Femi Aribisala’s unprofessorial diatribes

Posted by: Segun Ayobolu in News 5 hours ago
Femi Aribisala is suppossed to be a distinguished social science professor, presumably an international relations scholar. This should ordinarily imply clarity of thinking, rigour of logic, emotional detachment and a scrupulous adherence to truth in speech and writing. Unfortunately, week after week, in his Tuesday column in the Vanguard newspaper, Femi Aribisala demonstrates that his thoughts have been perverted, his reasoning jaundiced and his analytic prowess alarmingly enfeebled by an unhealthy, obsessive, maniacal, almost Luciferian hatred for the person of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the foremost opposition leader in Nigeria today. Of course, this is neither new nor strange. The late Professor SanyaOnabamiro, an otherwise distinguished academic and scientist similarly devalued his role and place in history by a morbid hatred of Chief ObafemiAwolowo.
Many of the baseless insinuations, and careless generalisations characteristic of Aribisala’s newspaper columns would never be permitted in any learned academic journal which would require the strictest verification of facts, attribution of sources and rational, internally consistent justification of claims. Given the abysmally pedestrian level of his reasoning as revealed in his column, it is disturbing to imagine the quality of education he must have imparted to those students unfortunate to pass through his tutelage.
Femi Aribisala’s column of Tuesday, July 1, titled ‘The beginning of the end of the Bola Tinubu dynasty’, made interesting reading. For one, he has unwittingly lionised Tinubu by concocting the existence of a Tinubu dynasty. He invests Tinubu with the title of ‘Asiwaju of Yorubaland’. The latter is the ‘Asiwaju of Lagos’ even though no one can doubt that he is the foremost ‘Asiwaju’ of opposition political forces in contemporary Nigeria. He begins the article by seeking to compare Tinubu with King Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible. Yet this is the same Aribisala who once insinuated that the Bible is a book of fables and lies by claiming that the Biblical account of David and Goliath is completely fictional. By the way, the retired professor doubles as some kind of pastor. Is this not evidence of a confused and disturbed mind? He finds fault with Tinubu’s assertion of his right to pursue any political ambition of his choice under the aegis of the United Nations Human Rights Charter. A supposedly eminent professor does not recognise the elementary fact that the freedom to pursue political ambitions by eligible persons is a key feature of liberal democracy? This is truly tragic. In his view, “The voice of the electorate in the South-West has answered Tinubu. His personally ambition is certainly not in the interest of the people”. Our beloved professor should kindly tell us which election Tinubu has contested with the South West giving such a verdict. Or should we swallow this kind of illogical garbage simply because he is a professor?
According to Professor/Pastor Aribisala, “Tinubu’s claim to fame lies in the strength of his ACN party in the South West”. Aribisala was probably on planet Mars when Tinubu was at the forefront of the struggle for the validation of the June 12, 1993, mandate of Chief MKO Abiola and the liberation of Nigerian politics from the stranglehold of military dictatorship. In any case, where was Aribisala at this crucial phase in the protracted battle for democratic restoration in Nigeria? This was long before the advent of civilian rule in 1999 and the evolution from the ACN from the AD. Mercifully, Aribisala is intellectually honest enough for once to admit that when the PDP under Obasanjo executed its electoral Tsunami in the South West in 2003, “The brilliant South West answer to this PDP treachery was Tinubu”. He continues, “Tinubu drew a line in the battle in the sand, held on to Lagos, and struck back from this stronghold to win back all the lost South West states in 2007”. Now, if Tinubu is as self- serving, unprincipled and power hungry as depicted by Aribisala, would he not have capitulated and joined the mainstream PDP at that critical moment in 2003 rather than remain the last man standing in opposition? How many Nigerian politicians can Aribisala name that would prefer to be in opposition on principle rather than join the all- powerful centre with its limitless power of patronage if he were to be in Tinubu’s situation in 2003?
Even more alarmingly for a supposed intellectual,Aribisala gets the reason for the progressive resurgence in the South West following the 2003 debacle absolutely wrong. In his words, “He won because the people of the South- West refused to mortgage their future to the political interests of Obasanjo and his allies in the North”. If the PDP had used its years in power in the South West to promote development and prosperity, the progressives could never have bounced back in the South-West the way they did. On the contrary, it was the Tinubu administration in Lagos that became a model of good and productive governance that caught the imagination of the South-West and made the progressives electorally viable once more.
Contrary to his insinuations, the Yoruba have no political animosity against the North. Aribisala claims that “Anybody who thinks Tinubu’s APC will succeed in the South-West does not understand South-West politics. The Yorubas are too proud and fiercely independent to agree to play second fiddle to anyone because of a man called Tinubu. S.L. Akintola tried the same gambit in the 1960s, and the South-West rejected him. The same rejection has befallen Bola Tinubu”. This kind of infantile analysis must be embarrassing to Nigeria’s professorial elite. By 1983, Awolowo himself had realised the need to build bridges across the country to win elections in a large, diverse country like Nigeria. His Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) thus went into an alliance with a faction of the Northern elite which backed him and even nominated Alhaji Mohammed Kura to be his running mate. It was as a result of the massive rigging of that election by the NPN that the military intervened in 1983. Beyond this, MKO Abiola’s landslide victory in the historic June 12, 1993, presidential election was attained largely because he had built a network of friendships and relationships across the length and breadth of Nigeria especially in the North. A Professor who does not understand the electoral dynamics of his own country and does not appreciate that no single region or nationality can produce the President without widespread support from other groups deserves not only pity but his academic title ought to be withdrawn. Chief Awolowo himself characteristically once predicted in one of his books that “One day the best of the progressives and the best of the conservatives will come together to rule Nigeria”. The sage must be terribly embarrassed in his grave as regards Aribisala’s infantile reasoning that the South-West must remain in political isolation.
