that first before rented orchestras of ignominy start screaming blue murder!
On Wednesday June 18th, fGYB clocked his golden age. President Tinubu penned him a glowing felicitation. Now, the president is a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. The former Governor is also a member of the APC who I am also aware was a member of the Tinubu-Shettima presidential campaign council as the youths coordinator from 2022 or thereabouts. Meaning that he shared in the election victory of the President.
So, the President greeted a member of his Party on his golden jubilee and, among the myriads of many pressing challenges confronting this country that people should interrogate, suddenly some hired social media urchins began a wailing competition to condemn the president and detract a simple birthday wish to an absolutely unrelated matter that is even already in Court.
So, is it now a crime in Nigeria to wish someone a happy birthday even if they have cases in Court? Even the dead are celebrated on their birthdays. The other day I watched on TikTok as a young lady in the USA was singing an emotional ‘Happy to you’ to her dad who was being led on his way to be executed by hanging, which happened to coincide with the old man’s birthday.
But the power of ignorance can make its victims become so blind to apparent realities to the extent that they display excessive senselessness. That a man has a case in court does not automatically qualify him to be labeled a criminal as to be neglected by his primary constituency or family.
What the President has done was what any decent and responsible leader would do. The presidency is different from the courts and certainly different from the EFCC. It is an oftquoted legal aphorism that a person alleged of an offence remains innocent until proven otherwise in a Court of competent jurisdiction.
But, here in Nigeria, allegations are tantamount to guilt, especially in the courtrooms of those suffering from a deplorable state of audiovisual hallucinations.
EFCC and Yahaya Bello are in Court to present their cases before their lordships, but some deliberate mischief makers are howling for the head of the president that he has committed an unpardonable crime by greeting him on his birthday simply because he is defending himself in Court.
Anyone with an elementary knowledge of law and court procedures would understand not to take legal matters on their face values. The facts are exhaustively interrogated on the floor of the Court while the chaffs of mere speculations are separated from the wheat of essential facts to produce a judgment based on proven or established facts beyond reasonable doubts.
But you can’t find reason in the company of ignorance. Far from it! We have a saying in Yorubaland to the effect that you can’t combine a wedding with funeral. They are totally different events. But here, when the enemy is blinded by the irritating effects of negative sentiments and the inducement of filthy lucre to do a dirty job, reason and decency take a flight through the window.
Well, the President has done what’s required of him as the leader of a country felicitating with a citizen of the country he presides over, who also doubles as an important member of the Party he leads. He shouldn’t be crucified for this by hired cavillers who specialize in character assassination for a few notes on the table.
They would rather the country continued experiencing violence so that the president would continue mourning the massacred than him celebrating with the living. We, indeed, live in interesting times.
Mark Adebayo, MPhil, is a published author, rights activist, organizational development expert, and a strategy consultant. He is the current national publicity Secretary of the Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP.
