Akeredolu And The Challenges Of Serotonin
A house slave has the same mentality like his boss, the slave owner. Being a house slave, he is in the best position that he could ever be, because he never dreamt he could ever be. To have those he would order around and exploit at the behest of his subjugating master is an egoistic desire that a house slave would protect at all costs. At any sniffing of slaves breaking the shackles on their ankles, what is usually palpable is jitter and anxiety fueled by fear. Out of this fear, the slave owner and his privileged house slave suffer brain catatonia. Epitomized by echolalia, there would be a generous display of a psychomotor disturbance that would involve muscle rigidity, stupor or mutism, purposeless movements, negativism, and inappropriate or unusual posturing that borders on schizophrenia.
What trails this, is predictable beastly exudation of carnivorous genre. Knee jack reaction. There ensues a lot of jolting and jiggling. A lot of quivering and quaking. A lot of shuddering and shaking. Apprehension dominates their thinking. They fret. They fuss. They become tizzy. Dazed and distracted. Disoriented. Confused. Perplexed. They begin to act strangely. Talking weirdly. Wallow and welter in physical and emotional disorderliness. The end product of this macabre emotional mutation is a staccato of craze inspired sorrowful ululation.
This definitely was the context that produced the outlandish, sickly, toddleric vituperation of Rotimi Akeredolu towards those in the vanguard of self-determination for Yoruba Nation, through a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Special Duties and Strategies, one "Dr." Doyin Odebowale, it was easy to isolate the anxiety and fear of these house slaves, their shallow knowledge of countervailing forces they are up against. A shallow knowledge garbed in the rancid robe of putrid eloquence.
In that statement released by Akeredolu, there is sufficient evidence of lack of adequate serotonin that has been triggered by possible excessive drug usage or self-medication. Serotonin is a chemical released in one's brain by nerve cells. This chemical acts as a messenger to control one's mood. Decreased serotonin levels may be linked to sadness or dips in one's mood.
Since Rotimi Akeredolu joined politics, he has become an amoeba of a human being. He has been manifesting psychological rollercoaster akin to acute mental trauma. Calm today, vexatious tomorrow. Cool today, raucous tomorrow. Controlled today, rambunctious tomorrow. Well - behaved today, unruly tomorrow. Reasonable today, irrational tomorrow. Normal today, mad tomorrow. Logical today, illogical tomorrow. Sensible today, nonsensical tomorrow. In Yoruba parlance, these represent perfect attributes of those having chronic mental illness, usually cured by terrific lashing with elastic cane.
From the title of the odious statement, "Grandstanding for relevance:- A historian’s burden”, it was nincompoopish ranting all the way to the last word, suggesting that minds high on some substance were at work. And to say that this was a statement put together by a so-called doctorate degree holder in one “anonymous” Debo Odebowale, and a purported Senior Advocate of Nigeria in Rotimi Akeredolu, could not have been more embarrassing. But what could one expect from minds mired in the miasma of chemical imbalance?
The statement was an enthusiastic demonstration in intellectual laziness. A rancorous howling of heinous hollowness. A sordid shallowness in substance. It is embarrassing that Akeredolu's statement demonstrated imperviousness to facts of History and lack of logic that one would have found to be a second nature to an undergraduate law student. Yet, he would always attach SAN at the end of his name. What a disgrace! To pour salt on injury, his so-called doctorate degree holder adviser could not even do better. Very nauseating.
Exuding an unmitigated intellectual idiocy: Akeredolu, supposedly a SAN, and his mis-adviser diddled:
“At what point did we decide as Yoruba people to declare a new Republic? Where was the referendum held? Who conducted it? Who chose the date for the declaration of “Autonomy for the Yoruba Nation”?
