OPINION
By Steve Oliyide
Ogun State’s treasury is bleeding again as response to Steve has now become another conduit pipe like the anniversary brochures
My attention was drawn to a sponsored vitriol by yet another coward who is afraid to use their own father’s name to append whatever they sincerely believe in. My immediate reaction was to ignore, which I did after reading the curse words contained in the first two lines. I could imagine the fury and combustion going on in the minds of the writer like a badly maintained vehicle engine over flooding and spewing out hot water.
I simply wrote to the journalists who share the link with me:
@…, as a professional, did you really publish this? You can take Rights of Reply but you also have rights to insist on the language that can be used in your publication. In Media Law, obscenities and vulgar languages are not permitted. They could be using this on social media (even social media has started regulating the languages and words that can be used). Your online platform will be discredited if you cannot regulate your content and ask writers to remove vulgar words like “Buffoon”, “vainglorious”, “stupid” etc. You did not see such words in my own write ups. You guys need to start cleaning up and sanitizing this journalism so that charlatans won’t take over and run you out of practice. I take it that the guy has not replied to me, he was only cursing, which shows the nature of his upbringing. I presume he is a faceless writer and I don’t engage those who do not have the courage to answer their father’s name.
His reply: “Sir, it’s opinion as a direct response to your last article which is why I sent to you for possible reaction.”
I told him, “I honestly would have loved to reply to him if he indeed responded to mine. I spoke to the facts, whoever the writer is, didn’t. Do you expect me to start engaging him with curses like he did. I don’t engage in gutter swipes, I want to engage someone who has value upstairs and not those who are looking for attention. How am I persuaded he is a real human being or someone just hiding under a Shadow to throw jabs at me and my response will be like hitting a punch to the winds. You used my own picture to anchor my story, why use my picture to anchor his own story too. Use the Writer’s picture too, and that is when I will know I am engaging a real human being. Thanks all the same.” That much for the protection of the Profession in which I have spent the last three decades. We need to return some sanity into the contents that are permissible.
I was repeatedly copied the link by several people and this morning I had no choice than to try to read what he wrote. Sifting through the lines, I had a surge of pity for the man sitting over the affairs of Ogun State at the moment, he is trapped in the labyrinth of desperation, and being led by blind media curators, who are themselves groping for attention. It is a festive season for hypocrites and sycophants and all struggling for attention in hope that if the 2nd term stands (which I honestly doubt, and I will come to the reason again shortly), they might be in for a consideration for one appointment or the other. There is therefore a schism and many people struggling to outdo one another to impress him. Hence, the over flooding of curse words so that they can go back to him and say “Oga, did you see how I gave it back to Steve, I attacked him furiously, abused his mother and father” and in the process they will inch their shoulders closer to him so that he can patt them on the back and their desperate quest for appointment will be reassured. But, here is how they missed it. You will know when hypocrites and sycophants write; “People’s Governor”, “Performing Governor”. These are self-serving words that is directed only at their principal for patronage. Only the people have the rights to describe their leader as they see him. Would I have been able to successfully “mobilise a mob against” and “manipulate public opinion against” a (truly) People’s Governor and the “innocent man’s image” who the people themselves rejected at the Polls. Ogun State has not been healed in the last two weeks, everybody is still processing how their genuine votes was brazenly hijacked and stolen from them; there is no ceremony going on again in town, they dread the remaining few months.
First, the Promo for the story was far too much than the content. The new media language will say it was “hyped” beyond reality, the kind that Shakespeare referred to as “full of Sounds and fury” and ended up saying nothing. But it did line the pockets of the former Commissioner from Ondo who took his Principal, a highly cerebral professional from the podium and klieg lights of top Achievements and finally dumped him in the political deserts and wilderness. Ogun State’s treasury is bleeding again as response to Steve has now become another conduit pipe like the anniversary brochures. I have been making calls for transparency in government expenditures for the past few months, instead of the government media handlers to answer the people of Ogun State because it is their right to know, but they are just creating distractions. I think the easiest thing to do in public office is to just ask the people in the account office, give me all records of our expenditures on roads, airports, vouchers of the Private Jet (which Ogun State did not own, nor running errands for the state, etc) and make these public. Shikenna! In the same token, there is nothing wrong if the people in the Ministry of Information and the account office at Oke-Mosan can come clean and make public the Cost of printing the Anniversary brochures for the past three and half years, and supply the names of the Contractor(s). They can then give samples each to other printers to quote and we will then know how much of Ogun State’s money has been pumped into the drain pipes managed on behalf of and emptied into the Governor’s reservoir by the man from Ondo. All the huge tax Payers’ money that they are drawing for external Ghost and Invisible Media will pay substantially some Civil Servants emoluments, pensions and gratuities as well as deductions on Workers salaries.
Even as convinced as I was that the write-up was ghost-written with the name Gbemisola Saliu (of the Psychology Department, Olabisi Onabanjo University), I still went ahead to do my background checks on the names at the department. And I was pained again, what a desecration on Ogun State’s prestigious Ivory Tower. I think the university authority owes it to the integrity of its name and reputation to make a public disclaimer, especially that its products are well and responsibly trained than to engage in vulgar and curse words. But more importantly, my fear is the relationship between Identity Theft and the man in cahrge of the affairs of Ogun State. In close to two years, the mystery of Shawn Michaels has refused to go; and now we are again having a Gbemisola Saliu, is it a curse? I am also worried what exactly are DA’s problems with Certificates? Are the elements not aligning for him and Certificates. For the past four years, the matter of Primary School, Secondary school and university certificates remained perpetually in Court. And when INEC was also issuing their “temporary” Certificate of Return” (pending the time they will issue the original to the real owner of the mandate), the party that DA presumably belongs to is *All Processives Congress*, a party that was never on the ballot nor contested in any election in 2023. In other words, he has earned a *processed* certificate for a processed results. Or could this be a result of some “Madarikan”? I also understand that DA has procured another INEC Certificate of Return for a candidate in Ikenne who did not contest in the election. I hope this Certificates matter will not kill Ogun State one day.
Steve Oliyide is my name.