It is very embarrassing to Nigeria’s intellectual class when one of their supposed leading lights, Aribisala, claims that following the consensus in 1999 that, because of the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, a Yoruba should be President, “Northerners decided they would determine who the Yoruba should be. Obasanjo was fished out of prison and anointed as PDP presidential candidate”. So should the presidential election of 1999 have been limited to the South-West alone? Should northerners have been compelled to vote for the preference of the South-West in an election being contested by two illustrious Yoruba sons? This reasoning is most jejune and sterile.
Aribisala makes several unsubstantiated assertions in his column, which every Nigerian academic should find embarrassing. He claims that under Fayemi, “Ekiti money was routinely shipped to Lagos”. There is not a scintilla of evidence to back this grievous falsehood. Fayemi is a far more honourable man than a pastor who recklessly peddles falsehood. He would never permit such an alleged rape of Ekiti. He argues that the finances of Lagos “are tied to Alpha Beta”. Our Professor does not substantiate this nor the crime involved. If he is so confident, why doesn’t he petition the EFCC on these issues? He alleges that Tinubu described all Yoruba Obas as useless and pretends not to have read Tinubu’s clarification of the misleading reports in the media on the issue. The truth of the matter is that Aribisala can never have or cultivate the kind of close relationship Tinubu has with most Yoruba Obas. Aribisala invests Tinubu with such magical powers that he allegedly “went up North to Kwakwanso to engineer the installation of a ‘useful’ Emir of Kano”. Professor Sir, where is your evidence? This kind of careless effusion is a disgrace to scholarship or has the word lost its meaning? An academic of Aribisala’s stature cannot even see the link between the massive infrastructure renewal being undertaken across the South-West under the APC and meaningful development. He thus eulogises and thereby insults the Ekiti “electorate’s cynical preference for pounded yam over tarred roads”. What a tragedy. He asserts that Tinubu “has even gone ahead to anoint AkinwumiAmbode as the next governor of the state without the benefit of any election”. Can this strange academic quote Tinubu on this? Has Tinubu uttered a word on the matter? Is he aware that the APC primaries are yet to be held and several aspirants are still jostling for the party’s ticket? As a citizen and party member, is Aribisala saying that Tinubu has no right to back an aspirant of his choice in the final analysis?
In Aribisala’s simplistic reasoning, Fayemi lost the Ekiti election because of Tinubu. It does not matter to him that neither Fayose nor Fayemi mentioned Tinubu even once in their intense campaigns. Our supposedly distinguished academic cannot undertake an objective assessment of the pertinent factors in the Ekiti elections including the heavy militarisation of the process and the detention and harassment of opposition leaders while PDP leaders including federal Ministers and legislators were allowed to run rampage all over Ekiti. When a Professor cannot appreciate that an election is a process and not just the casting and counting of ballots on Election Day, we are all in serious trouble. This is why Aribisala is incapable of understanding the basis of APC’s legal challenge of the election, which is that a flawed process cannot result in an untainted outcome. In any case, why should a social science professor see a party’s loss in an election as a ‘disgraceful trouncing’ the way a motor park tout would? If the electoral outcome was actually the will of the people, is that not the beauty of democracy? Again, does this mean that because of Tinubu’s success in politics, members of his family should forfeit their right to pursue their own political careers? If they have the advantage of riding on Tinubu’s goodwill, what is the crime in that? The late Chief Oluwole Awolowo, Awo’s son, was elected as a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly in the second republic. His daughter, Dr Tokunboh AwolowoDosumu was a leading governorship aspirant of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Lagos State in the aborted Third Republic. Has our professor heard of the Kennedy, Bush or Clinton political families in the US?
Our distinguished professor sees Afenifere chieftain, Reuben Fasoranti’s, endorsement of Governor OlusegunMimiko’s re-election as a rejection of Tinubu’s influence in Yoruba politics. So, if he were teaching students in class, he would be unable to pinpoint to them the intricacies of the contradictions between a vanishing political elite and an emergent new leadership in Yoruba politics? This is a great pity. Aribisala’s weekly diatribe against Tinubu can only succeed in lionising the latter just as those who similarly hated Awolowo insanely did throughout the sage’s political career. They set up the vindictive Coker Commission of Enquiry which alleged that Awo was using state power and resources to build a political empire around himself in the Southwest. This is the same allegation retrogressive elements like Aribisala are making against Tinubu. That iniquitous Coker Commission report has since been discredited just as Femi Aribisala’s worthless diatribes against Tinubu in his column will end up in the refuse heap of forgotten history.

