Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo says
it is despicable to slap women.
In his tribute at the launch of a
memoir by Olusegun Osoba, former governor of Ogun state, on Monday, Osinbajo
went down memory lane to speak of British born Patrick Chadwick slapped
Adekunbi Adeite, a Nigerian sales girl, at the Kingsway Stores in Lagos.
He condemned the act of slapping
women, referring to it as a “despicable business”.
The VP seems to have been sending
a cryptic message to Elisha Abbo, senator representing Adamawa north, who was
recently seen on camera assaulting a woman.
Osinbajo, who made his speech
without any mention of Abbo, said Osoba, as a journalist, exclusively reported
the case and Chadwick had to resign, and be punished.
Abbo, who had initially made a
public apology and an admission of guilt, pleaded not guilty in court.
“Chief Olusegun Osoba’s
illustrious career as a journalist and later politician, have also by some
uncanny stroke of good fortune, placed him at the centre of many defining
moments and situations of post-Independent Nigeria,” Osinbajo said.
“Arguably the most memorable is
his January 1966 scoop; the tragic discovery of the bodies of Prime Minister
Tafawa Balewa and Finance Minister Festus Okotie-Eboh, not long after the coup
that ended Nigeria’s first Republic.
“He was there on the frontlines
in many sectors of the Civil War, recording and reporting the horrors and
tragedies of a factional war. And it was he who witnessed the surprise visit of
Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to Lagos during the Civil War.
“He was also right there on the
frontlines, nine years later with exclusive reporting during the coup that
brought General Murtala Mohammed to power.
“He happened to be in the
Governor’s office in Enugu when the then Commissioner of Police, Kafaru Tinubu,
sent word of the capture of Lt. Col. Bukar Dimka, the man who assassinated
Murtala Mohammed. He was the only journalist to see Dimka in handcuffs in
police custody in Enugu.”
SLAPPING WOMEN IS DESPICABLE
He went on to say Osoba’s scoops
were not limited to politics but also extended to the injustices amongst
societal strata.
“But his scoops went beyond the
political, he exclusively reported the case of British born Patrick Chadwick,
who slapped a Nigerian sales girl, Adekunbi Adeite, at the Kingsway Stores in
Lagos (this despicable business of slapping women seems to have been around for
a while), and how the UAC and some other journalists tried to cover it up.
“It became a national issue and
the UAC eventually punished the culprit and he resigned.”
WE NEED ALLIANCES TO DESTROY
EXTREMISM
The vice-president said Nigeria
needs to form alliances across faith and ethnicity to adequately battle
extremism, taking examples of cross-ethnic relationships from Osoba.
“There is a paradox here, the
subtext of Osoba’s autobiography ‘Battlelines: Adventures in Journalism and Politics,’
is the tragedy of ethnic and religious jingoism in Nigeria.
“The collapse of our national
achievements and attainments at every stage of our history has been that
Achilles Heel, the tribal and religious suspicions. The inability at crucial
moments, to bridge the gaps of ethnic and religious prejudice.
“Chief Osoba’s life and times
speaks most eloquently to the power of building bridges, finding common ground,
and resisting divisive narratives, especially in a country as diverse as
Nigeria, a country where it is extremely easy to find reasons to languish in
stereotypes and suspicions, where far too many of us by default, lapse into
ethnic camps.”
Osoba clocks 80 next week.
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