It is despicable to slap women, says Osinbajo

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo says it is despicable to slap women.

In his tribute at the launch of a memoir by Olusegun Osoba, former governor of Ogun state, on Monday, Osinbajo went down memory lane to speak of British born Patrick Chadwick who slapped Adekunbi Adeite, a Nigerian sales girl, at the Kingsway Stores in Lagos.

He condemned the act of slapping women, referring to it as a “despicable business”.

The VP seems to have been sending a cryptic message to Elisha Abbo, senator representing Adamawa north, who was recently seen on camera assaulting a woman.

Osinbajo, who made his speech without any mention of Abbo, said Osoba, as a journalist, exclusively reported the case and Chadwick had to resign, and be punished.

Abbo, who had initially made a public apology and an admission of guilt, pleaded not guilty in court.

“Chief Olusegun Osoba’s illustrious career as a journalist and later politician, have also by some uncanny stroke of good fortune, placed him at the centre of many defining moments and situations of post-Independent Nigeria,” Osinbajo said.

“Arguably the most memorable is his January 1966 scoop; the tragic discovery of the bodies of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and Finance Minister Festus Okotie-Eboh, not long after the coup that ended Nigeria’s first Republic.

“He was there on the frontlines in many sectors of the Civil War, recording and reporting the horrors and tragedies of a factional war. And it was he who witnessed the surprise visit of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to Lagos during the Civil War.

“He was also right there on the frontlines, nine years later with exclusive reporting during the coup that brought General Murtala Mohammed to power.

“He happened to be in the Governor’s office in Enugu when the then Commissioner of Police, Kafaru Tinubu, sent word of the capture of Lt. Col. Bukar Dimka, the man who assassinated Murtala Mohammed. He was the only journalist to see Dimka in handcuffs in police custody in Enugu.”

SLAPPING WOMEN IS DESPICABLE

He went on to say Osoba’s scoops were not limited to politics but also extended to the injustices amongst societal strata.

“But his scoops went beyond the political, he exclusively reported the case of British born Patrick Chadwick, who slapped a Nigerian sales girl, Adekunbi Adeite, at the Kingsway Stores in Lagos (this despicable business of slapping women seems to have been around for a while), and how the UAC and some other journalists tried to cover it up.

“It became a national issue and the UAC eventually punished the culprit and he resigned.”

WE NEED ALLIANCES TO DESTROY EXTREMISM

The vice-president said Nigeria needs to form alliances across faith and ethnicity to adequately battle extremism, taking examples of cross-ethnic relationships from Osoba.

“There is a paradox here, the subtext of Osoba’s autobiography ‘Battlelines: Adventures in Journalism and Politics,’ is the tragedy of ethnic and religious jingoism in Nigeria.

“The collapse of our national achievements and attainments at every stage of our history has been that Achilles Heel, the tribal and religious suspicions. The inability at crucial moments, to bridge the gaps of ethnic and religious prejudice.

“Chief Osoba’s life and times speaks most eloquently to the power of building bridges, finding common ground, and resisting divisive narratives, especially in a country as diverse as Nigeria, a country where it is extremely easy to find reasons to languish in stereotypes and suspicions, where far too many of us by default, lapse into ethnic camps.”

Osoba clocks 80 next week.