A Handshake with an Enemy and a Heart of Forgiveness…

By Bode Ojoniyi

Yesterday, as I was descending the stairway of the administrative building of Osun State University, guess who I met walking into the building? Prof Olukoya Ogen…

You should know that name by heart if you have been following my fight against the hegemony in Uniosun for the past 7 years running. It is a fight that actually started in June 2015 when I provided evidence against Dr Amao Temitayo Ayanbisi who had manipulated 94 results of 2013/2014 graduating students of the Department of English and International Studies of the College of Humanities and Culture. For any reason unknown to rationality, the University Management had sought to cover up the crime. The University Management through Prof Ogen and his gangs of Profs Christopher Alebiosu, Bolaji Omitola, Idowu Akintayo, Monsuru Adeleke and others had then blackmailed and defamed me to withdraw my evidence against Dr Amao. They eventually used Femi Makinde and Tunde Odesola of the Punch Newspaper to defame me through the media. Of course, you already know how I have fought back writing plays, short stories, poems, essays, and through the court of law to date.

You would recall that on 20 February this year, the Court gave a landmark judgment against the University. The Court ordered my immediate reinstatement and the payment of my salary of over 6 years running. The Court in the judgment went as far as saying that Ogen is not fit to be called a Professor and that Amao is not fit to be a lecturer anywhere in this world! You would also remember that just last month I wrote a very strong petition against the investiture of Ogen as an intending member of NAL, Nigerian Academy of Letters. A petition that neither Ogen nor NAL found the temerity to respond to, either to refute or acknowledge the claims it made against Ogen…

Actually, to date, the University Management, Ogen, his gangs and their paid media dogs and all that participated in blackmailing and defaming me to cover the crime have lost their balls and voices against my writings and actions… When I talk or write now, they simply keep undignified silence, including their unless media aids… and, it may be because their main media dog, Femi Makinde, has eventually been sacked by the Punch newspaper while his elsewise loquacious Editor, Tunde Odesola, has also ‘japa’ to the US to escape same sanctioning, I guess…

It is the Ogen that I fortuitously met yesterday. Of course, he could not have imagined such a meeting and at a very close range on the University Campus… After all, the University has written to me that I have been banned from entering any of the campuses of Osun State University. Yeah, that was after I led men of the Nigerian Police Force to identify the criminal blackmailers and defamers. It was a dramatic experience. The garrulous Christopher Alebiosu whose office we first visited had taken refuge in the Dean of Faculty of Health Sciences toilet to avoid being served a letter of invitation by the Police. He was in hiding until the arrival of the University CSO. The CSO pleaded that the Police Officers should submit the invitation letters to the Office of the Vice chancellor. These were letters they had initially rejected, asking the Police to proceed to serve individual culprits, for which the Police had invited me to lead them to identify the individual criminals…

They needed to do something desperate to stop me from entering the University to stop me from identifying the criminals for the Police… Of course, as in anything ‘Nigerian Police’, the Police eventually also made a U-turn to claim that they cannot guarantee my safety if I again enter the University Campus… That was after I demanded for the authority of the University to claim that I have been banned from entering such a public space like a University in Nigeria? I also wrote to the University Registrar, the VC, and the lawless SAN who claimed to be the Chairman of the Council of the University… Of course, they or the Police could not defend their lawlessness. ‘Power’ must have changed hands in the agreement between them and the Police…

Anyway, I have continued to enter the University anytime I am in town and the Spirit so moves me…

No doubt, I must have been led of the Spirit, for, for some esoteric reasons, I needed to meet Ogen yesterday… For the Love of Sisyphus…, that first play of its kind in Nigeria that dramatises the experience of its author with the real characters, their names and their actions, a true historical record of the blackmail and the defamation of my character, is going on stage in Chukwwemeka Odumegu Ojukwu Uiversity, Akwa, today. It is a theatre workshop. The Head of Department had discussed my experience in Osun State University with his students. They had taken interest in the play and had contacted me over it. I had shipped the play and another play, Death in a Masque, to them. We kept communicating through the period of their rehearsals. And, I had been informed the performance is today!

Anastasia, the director of For the Love of Sisyphus almost found the reality of the play unbelievable. She had queried its reality. She would even want to speak with Ikwue Ejiro Mercy. Luckily for me, a woman who had earlier private chatted me on the same case, who confessed she had followed the case from the time it was published by the Punch Newspaper to the point judgment was delivered in February, one who wanted me to deal with Ejiro, probably sending her to gaol, had volunteered information on her phone number, the private school where she is teaching in Ajah, Lagos, including her experience with her husband and the rest…

I am not such individual who rejoices over evil or the misfortune of others, I would have gone for a form of special testimony of the challenges of Ejiro as we speak…

I gave Ejiro’s number as the woman sent it to me to Anastasia to satisfy her curiosity by speaking directly with Ejiro. She is a lady. She needed to hear the side of Ejiro… But, Anastasia was disappointed. Ejiro blocked her off immediately she started her investigation… My story was, after all, a true story. She felt pity for me, but, in equal breath, I had become an unimaginable being, a non-being, perhaps, a monster of a sort.… She could not believe the story was true… She was facing a new reality of her life. When she told me of how Ejiro responded to her and blocked her off, I just laughed. I became a character that looks larger than life in her imagination…

Knowing fully well that my story of Uniosun is being performed and interrogated on the Nigeria theatre stage, I beamed with a broad smile to call Ogen who wanted to pass-by as if he did not see me: ‘Oga Ogen, quite an age sir!’ He looked at me, almost trembling. Impulsively, he stretched forth his hand for a handshake, saying, ‘Dr., a very longtime!’ I equally reflexively responded to the gesture. I shook his hand with a knowing mischievous satisfaction: I had told them I would have my own pound of flesh from them without a drop of blood! He quickly walked away without waiting for any familiarity banter…

I reflected on the reason they are now afraid of me on that campus: it is indeed not easy for anyone of them to stand before me and look into my eyes or face again… They have become prisoners of their ignoble actions… They have become slaves to such haunting shadows of the dead body they had buried whose legs had unfortunately remained in the open with its fouling stench… But, my returning to Uniosun to teach or do research would be like the story of that greedy man who carrying a big game as an elephant on his head was said to have stopped on his way home to dig the hole of a cricket with his toe to kill it in the hope of adding it to his catch! Haba, who would leave a Federal University where it is being celebrated for its creativity and scholarship to pursue a career with such animals as these blackmailers again… Who? Not Ojoniyi Olabode Wale anyway… Like those characters in the recounted story of the ‘Not I Bird’, I also snap my right hand over my head three times to say ‘Not I!’ Not in this age or generation again…

But, and sincerely so, if Akinkoyi, Maren, our own Wole Soyinka, and the great Sage, Obafemi Awolowo, could forgive those who plotted evil against them, those who imprisoned them, I wholeheartedly forgive Ogen, his gangs and the management of Osun State University, including Labo Popoola and Yusuf Ali… after all, what they plotted and executed against me to ruin me has only turned me to a god in my own right. If they did not do what they did, there wouldn’t have been For the Love of Sisyphus and the other plays for the stage now and forevermore…

Tell Dr Amao, Ejiro, Femi Makinde and Tunde Odesola also, I have forgiven them… They should go and sin no more…

I don’t love ‘vawulence!’ I pity the man as I shook his hand yesterday… of course, we would all not ever be the same again after the blackmail story… Yet, we should all love to forgive and forgive and forgive if humanity would ever learn anything…

‘Bode Ojoniyi writes from Osogbo
16 September, 2022.

Will be coming back to read.