DINO MELAYE: OBJECTIVITY IN THE HAY

‘Like a needle in the haystack’

Each time I close my eyes to picture this saying that has become cliché for almost every shade of expression, I see stress, despondency and near-futility engraved in capitals in my mind’s eye. I can picture a 14^th century medieval mother, intent on probably giving vent to her marital frustrations on a hapless maid, commanding her to go to the stable where the horse was tethered, to look for the ‘only’ needle she needed to finish an urgent job. I can imagine the despair personified on the face of the little girl, who actually knows what her chances of success are at such a feat. Yes, a feat.

Over the past week or so, there has been so much hue and cry over an altercation between the senator representing Kogi West constituency, Mr Dino Melaye and the erstwhile first lady of Lagos State, Mrs Oluremi Tinubu, also the senator representing Lagos Central. The convergence of all the spurts of spleen has been on the alleged outburst of Mr Melaye, who allegedly threatened to impregnate and beat up Mrs Tinubu, over his comments about people who decided to testify against the principal Senators in the country, Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu.

Expectedly, various human rights groups and liberty organizations have taken turns to outlaw and demonize the unfortunate utterances from a supposedly revered lawmaker, with dissociations and demands for apologies colouring and dotting the landscape and news space as it filters in.

Without any speck of doubt, the lawmaker acted in the most unruly manner undeserving of not only his mettle, political pedigree and positioning in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but also the Divine sculpting of his facial features. His gory and gross antecedents in the House make this latest no less suprising, and lends credence to snippets of slight psychological and psychomotive imbalance, which is in acute need of professional attention. But as the saying goes, the truth can have two faces sometimes.

   

   I am not and can never be a proponent of abuse in whatever colouration, hue or shade, especially when a woman is involved, bearing in mind not just the frailty of her composition which puts her in somewhat of a vulnerable position, but also the potential her complete emancipation from this vice holds for the world at large, should civilization succeed in stamping out abuse in its entirety. However, every agitation needs to have at least a rational and logical face, so as not to assume the ‘basket of water’ stance.

     

     I do not want to believe that I am the only one who can conveniently say that the attack of Mr Melaye on Mrs Tinubu was a provoked one.  Neither do I believe I am the only one who read that she called him a thug and a dog, which elicited that reaction, uncouth as it came out, unfortunately. I also want believe that I am not the only one who is noting how skewed the inclinations of people are, in favour of the ‘weaker’ Mrs Tinubu. In the news space, the report of the former first lady nearly assaulting a senator is not anywhere in the purview. Suddenly and completely, she has been absolved of every blame whatsoever. Because she sits magnificiently and protectedly on the side of general sympathy, she has the right to call a man names, with no consequence whatsoever. Of course she is the one whose attacks ought to be swallowed and masticated and ingested to nourishment. She is the woman. Because she is weak, she is on a freeway of uncensored thought, word and expression. Her faculty of self control is permissively redundant, and it doesn’t matter, afterall she is the woman. It doesn’t work like that on the balance of fairness and objectivity.

    As Stone Age as this may sound, any civilization that seeks to view gender balance with any taint of skew is unfair and unacceptable. Some of the ‘abuses’ that necessitated this worldwide demand for gender equality were at some point provoked ones. But the opinion of the critical mass, engineered deliberately by some forces with a mapped out world agenda, has been moulded to only dwell on effect and extent, without recourse to root and cause.

   Without meaning to sound misogynistic, there is a certain way nature has fashioned this cosmos, and the equality of the genders is not part of it, in any way whatsoever, Divinity appending its signature by way of the Scriptures. Because of the role of the woman in the fall of our first parents, she was to remain subservient to the man, albeit fairly (Genesis 3.16).

Dino ought to tender an unreserved apology for his actions. But objectivity ought to be concertedly hunted and rescued from that haystack.

Ogbonna Nnaemeka Henry