On Kassim Afegbua’s Shallow and Misguided Utterances By Pedro Obaseki
POLITICS DIGEST- In 1977, the famous dramatist, Professor Ola Rotimi wrote a play titled *_“Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again!”_* It was a comic drama that takes a satirical swipe at the band of ideological misfits and pseudo-politicians of no fixed addresses who dominate Nigeria’s weird political landscape. Men whose actions and utterances lack justifiable rationalization. It is a comic satire on Nigeria: a nation where politics appear to be governed solely by self-interest and the proverbial *_“stomach infrastructure”_*.
A careful and systemic profiling of the posturing, utterances and vituperations of Mr. Kassim Afegbua over the last couple of years, reminds me of Professor Rotimi’s classic comic masterpiece. Kassim Afegbua’s public _(and maybe, even private)_ posturing, paints the unenviable picture of a man trapped in the claws of political disillusionment. His most recent attack on Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, the National Chairman of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the just concluded National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the party is nothing short of despicable. It is obvious that Kassim strives so hard to cast himself in the mould of a REBEL. But it is imperative to let him know: *_“a REBEL is not necessarily a REVOLUTIONARY.”_* Kassim is impulsively talkative. He is rash, impetuous and thoughtless. These are symptomatic of an intellectual dwarf whose reasoning is incredibly and incrementally deficient. It is obvious: Kassim suffers *AIDS!* *_Acute Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome!_* How else will one describe a man who rakes up misinformation, creates a lie, believes the lie, lives the Lie, and packages same for sale to the public?
After reading his last outbursts, it dawned on me that replying Kassim Afegbua is a waste. Engaging him intellectually has increasingly become an exercise in futility. Kassim has become a loose cannon personality: an unpredictable man who is narcissistically inclined to cause damage to his own supposed political family. A man whose disposition profiles nothing short of self-harm. A man willing to cut his nose just to spite his face and please whosoever is currently paying him for piping his tune!
In his press interview published on 12th May 2022, Mr. Kassim Afegbua blatantly and erroneously accused the Dr. Ayu-led PDP National Executive of “trying to upturn the zoning arrangement”. He went further to impugn the person of the PDP National Chairman, while employing a _“Lai Mohammed-style”_ rhetoric to say that Dr. Ayu is jettisoning the provisions of the PDP Constitution to “deny the South an opportunity to have their turn”. It must be clearly stated that it was never the “turn” of the South to produce the PDP Presidential Candidate for 2023. The facts are in the public domain and the facts (unlike Mr. Afegbua) don’t lie! Unfortunately, Kassim along with his paymasters, and co-travellers have opted to jettison the truth, turn historical facts upside down, and with the sole aim of confusing the innocent public.
Read Also:
It is on record that the PDP as a party has hitherto favoured the supposed “South” of the country in the choice of its presidential flagbearer. This is an incontrovertible fact. In the 16 years of the PDP in power at the Federal Level, two zones from the South held sway for thirteen years and three months. This was via Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (eight years) and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan (five years and three months). Under the PDP, the North held presidential power for less than two years and nine month (via the Late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua).
Thus, by throwing its presidential primaries for 2023 Elections open, the Iyorchia Ayu-led PDP leadership have taken a giant, bold step. And that singular pronouncement is the *RESET button* for the PDP and the vexed issue of Zoning. This is because by granting the presidential ticket to Goodluck Jonathan in 2011, the party literarily shut the door on Zoning. This recent proclamation to throw open the Presidential candidate nomination process to all qualified aspirants is a masterstroke worthy of commendation. The PDP can start on a fresh clean slate.
Above are FACTS that the misleading sophistry of Kassim Afegbua and his co-travellers would rather ignore because the *TRUTH* negates their Mephistophelean narrative. With these historical facts, it is obvious gthat Kassim’s sophistry borders on criminal misinformation and nestles on the darker sides of black propaganda.
The Presidential Primaries is a Candidate-Nomination Exercise. It is an intra-party affair; a contest among “Brothers and Sisters” who share largely common ideological persuasions and political objectives. It is therefore alarming, scary and irresponsible (if not downright ludicrous) for a supposed “brother” to work so assiduously to pull down the roof and set ablaze the very same structure that houses his political brethren. As the saying goes, however, “in every 12, there must be a Judas”. *_The “Judas Iscariot Syndrome”_* has increasing become Kassim’s stock-in-trade.
For the PDP, the clear Objective is to win the 2023 Presidential Election and save Nigeria from the brink. The PDP must be positioned to rescue the nation, save the common man, and re-unit our diverse peoples. It must salvage Nigeria and end the *APC’s Years Of The Locusts!* Consequently, as the PDP Presidential Primaries draw near, all PDP National Delegates, Leaders, Party Faithful, and all well-meaning Nigerians must gird their loins. We must all keep our eyes on the ball.
The monotonous sophist rhetoric of an inconsequential minority of detractors who have raised the banner of misinformation to stratospheric levels must not be allowed to derail the PDP and its leadership in the task to get our people out of APC’s political *“Egypt”*. By the grace of the Good Lord, the verbal diarrhoea of mental Lilliputians and intellectual dwarves like Kassim, and their orgasmic “Judas Iscariot moments” will pass away. I only pray that they do not get drowned in the pool of their own vomit. Else, they will be swept into the dung-heap of political irrelevance.
*_Dr. Pedro Obaseki_* (12/05/2022)
writes from Benin City, Edo State.
