Gbenga Contra Olusegun Obasanjo.

Some things in life are so enormous in their impact that they are almost impossible to take in, like the day a man discovers that his wife has been sleeping around with his kith and kin. Words become meaningless, the mind cuts itself off from reality for a little while, a necessary breathing space until one is ready to cope. And if such a man, instead of washing his dirty linen at home, now decides to wash it in public, then the village square of public opinion must ensure with all the means at its disposal not to wash its hands off such a dirty linen, but take wary steps to know what is true and what is not, what is fact, what is fiction, what is informed speculation and what is pure flight of fancy. Where does this story about Obasanjo's alleged intimate encounter with his daughter-in-law fall? Under the rubric of fact or fiction? The victim claims to know for a fact that "...his wife had an intimate relationship with his own father, General Olusegun Obasanjo..." If Gbenga's ears can hear what his mouth is saying, then he should be exonerated for washing his soiled linen in public.

This writer has for a long time held in high esteem Joseph, the father of Jesus, because of the way he comported himself with dignity when it became apparent that Mary, his wife, was pregnant without any act of carnal knowledge by him. According to the Scriptures, "...Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly..." Joseph was not a mere mortal. And Gbenga Obasanjo is not making any claims to be Joseph as any mere mortal who makes such claims will be out-josephed. Gbenga is just human. And in that way, he resembles a lot of us. Some of us would even go beyond the extent this poor man has gone so far. We would attack the man who sired us, even though that would constitute a paradigm of impious conduct. In Euthypro, the protagonist prosecutes his own father on a charge of homicide, thus drawing a line between indispensability and expendability in parent -child relationship. In Gbenga contra Obasanjo, who should we charge with impiety?

In origin, Olusegun Obasanjo belongs to the lowest class; everything about him is crude. We know, we can still see for ourselves, how ugly he is. To be politically correct and to be fair to him, he is aesthetically reprehensible. Ugliness is often enough the expression of a development that has been arrested, thwarted by arrest. Or it appears as declining development. The anthropologists among the criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly. Is Obasanjo a typical criminal? Yes! From all indications, he is not only corrupt, he is lecherous. A dirty old man in whose eyes the light of lechery is beacon-bright and whose face bears all the signs of his sins. He should be charged with Felonious Use of Carnal Knowledge (F.U.C.K).

Alas, times have changed. In the days of yore, marriage was a venerable institution. Today, it has become a much-maligned deity whose slowness to anger and unwillingness to punish offenders has emboldened couples tying the nuptial knot to permanently set up the abomination of desolation on her altar. Inasmuch as this writer is a constitutional cynic, he is of the considered opinion that to reinvent marriage for those who cannot fly without having their wings clipped, ferocious gods like Ogun and Sango have to be assigned the unenviable task of punishing matrimonial offenders and those who cause them to sin.

But, as an afterthought, one cannot help wondering what manner of family is the Obasanjo's. With the spate of controversies and scandals the former first family has been involved in, it would be no surprise if the internal contradictions and antagonisms within it eventually destroy it. And there would be no iota of commiseration from any quarters, including the abode of the living and the dead and the professional mourners, because the head of the family, a man whose libido is as large as ZUMA's head, compared to the LITTLE ROCK from Arkansas, has dug its grave.

After the hackneyed singsong and hype about being born again and the hypocritical attempt to dissuade Gowon from going to Aso Rock to collect what he forgot there, one would have expected a saintly president perched high on the Pegasus of fame, looming larger than life, and glowing amidst the razzle-dazzle of global media hoopla. Whosai! Instead, Mother Nigeria and her progeny, Nigerians have been doubly cursed; firstly, with a geriatric leadership that has blurred out the boundary of senescence and senility; secondly, the siamese-twin curse of oil whose mismanagement has led a woman that is supposed to be referred to as mother to sexually gratify a man to whom she is related by nexuses of affinity. What a shame. Enough said!