The mis-adviser and his principal did not tell their audience where, we, the Yoruba "elected" or "agreed" to be in Nigeria? He did not produce the result of a referendum where the Yoruba people said they would prefer Nigeria to Oodua Nation. "Dr." Odebowale then toddlerically quipped, "Who chose the date for the declaration of 'Autonomy' for the Yoruba Nation?" It was an impertinent plunge into the putrid pool of odious ignorance about History and how the process of struggle for liberty and freedom is waged. As someone who claimed to be a SAN, and being advised by a so-called doctorate degree holder, how come they are displaying such intellectual laziness? Why could they not do a little research to educate themselves about power, especially oppressive power, of which they are part, that it (power) gives nothing unless it is taken from it? Or they have that understanding and they are just trying to confuse themselves?
Akeredolu claimed that because he was "elected" he could speak for the people of Ondo State on the issue of self-determination and Oodua Republic. Was it not Akeredolu, who in a lecture in December 2009, said no amount of electoral reform or judicial system could give Nigeria free and fair elections? If he questions the legitimacy of his own "election", how in the world could he claim he was duly “elected”? And if he was not duly “elected”, how could he speak for Ondo people on a matter so important as that of the birth of Oodua Nation? How then could he claim he spoke for the people of Ondo State? Or in his law classes, he never had to learn logic? If he did not learn logic, what happened to his mis-adviser with that chain of degrees?
Even, if he was not rigged in, is he claiming that those who desire a different path for the land have no right to wake up their people to availability of different options other than the regime of kleptomania that he and his "Dr." mis-adviser are part of? Who needs the permission of fake "Nigerian Nationalists" patriotic only to their wallets, to change the trajectory of hopelessness and misery they have paved for the people? Even, under military and dictatorial regimes, people exercise the right to champion a different political arrangement for the polity. If Akerodolu has the fantasy to be a fascist, not in Ondo State, and certainly not in Yoruba land.
Hear the dense duo of Akeredolu and Odebowale:
"... it is presumptuous, denigrating and condescendingly spiteful for a group of hustlers, living largely in anonymity but struggling for relevance, to keep proclaiming and legislating on issues which affect the destiny of a whole people, without the faintest suggestion of paying even scant regard to their feelings or extending due courtesy to the real representatives of the people whose opinions they discount as unimportant."
With the encounters one has had with some of the so-called doctorate degree holders in recent times, this Odebowale is emblematic of why there is withering of confidence in the degree. How could anyone who understands the basics of English grammar describe freedom fighters as "living in anonymity?" If they were "living in anonymity" how then did Odebowale and his confused principal become aware of them? Did they go searching for them from their hideouts? Is there no dictionary of English Language in the whole the State Secretariat in Akure? If they are having challenges with English Language, why could they communicate in Yoruba Language? Or in the language of their masters, Fulfulde and get someone to interpret it for the rest of us?
Akeredolu, supposedly a SAN and his so-called doctorate degree holder of an adviser went on to describe the champions of self-determination as "hustlers" in an exercise of grammatical quackery that even malapropism would not dare challenge. The dense duo, Akeredolu and Odebowale, used the word "hustler" to described a group that has within it, professors in various fields, medical doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers (not of Akeredolu's inferior genre) pharmacists, journalists, business men and women, nurses, retired military men, all of them spread all over the world? It is challenging enough to have to deal with ignorance on its own, but when one has to deal with arrogant ignorance as espoused shamelessly by Akeredolu and his hungry puppet, Odebowale, one has a titanic task to contend with.
With garish gusto Akeredolu and his hack lashed out, like a desperate house slave on the brink and spoke defensively for a group of legitimized kleptomaniacs, legalized predators and rampaging locusts garbed as "governors" and "special advisers" who are determined to sell us into Fulani slavery. A first-class traditional Oba was kidnapped and murdered under his nose and he could do nothing about it. Many parts of his Ondo State are no go areas for law abiding citizens, he has no solution to it. Yet, his idle so-called adviser had no eloquence, putrid or not, to empathize with the citizens and appropriately articulate their miseries.
Akeredolu's tenure as the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, (NBA), (2008-2010), was the first public testament to the character of a man void of integrity. It brought to public attention the charlatanism of a full-fledged con man, who after he was made a Chief in his hometown of Owo, had absconded, duping those who performed the traditional rights for him, betraying the trust reposed in him by failing to do the traditionally needful. Not until he had to return to assuage the town leaders because he was a gubernatorial candidate and he was forced to atone for his betrayal!