ftc


Femi Aribisala is suppossed to be a distinguished social science professor, presumably an international relations scholar. This should ordinarily imply clarity of thinking, rigour of logic, emotional detachment and a scrupulous adherence to truth in speech and writing. Unfortunately, week after week, in his Tuesday column in the Vanguard newspaper, Femi Aribisala demonstrates that his thoughts have been perverted, his reasoning jaundiced and his analytic prowess alarmingly enfeebled by an unhealthy, obsessive, maniacal, almost Luciferian hatred for the person of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the foremost opposition leader in Nigeria today. Of course, this is neither new nor strange. The late Professor SanyaOnabamiro, an otherwise distinguished academic and scientist similarly devalued his role and place in history by a morbid hatred of Chief ObafemiAwolowo.
Many of the baseless insinuations, and careless generalisations characteristic of Aribisala’s newspaper columns would never be permitted in any learned academic journal which would require the strictest verification of facts, attribution of sources and rational, internally consistent justification of claims. Given the abysmally pedestrian level of his reasoning as revealed in his column, it is disturbing to imagine the quality of education he must have imparted to those students unfortunate to pass through his tutelage.
Femi Aribisala’s column of Tuesday, July 1, titled ‘The beginning of the end of the Bola Tinubu dynasty’, made interesting reading. For one, he has unwittingly lionised Tinubu by concocting the existence of a Tinubu dynasty. He invests Tinubu with the title of ‘Asiwaju of Yorubaland’. The latter is the ‘Asiwaju of Lagos’ even though no one can doubt that he is the foremost ‘Asiwaju’ of opposition political forces in contemporary Nigeria. He begins the article by seeking to compare Tinubu with King Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible. Yet this is the same Aribisala who once insinuated that the Bible is a book of fables and lies by claiming that the Biblical account of David and Goliath is completely fictional. By the way, the retired professor doubles as some kind of pastor. Is this not evidence of a confused and disturbed mind? He finds fault with Tinubu’s assertion of his right to pursue any political ambition of his choice under the aegis of the United Nations Human Rights Charter. A supposedly eminent professor does not recognise the elementary fact that the freedom to pursue political ambitions by eligible persons is a key feature of liberal democracy? This is truly tragic. In his view, “The voice of the electorate in the South-West has answered Tinubu. His personally ambition is certainly not in the interest of the people”. Our beloved professor should kindly tell us which election Tinubu has contested with the South West giving such a verdict. Or should we swallow this kind of illogical garbage simply because he is a professor?
According to Professor/Pastor Aribisala, “Tinubu’s claim to fame lies in the strength of his ACN party in the South West”. Aribisala was probably on planet Mars when Tinubu was at the forefront of the struggle for the validation of the June 12, 1993, mandate of Chief MKO Abiola and the liberation of Nigerian politics from the stranglehold of military dictatorship. In any case, where was Aribisala at this crucial phase in the protracted battle for democratic restoration in Nigeria? This was long before the advent of civilian rule in 1999 and the evolution from the ACN from the AD. Mercifully, Aribisala is intellectually honest enough for once to admit that when the PDP under Obasanjo executed its electoral Tsunami in the South West in 2003, “The brilliant South West answer to this PDP treachery was Tinubu”. He continues, “Tinubu drew a line in the battle in the sand, held on to Lagos, and struck back from this stronghold to win back all the lost South West states in 2007”. Now, if Tinubu is as self- serving, unprincipled and power hungry as depicted by Aribisala, would he not have capitulated and joined the mainstream PDP at that critical moment in 2003 rather than remain the last man standing in opposition? How many Nigerian politicians can Aribisala name that would prefer to be in opposition on principle rather than join the all- powerful centre with its limitless power of patronage if he were to be in Tinubu’s situation in 2003?
