Akinrinade: softly, softly please

I don’t think I’m alone in this: there are some people you just like even when you don’t know anything about them. You read about them or watch them on television and you simply love them in a way you can’t explain.
It happened to me when I first read The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama; a thrilling piece of literature captured in a breezy narrative. I quickly fell in love with Obama until he became a global policeman over gay issues.
That’s the same way I feel about Alani Akinrinade, retired army general. I met him last when I served as media officer at the 2014 National Conference. He was a delegate. I regard him as the best model of who, what and how a soldier should be.
So, anytime I read anything about him, if it is controversial, I must find reasons to justify it because Akinrinade can do no wrong.
For instance when he was quoted as saying in 2015 that candidate Muhammadu Buhari should not be disqualified from the presidential race because he could not produce his Secondary School Certificate, I quickly adjusted my argument; because my man had just spoken.
He even called it an insult. This is a part of what he was quoted as saying: “It is an insult to the armed forces – a terrible insult to the armed forces. If they are so embedded in the system and they have lost their souls, then they can go ahead and join everybody else in castigating a general of Buhari’s calibre.
“They are now talking about a school certificate. What is that? By the time he joined the army, in those days, there were no cutting corners. It is later when these same civilians took over from the army that admission into it became less transparent.
“I can give you an instance. There was Course Five around 1964: if one did not have a school certificate one couldn’t apply to join the army. And I know up to 1963 when the last General Officer Commanding left Nigeria, there were no corners to be cut.
“There was no such thing. Everything was on merit. And, that was how it was till Buhari’s time. Buhari attended the Mons (Officer Cadet School in Aldershot in England) and the Staff College; I don’t want to think they have an idea what they teach in those places.
“And the rest of us pretend as if we don’t know what they do there. You send a man to America for one and a half years in a military school. Do they think he just went there to learn how to fire a rifle? No.”
Then last week, he was quoted rightly or wrongly as saying what you are about to read. It was about alleged plans by senators to impeach Buhari. Yes, it is the senators’ constitutional right to impeach the president if they satisfy the conditions.
Impeachment of a democratically elected president has never been a tea party. Even in the US where political sophistication can be taken for granted, it has never been successfully executed.
Akinrinade was quoted as reacting this way: “As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing like senators in the Federal Republic of Nigeria as of today.
“What people refer to as senators, is merely a deceptive and illusory assemblage of national irritants, who deliberate daily on how to purchase new cars, build new mansions and buy fantastic ones abroad, arrogate a strange and unjustified immunity to themselves, get constituency votes for marrying new wives and servicing girlfriends.
“This assemblage derives most of its membership from retired and expired ex-governors, who ran their states aground and left them in huge debts, and also left their subjects bleeding, and weeping in sorrow and abject penury. You also have a lot of rascals, hooligans, area boys and street fighters amongst their fold.
“Now how can this insensate and fiendish lot, after enough dosage of weed, lock up themselves in one obscure chamber and begin to mute the idea of impeaching a democratically elected president?… Well, l must state here that it is none of their faults.
“If Nigerians had turned out en-mass and come to #OCCUPYNASS so we chase these prodigal sons back to their respective villages, we surely won’t be discussing this today. They should let it trickle down to their medulla that things are no longer the same.
“It is no more business as usual and there is nothing they can do about it. I reliably gathered that most of them who borrowed money from banks to finance their campaigns are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with pressures from the banks. “That’s the way it should be.
“This is not a business venture, rather a call to service.
“Hence, if you are not comfortable with the tune of events, then you resign, instead of turning yourself a legislative embarrassment and national disgrace. I’m yet to see any of them who would be missed for a minute if he resigns today.
“This crop of Wonderers would undoubtedly leave a legacy as the worst performing, and most unproductive Senate in the history of Nigeria. Their latest actions and pronouncements are indeed a joke taken too far.”
I do not completely agree with the general if indeed he said this. I still do not believe he said them. Among those senators referred to here, there are still some unquestionable integrity. What if somebody said this about the military?