The article with the above title went viral some days ago. You find it on Facebook and on different social media platforms. It was, and is still, being repeatedly shared on WhatsApp. I have personally received it from different persons, and seen it shared in different WhatsApp groups to which I am a member. To set the record straight, this article was published almost a decade ago—2012 precisely.
Could this be a clickbait headline? Possibly. But this is spammy and misleading. The way it was ingeniously manipulated to make it seem as if AdamuAdamu just wrote it is unwelcomingly questionable. What do those news media want to achieve? To be clear, Adamu Adamu, at the end of the article was described as Nigerian Hon. Minister of Higher Education. Many are, by this, hoodwinked to think he wrote the article as a minister. However, he wrote it when he was not dreaming of becoming a minister. Or was he dreaming of it? Whatever be the case, he was not a minister in 2012. Full stop.
It is a known fact that Nigeria presently has many fissures and cleavages. The adherents of the major religions in the Country are struggling to live together in peace. The cacophonic song of restructuring is deafening. Secessionists are spitting brimstones. Protest is demonized in a supposedly democratic Nigeria. Similarly, protesters and human rights activists are criminalized. Who governs Nigeria between the Presidency and the bandits could not be clearly determined. Therefore, it is no right time to pitAdamu against Soyinka. It is like pitting the North against the South and the Muslims against the pagan African Traditionalists. We don’t need this.
Prof Soyinka is well too known; AdamuAdamu is not less known either. Though not a professor (not even a PhD.), he has been a role model to many professors. His cerebral quality or wealth of knowledge surpasses those of many professed professors. If you are not comfortable with this fact, it is your right to disagree. Many come to know Adamu as a minister, he was one of those columnists with Daily Trust when Daily Trust was Daily Trust. It is still Daily Trust anyway. Perhaps I am only being nostalgic.
I am nostalgic about Daily Trust of those days when you read columns of great writers like the analytical Muhammad Haruna whose writings I always admire to admire. His stand-alone positions are well known on many national issues where he would be the only ONE against the REST. Like JideoforAdibe, the cerebral but not too radical columnist—a professor of Political Science and International Relations—and the founder of Adonis & Abbey Publishers and the online newspaper The News Chronicle. Like the wordsmith under discussion—AdamuAdamu—whose opinions are always logically expressed. One is compelled, by his powerful logic, to agree with him. Though I hardly agree with him on religion.
In that rank is the iconoclastically perspicaciousKperogi. Though younger, Farooq Kperogi’s acerbic criticisms have always been discomforting thorns in the flesh and lungs of those in the corridors of power. When he sneezes, from far away Greater Atlanta in the United States, governments in Nigeria catch cold. I pray his self-imposed ‘asylum’ ends soon.
What about the amiable Aisha Umar Yusuf and the late veteran journalist and activistBilikisu Yusuf(may her soul rest in peace),the sharp-witted and satirist TundeAsaju, the bookish Mahmud Jega etc.? If you are familiar with these writers, you will appreciate my nostalgia.
Though these columnists still exist, Buhari’s government has consumed many of them. Some still write for Daily Trust. However, and sadly, for one reason or the other, some do not write for Daily Trust any longer. It is in this Daily Trust that AdamuAdamu’s above mischievously titled article was published. That was on Friday 10/02/2012. It was titled ‘Soyinka: Still on Bo-ro-no State.’
But some online news media dubbed it as ‘AdamuAdamu Takes A Swipe AtProf.Wole Soyinka’ as if it is something new. The article as written, then, was apparently a reaction against what Adamu considered an uninformed assertion by Soyinka on the creation of Boko Haram for which he fingered the northern establishment as culpable.
To set the record straight once again, it wasn’t only AdamuAdamu that angrily reacted, many other writers did. Admittedly, AdamuAdamu’s generated many rebuttals and rebuttals upon rebuttals. I can recall that of NafataBamaguje titled Adamu’s Tirade AgainstWole Soyinka. Not too long ago we also read a ‘vocabulariously’ migraine-inducing article by RemiOyeyemititledWole Soyinka: Abating The Arrows Of The Envious And Ignorant. The article is full of vocabulary like arrows targeted at enemies.
All said, maybe Soyinka or Adamu, they are, to any objective analyst who is bereft of jingoism and subjectivism, icons to be celebrated and special gifts to Nigeria. There is no need to set one against the other on issues that are bygone. Unearthing this bygone spat, to me, is media unprofessionalism and subterfuge. The viral article is an old article. Please! And I think both have sheathed their swords.
It seems I have showered encomiums on both Soyinka and Adamu. Prof. Soyinka, though not in government, is instrumental, of course, in bringing on board this lackluster government. As for AdamuAdamu, he is in government as the Minister of Education. Despite his wealth of knowledge and the virtue he is known for, the Education Ministry which he is ministering is in comatose—this needs no explanation.
Should we blame MalamAdamu for it? This is debatable. What seems not to be debatable is that once you join this government, you are mysteriously incapacitated. If there are few exceptions who prove this assertion wrong, they are negligibly few of the few.
In conclusion, we should all exert efforts to narrow the widening cleavages in this Country. The resolution of the Southern Governors Forum for one Nigeria is commendable. Let’s emphasize those aspects of our togetherness that strengthens our unity and de-emphasize those catastrophic flashpoints. We can attain unity in diversity and avoid the destruction of diversity. God bless Nigeria.
salahuddeenabdulkadir@gmail.com