Even more alarmingly for a supposed intellectual,Aribisala gets the reason for the progressive resurgence in the South West following the 2003 debacle absolutely wrong. In his words, “He won because the people of the South- West refused to mortgage their future to the political interests of Obasanjo and his allies in the North”. If the PDP had used its years in power in the South West to promote development and prosperity, the progressives could never have bounced back in the South-West the way they did. On the contrary, it was the Tinubu administration in Lagos that became a model of good and productive governance that caught the imagination of the South-West and made the progressives electorally viable once more.
Contrary to his insinuations, the Yoruba have no political animosity against the North. Aribisala claims that “Anybody who thinks Tinubu’s APC will succeed in the South-West does not understand South-West politics. The Yorubas are too proud and fiercely independent to agree to play second fiddle to anyone because of a man called Tinubu. S.L. Akintola tried the same gambit in the 1960s, and the South-West rejected him. The same rejection has befallen Bola Tinubu”. This kind of infantile analysis must be embarrassing to Nigeria’s professorial elite. By 1983, Awolowo himself had realised the need to build bridges across the country to win elections in a large, diverse country like Nigeria. His Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) thus went into an alliance with a faction of the Northern elite which backed him and even nominated Alhaji Mohammed Kura to be his running mate. It was as a result of the massive rigging of that election by the NPN that the military intervened in 1983. Beyond this, MKO Abiola’s landslide victory in the historic June 12, 1993, presidential election was attained largely because he had built a network of friendships and relationships across the length and breadth of Nigeria especially in the North. A Professor who does not understand the electoral dynamics of his own country and does not appreciate that no single region or nationality can produce the President without widespread support from other groups deserves not only pity but his academic title ought to be withdrawn. Chief Awolowo himself characteristically once predicted in one of his books that “One day the best of the progressives and the best of the conservatives will come together to rule Nigeria”. The sage must be terribly embarrassed in his grave as regards Aribisala’s infantile reasoning that the South-West must remain in political isolation.
It is very embarrassing to Nigeria’s intellectual class when one of their supposed leading lights, Aribisala, claims that following the consensus in 1999 that, because of the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, a Yoruba should be President, “Northerners decided they would determine who the Yoruba should be. Obasanjo was fished out of prison and anointed as PDP presidential candidate”. So should the presidential election of 1999 have been limited to the South-West alone? Should northerners have been compelled to vote for the preference of the South-West in an election being contested by two illustrious Yoruba sons? This reasoning is most jejune and sterile.
Aribisala makes several unsubstantiated assertions in his column, which every Nigerian academic should find embarrassing. He claims that under Fayemi, “Ekiti money was routinely shipped to Lagos”. There is not a scintilla of evidence to back this grievous falsehood. Fayemi is a far more honourable man than a pastor who recklessly peddles falsehood. He would never permit such an alleged rape of Ekiti. He argues

