By Sam Omatseye
If a democrat, the fellow running for Lagos governor on LP ticket should act like one – in his tongue, in acts and genealogy. That is accounting.
As the campaign runs its final course, he should tell us if his tongue is twisted. Let us know if he cannot speak the language, or if his accent casts doubt on his authenticity. Or is he afraid to utter the Yoruba Language? I have seen some of his Yoruba clips. In these days of deepfake, he may deny it. But let us have an authentic utterance from Gbadebo.
He should tell us why he waltzed into a setting and basked into a zest of sing-song in non-Yoruba language. Yet he has failed so far to showcase any campaign event where they wafted the language of Kaaro ojire. If he does that now, though, it will fall flat as an anticlimax of afterthought. He never did the right thing at the right time when the rites of campaigns offered him the site. So, he will not have a chance to prove himself right.
I will be upending his right to identify him by his name if I call him Chinedu for the reason that he does not address himself in public by that name. That name, though genuine, must be a valued identity of his. But he elects to go by the name of Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, and that is his own name by choice and birth. Is Chinedu a name by stealth, too? He used it in 2019. Why has he edited it now? Is it because he ran in a part of town where Chinedu inspired a war chant for his candidacy? Is it that he now is not proud of his mother’s heritage, or that he is too proud of it to smear it? Or is he being a Yoruba from the backdoor?
A fiery tone crests the internet. How much of this is true? We have not seen any spirited rebuttal? Is it that his silence is consent or defiance, or even a puffy, sullen and voiceless insolence?
Has he, in fact, privileged Chinedu over Gbadebo? Is he at one with the fact that Yoruba and Igbo are not at one over him in Lagos? Why does he not defuse the tension, and tell those who want to hoist anger against the host tribe that he comes in peace? Or is he one of those who believe that Lagos is no man’s land? Is he now at war with the people who share his first name? is Chinedu at war with Gbadebo? How is he allotting the armoury and army divisions over the division of the name? And is he partial to those who share his quiet or unobtrusive name? is Chinedu his stealth bomber? I should want Gbadebo and Chinedu to exchange roses, not thistles. Unless he concedes that he is under both powers. Is Gbadebo looking at Chinedu as a traitor, and vice versa? If true, why impose his inner storm on others?
I saw the video of him walking into an event, and the song was not in proper English or pidgin English or Yoruba or Hausa, but in Igbo. Nothing wrong with that. Any candidate can do that. But he has to balance it with another flavour to reflect our ethnic diversity. I have not seen him in an exclusively Yoruba rally, or a foray into the hefty Hausa-Fulani parts of the town.
He should have a conversation in Yoruba and make it plain that he speaks the language as fluently as anyone. If it is true that you cannot speak it so fluently, you can confess to that shortcoming and give a human explanation that it is not your fault. You can show us that it is because your mother did not teach you and she made it impossible by your upbringing. That can explain why you are so handicapped. They may however wonder how you would relate to the folks at Mushin or Epe or Ikorodu?
If that is the case, then make the point that it is not important to know the language in order to govern, and that your English and Igbo are good enough for governance. The people will then ask why you hid that inability until the issue bubbled into a frenzy.
It would become hard, if not impossible though, for you to say you are competing with a person, like Babajide Sanwo-Olu (The BOS of Lagos), or even Jandor whose Lagos bona fides cannot be contested.
The next step would have been for you to counsel the people of your mother’s heritage that this is not a campaign against your father’s heritage. You are yet to act like the governor who has called for calm and eschewed the rhetoric and fury around Lagos about one tribe seeking to unseat the other. You should have told the Chinedu of your soul that such stuff is not of a civilized lot. But Rhodes-Vivour has done no such thing.
Rather, he has encouraged a malignancy in the form of a whispering campaign. But that was at the beginning. It no longer whispers but brawls on the street. It deafens with a register of words and phrases and even images that recall a time in history when this same city was overshadowed with the spectre of war and death. We cannot even forget, not long ago, when a royal caution about the Atlantic Ocean filled the city with portent and protests.
Rhodes-Vivour has acted like one who wants to stalk a city in silence, like a predator on the sly. No one can blame him for who he loves to marry, who delivered him at birth, or a riven parenthood. But he has to account whether he exploits either or both to rip a community apart. It’s not whether someone split his blood ancestry. It is whether it can spill blood.
His tweet about celebrating Biafra day also went viral. Did he do it? Few answers. He should confess and say whether he is an IPOB faithful. Or is it just another election slander? Some have said the LP’s presidential candidate picked him because of the same controversial credentials. Is that so? He has kept mum even when it concerns his mom.
The people will have to compare him with the governor who has stirred the state in peace, handled the COVID-19 matter with great aplomb and statecraft, is giving us a train, has given us the biggest rice mill in the region, apart from an array of housing, healthcare facilities and infrastructure displays. Above all, he has been a carapace of harmony in a nation ravaged with fear and bandits.
In his play of divided selves, The Tempest, Shakespeare asserts that, “the strongest oaths are straw to the fire in the blood.” Which of the oaths is in the bonfire? Chinedu or Gbadebo?
The first job of a candidate is to account for his past and present. The LP candidate has done neither. He wants to bend the present to worship his past.
