By Mutalubi Adebayo Ojo
Well-meaning Nigerians, friends and well wishers, as usual, who know the siamese twins relationship between Dr. Festus Adedayo and my humble self have inundated me with calls, messages (both WhatsApp and sms), emails and all sorts of communication avenues both online and offline, over yesterday’s column of my bosom friend, Dr. Festus Adedayo titled “Tinubu’s certificates, Open Society And Its Enemies.”
Let me state from onset that Festus is well aware that I am one of the most weekly harassed and disturbed persons (if not the most disturbed after our cerebral friend, Professor Wale Adebanwi) immediately Festus releases its weekly Sunday food for thought online globally.
Undoubtedly, Festus is a wordsmith, a very intellectually deep writer, a philosopher, a journalist (though not a formally trained one), a lawyer , a public administrator, a professional in politics, a technocrat and a proud Yoruba son who understands the language, the music ,the proverbs, the idioms, the folklore stories, the history, the culture, the custom and the traditions of the Yorubas and who always display very deep knowledge of same in its very rich writings just like our mutual friend who is another wordsmith and one of the country’s best pen-pushers, Dr. Olagunju Lasisi of the Tribune titles and also their mutual friend (not yet officially my friend, but who is my kinswoman from Ibadan) who I missed meeting when she came home recently for a social function, I mean the delectable, brain and beauty, Professor Abimbola Adelakun, an Ibadan-born top notch academic who is based in the United States of America.
Work should be fun, if you are not happy with your work, it means that you are in a wrong profession. That is to say that whatever you know how to do, just do it well and it would just be like fun.
My dependable bosom friend and brother, Dr. Festus Adedayo, is doing his job in the manner he knows how to do best. Writing is fun to Festus, in the same way as Legal Practice Advocacy is fun to Chief Wole Olanipekun, OFR, CFR, SAN, J. B. Daudu, SAN, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, Chief Akin Olujinmi, CON, SAN, Mallam Yusuf Ali, SAN, Dr. Onyekachi Ikpeazu, SAN and Mrs. Mianaya Essien, SAN to mention just a few of the country’s seasoned legal practitioners without forgetting the blessed memories of the legendary Chief F.R.A. Williams, QC, SAN, Chief G.O.K. Ajayi and Bankole Aluko, SAN. By the same token, listening and singing the music of the legendary and iconic Dr. Sikiru Ayinde Olanbiwoninu Ololade Balogun, MFR (a.k.a Sikiru Ayinde Barrister) is always the best fun for me after watching Yoruba Nollywood movies and listening to the music of my revered brother, Alhaji Isiaka Iyanda Sawaba (Ewe nla) of blessed memory.
Those who have private-chatted me over Festy’s piece of yesterday in particular and all his articles in general should please note that I will, as usual, disappoint them because I am an advocate of free and virile press because my own background is also in Mass Communication. In actual fact, I always taunt Festus and other media practitioners like him who did not have formal training in the media that my one year sojourn at the Mass Communication Department of University of Lagos can never be matched with their several years of on the job trial and error trainings.
I must however caution and advise that Festy should never be compared with the youthful exuberant Oseni Rufai of Arise TV. While Oseni Rufai is an unprofessional and untrained media personality, but who also has morbid and incurable hatred for the person of PBAT, and who may have also been influenced and or compromised by other extraneous means, Festy is a very professional, very experienced, highly knowledgeable and a thoroughbred journalist but who can also not just tolerate and or touch PBAT with a pole.
Unlike Rufai Oseni of Arise TV, Festus is not a compromised journalist , but Festus too would rather prefer a satan or Lucifer to rule Nigeria instead of PBAT!!!
I would therefore enjoin and appeal to all and sundry to let your complaints of this just passed weekend to be the last time you would be reporting Festy to me over his professional writings because I will never guillotine freedom of expression and free press under any guise whatsoever.
Anybody that has an axe to grind with Festy and or any other person’s intellectual writings should please resort to decent and civil ways of responding and or reacting to same by doing a rejoinder just like I have done severally in the past in respect of Festy and other persons articles and or comments. The reason being that the right to dissenting opinions and comments are veritable and fertile ingredients for nurturing and development of democracy, decent society and good governance .
Enough is enough please!!!
Post script: My Samsung S9+ got lost in Akure, Ondo State on Friday, the 6th day of October, 2023. I am appealing to any person who might have found it to please contact me using any of the contacts options hereunder supplied. Handsome or beautiful rewards shall be given to such a person.
Thanks and God bless.
Dated this 9th day of October, 2023
JCI Senator Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo, SAN
Asiwaju of Ita-Ege and Idi-Aro,
Ward 5,
Ibadan South-East Local Government Area,
Oyo State of Nigeria.
08033274595
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E-mail: adebayoojo90@gmail.com
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