Some years ago at a birthday dinner for Senator Oluremi Tinubu at Muson Center In Lagos Prof Soyinka in his usual self told the audience he has informed his family members as well as his physician that whenever he began to talk in dissonance from what he is known for he should simply be locked up and not allowed to make public statements again.
He was reacting to statements made then by a leader of the pro democracy movements whose statements from from a certain point in his public life became contradictory of what he has been known for over the years.
Most of the statements then were embarrassing to many who knew him and had collaborated with him.
Whenever I listen to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo speak in recent time, particularly since his candidate lost the last election Prof Soyinka’s words keep coming back to me and I began to think this should be addressed to Obasanjo’s family and physician . The children and relations need to do something.
The old man should not be allowed to use his mouth to destroy whatever he has been known to champion or canvass over the years.
He has worked very hard. He has served Nigeria to the best of his ability.
A time comes that a man gets tired both physically and mentally. It is a function of age. The body and the brain begins to break down. You begin to act and behave like a baby again.
It behoves on family members to help such person , just as they did when he was an a little tot , to save him from himself. If not he will pee and defecate on his body, he will shop lift, saliva will drop from his mouth to his chest.
That is why the elderly people in the traditional society are tagged witches or wizards. They behave and talk in a manner not normal. They put their mouth in things that does not concern them. They sometime admit to doing things they know nothing about. The onset of this differs from individual to individual. Watch people from 80 and above ( with some exceptions though ) and you will see some kind of unusualness to their utterances and actions. It is a debt we all owe.
I submit and strongly too that Obasanjo the the federal commissioner, the army general, Nigeria’s number two man to Muritala Mohammed, the former head of state, the prisoner, the two term President of Nigeria , the ‘conscience of the nation’ and above all the Statesman and a world citizen should be compulsorily retired by his family.
He has done his best. He needs now to rest till God says it is time to call him home. Baba it is time to rest.
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