"In November 2009, he had faced allegations of corruption when the Bar Association's Third Vice-President, Welfare Secretary and Assistant Financial Secretary circulated a petition entitled "Complaints against your fraudulent manifestations, violation of the NBA". It exposed an underbelly of a corrupt element hiding under the cover of the wig and gown. Rapacious and desperate. Shameless and crooked. These allegations of untold corruption were eventually resolved "the Nigerian way".
It is only in Nigeria, that professional con men like Rotimi Akeredolu would become a governor. The day he went to dress up in some uniform like a boy scout (apologies to all the Boy Scouts all over the world for that comparison) claiming to launch Amotekun in Ondo State was when this writer began to suspect his mental balance and genuine commitment to the safety of Ondo people. That nauseating exercise revealed a confused mind inebriated in grandstanding rather than substance. It revealed a con man out to give the impression that he was on the side of the people when he was actively engaged in selling them into slavery.
When one reaches into History, anthropology, political science, social science (or sociology), religious studies, elements of psychiatry laced with a modicum of psychoanalysis, or as Professor Tam David West once did brilliantly, using the basics of chemistry to explain the Nigerian corrugated existence and its inevitable end, kleptomaniacs shackled by their greed are usually unable to grasp what is being talked about. In fact, and indeed, when you even dive into spirituality to explain that Nigeria will eventually meet its destiny by breaking up, many of them are still in intellectual limbo and manifest scary lack of discernment. Akeredolu and his Special Adviser belong to these intellectually comatose crowd.
Akerodolu and his illiterate adviser with a doctorate degree, are house slaves of the feudal lords of the Nigerian Manor. They are the dubious patriots found across all crannies of the country that are siphoning the commonwealth and impoverishing Nigeria. They yell at the top of their voices on daily basis that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable. They are the swindlers in the corridors and inner chambers of power. Their sole mission is to hold in perpetual bondage the various ethnic groups in Nigeria. Their interest is not to take Nigeria to the next level, but to continuously exploit them economically as they gradually transform Nigeria to Middle Ages. That is why Akeredolu is a desperate man. That is why he is a dangerous man to the existential survival of the Yoruba Nation.
A shallow minded trickster, and very proud house slave that swims in illusion of invulnerability, Akeredolu could not but feel jittery when he encounters those that have more depth than him. He could not but feel utterly rambunctious when faced with the reality that the days of the system that produced him and other leeches of his ilk are numbered. He could not but feel murderous against those who want to be free from the subjugation of his Fulani masters when he encounters those imbued with the determination to be free. This is the context in which Akeredolu’s unguarded outburst against freedom fighters for the Yoruba Nation should be placed.
Rotimi Akeredolu, his misguided adviser and their ilk have no choice. They would have to contend with History. The History that teaches that man would always throw off any yoke no matter how long it lasts. That the spirit of man abhors slavery and subjugation. That man would fight Akeredolu's genre of mercantilist politicians or any other slave owner, to be free. That no matter how much money they have illicitly accumulated and no matter how formidable they might think they are, their days are numbered.
A confused mind like Akeredolu and his illiterate adviser still want Nigeria, they have no idea how they could invigorate and sustain a good country. They have no idea of the way forward. They have no solutions. Yet, they would argue against its dismemberment. It does not matter anymore whether Akeredolu and his fellow travellers agree that Nigeria should be broken up or not, the fact is that Nigeria is furiously bolting towards its destiny of balkanization at the speed Usain Bolt would never be able to fathom.
The spirit is the greatest possession of man. It is the most important variable in the constitution of man and should be the most coveted dynamic in the struggle for freedom. When properly mastered by victims of enslavement, the body of man becomes immaterial. It becomes insensitive to physical violation. His emotions become immune to sufferings inflicted by the agents of state. The encapsulation of the mind by the spirit then follows. The body could be chained but not the spirit. The citizen could be enslaved but not his/her mind. The Yoruba spirit is flying high towards its freedom and liberty. There is nothing the Akeredolus of this world could do about it.
©Remi Oyeyemi