Dear Olumhense, I Am Not Stupid!

The syndicated Daily Trust/Punch columnist, Mr. Sonala Olumhense, titled his last Sunday column “The 2027 Election is a Survey on Stupidity.” Every curious Nigerian would want to know who the stupid are and why there is a need to survey stupidity. That is natural.

Why does Olumhense think the 2027 election will determine the population of stupid people in Nigeria? Before I address what he raised in his column, let me say one or two things about this columnist.

Olumhense seems to have no peer among the present crop of Nigerian columnists. While we can still find one or two who are older — like the octogenarian “Nigerian economy prophet” Dr. Dele Sobowale and the enigmatic Professor Toyin Falola — he is senior to most in years of column writing.

He started decades ago. I will not mention the actual year; whoever is interested should do a little research. All I know is that I was born the same year he wrote the maiden edition of The Guardian on Sunday. And he had been writing columns a few years before then. Do the math.

Since then, Olumhense has neither retired nor tired of writing. Many of his peers have retired. One of them is Mallam Muhammad Haruna of Daily Trust; he retired exactly a decade ago with his last column, which I am still nostalgic about. It was titled “The Columnist as a Salesman.” That column brought tears to our eyes. Only those familiar with Muhammad Haruna’s writing can relate.

But for Olumhense, I think he was born to write till death. I don’t know if that is his wish. I suspect it is. Edmund Burke described journalists as the Fourth Estate. That is understandable because journalists advocate for the people and for just causes. They are indispensable in a civilised society. They do not only stand by the truth; they speak it to power. If my students ask me what Burke’s Fourth Estate means, I will ask them to study people like Olumhense.

So, since he declared that the 2027 election will be a survey on stupidity, I am determined not to be among those surveyed. Stupidity ba wo?! Only the Yoruba people will understand this exclamatory question.

Lest I forget, there are other things I must mention about Olumhense. Though this piece is meant to focus on the “survey on stupidity,” I cannot help saying more about Olumhense, the chief field researcher.

More than a decade ago, he answered a question this way: “In the tradition in which I was raised, government officials feared journalists; today, journalists fear government officials. Ask yourself, why?”

In Olumhense, we find a journalist whom government officials — even presidents — fear. Ask former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He will tell you Olumhense is the quintessential columnist. Olumhense digs for his facts. He knows how to get them. Whether from the pit or the archive, his facts are factual and incontrovertible. He dishes out his facts with dogged confidence and, in most cases, provides links for doubting Thomases.

He is the only Nigerian journalist I know who defeated a former military head of state and civilian president in court. Obasanjo is still alive. He knows the details. He filed a defamation suit demanding N1 billion in damages against Olumhense over an article that questioned his account of Nigerian history. The article was titled “This is the best contribution Obasanjo can make.” The suit was dismissed. Instead, on October 19, 2023, the court awarded N4 million in costs to Punch and Olumhense.

For fear of the facts in Olumhense’s arsenal, no government official dares challenge him. Obasanjo tried and was humbled. For years, Olumhense ended his Sunday column with this line: “This column welcomes rebuttals from interested party/government officials.” Since no official dared respond, he stopped appending it.

Last Sunday, Olumhense wrote:

“Four years in the presidency, Mr. Bola Tinubu has barely scratched the surface of the electricity problem or any other major issue. And he is on the ballot in 2027 as the incumbent president.

“Elsewhere, that would have been considered an insult to voters. And that is why the ballot will test who Nigerians really are: everyone who has been hurt by those problems or knows someone who has. Everyone who has a drop of dignity left. Every Nigerian who is not stupid.

“Because Nigeria, and every Nigerian voter, must in 2027 answer this question: Am I in denial or am I stupid? Voting with that in mind should be easy.”

Olumhense was one of the public intellectuals who, through their columns, gave wings to the APC. He now regrets it, like many others. Five days ago, he restated his verdict: “APC was a fraud. It is still a fraud. Twelve years after it took control by marketing the concept of CHANGE, it is concerned only with power, not the public interest.”

As much as I consider Olumhense a towering figure who cannot be faulted lightly, I respectfully disagree with him on two points.

He wrote: “In the forthcoming election, the Nigerian voter is in effect being asked to vindicate treachery; to vote against himself by voting for APC. But Nigerians are not stupid.”

Dear Olumhense, are you sure Nigerians are not stupid? Isn’t that a contradiction of “The 2027 Election is a Survey on Stupidity”? If you are sure Nigerians are not stupid, why the need for a survey on stupidity? And who exactly do you mean by “Nigerians”? Who do you include or exclude? While Olumhense may be right to say Nigerians are not stupid, we will wait to see what happens on election day when the survey is conducted.

Again, Olumhense wrote: “…the 2027 campaigns ought to be easy for even half-decent opposition. Because APC has no campaign.” I beg to disagree. APC has a campaign, and it has been campaigning. It has been campaigning with threats.

We saw violent campaigning in Osun State by the APC. Is “Vote for APC or be killed” not a campaign? What about “Vote for APC or vacate your residence in Kuje” by a local government chairman in Abuja? What of the Borno State commissioner who threatened to flog voters who refuse to vote APC and to break their fingers? In Yobe, an APC stalwart told married women to seek divorce if their husbands would not let them vote APC. We also heard that 500 clerics in Jigawa were allegedly given N3 million each to endorse Ọmọ Ologo. Are these not campaigns?

Let me concede that APC has no campaign based on governance. But it has a campaign of threats — violence, killings, finger amputation, marriage dissolution, and threats of hell by the Muslim-Muslim clerical warriors.

If APC had fielded another presidential candidate, not Tinubu, one might not consider it stupid to vote for it. But with Tinubu, whom Omoyele Sowore has accused of being a …(plug in a befitting noun), and with the ongoing issue of criminal records in the United States yet to be released and are being lobbied to remain sealed, I would be stupid to vote for Tinubu. I don’t think God will forgive me. The issue now is not just whether a crime was committed. It is about the release of those criminal records.

If democracy in Nigeria under APC were not “crime-in-progress,” as Olumhense rightly puts it, someone like Tinubu should not even be on the ballot. While I am sure that anosmic Nigerians who are smell-blind will not perceive this stench, I urge all conscientious Nigerians to reject Tinubu at the polls.

Being asked by foreigners whether our president is a criminal is a question I do not want to answer. Besides, he said we should not vote for him if he did not fix electricity before 2027. Now that he has not, responsibility demands that we do not vote for him. To vote for Tinubu, in my understanding — and in Olumhense’s — is to be stupid.

Dear Olumhense, I am not stupid.

Abdulkadir Salaudeen

salahuddeenabdulkadir@gmail.com