APC FAKE PROPAGANDA THREAD!!!

Femi Aribisala the ape professor

Gibberish writes up to fool the foolish
Tinube time has ended!

Femi is just an inconsequential attention seeker who wants to be seen as independently minded in his verbiage not only against Tinubu, but for anything with the remotest traits of pro-gej.
His near infinite ability in promoting GEJ's corruption, cluelessness and religious bigotry gives him away as a stomack writer/poster/columnist and a leading figure in the bandwagon of useful idıots.

The same Segun Ayobolu who was Tinubu's media assistant, and was rewarded with the post of permanent secretary in lagos state. It has not been long since Fashola and gang forced him out of lagos civil service.

Then Segun claimed he resigned because he had ulcer. Apparently his ulcer heals whenever anyone challenges his master. Same way he started barking at professor Niyi Akinnaso when the later penned the classic article " Jagaban returns empty handed". (Back page commentary on punch newspaper; when Mimiko trounced Akerodolu) .

Some thing tells me this man is Nairaland's Aigbofa. Might be right or wrong.

Very interesting read. Indeed, Femi Aribisala suffers some form of amnesia.

In his idiotic and moronic mind, Yorubas voted against Obasanjo because "of his romance with the north". How ridiculous! Dear prof, Yorubas did not vote Falaye because he was independent, they voted him because Obasanjo, his alternative was anti-Abiola. Yes, Yorubas hate Obasanjo because of his non-involvement in Abiola's struggle! I'm very sure you know Abiola "ran" with the support of Northerners. The very ones you demonise. The hausas you hate voted him enmasse. You know Sule Lamido, right? He gave his all for "your" son, Abiola.

Yes, Awolowo did not "romance" the hausas at first, but what did he get? He was pushed to the minority! Awolowo led Action Group was pushed to the opposition, while Azikwe's NNPC formed a coalition with the hausas, and became a ruling party. In 1979, not willing to be twice beaten, he formed the UPN - a party that had a vast population of Hausas. Yes, hausas!
Due to the coalition, he was able to come in second at the polls; only loosing to Shagari by a small difference. At least, he was no longer the local champion. He has tested his national popularity. All thanks to Hausas.


Need I remind you that western Nigeria lost the mid-West because of NPN's desire to push AG further down the majority? Also, Balewa showed no reluctance in declaring a state of emergency, all because AG was a local party. If you've forgotten this, I'll remind you.

Tinubu is a smart politician; He wants to nationalise the APC- an evolution of AG. And you know our "Southern brothers" were not willing to, so he formed an alliance with the North. So, AG would leave its mark in the national sands. But Yorubas like you, would never learn. All thanks to you and a few other saboteurs, that dream may never be acheived. AG would be an opposition party, just like APGA, worthless and non-acheiving. Because of mo..rons like Aribisala, Okupe, Fayose, and other monkeys!

I would not kill you, curse you or flog you, but posterity would judge Aribisala and all other omo-ales that are against the nationalisation of Action Group. In the end, Jonathan would vacate office, be it 2015 orwhenever, and after that, Northerners would rule forever! Tell me one party that would resist them? Is it adiye Oh sorry, APGA, or LP?

Politics goes beyond 2015, dear Prof. But you're just to myopic to see that!