By Charlie Chikezie
This is Charlie Chikezie’s reaction to Vice President Yomi Osinbajo’s YouTube video where Nigeria’s Vice President, and Senior Advocate of Nigeria SAN, recounted his ordeal with an ethnic-profiling Lagos landlord who jolted then then young and unmaried Osinbajo telling him that he would not rent his house to Igbo, Ijebu and Lawyers… the video can be watched on YouTube
Between November 20, 1945, and October 1, 1946, following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 24 of the most important political and military leaders of Nazi Germany at Nuremberg, Germany.
The defendants included some of the most famous Nazis, including Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, and Franz Schlegelberger. Also represented were some leaders of the German economy, such as Gustav Krupp (of the conglomerate Krupp AG) and former Reichsbank president, Hjalmar Schacht.
Most of them were convicted of participating in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace, planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace, participating in war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and were hung or sentenced to life imprisonment.
For me, the most interesting person among these defendants was Prof. Franz Schlegelberger, a well-educated and internationally respected jurist and legal scholar, who was portrayed as Ernst Janning in the Movie, “Judgment at Nuremberg” by Academy Award-winning Actor, Burt Lancaster.
In his judgment, Judge Dan Heywood, played by another Academy Award-winning Actor, Spencer Tracey singled out Prof. Franz Schlegelberger’s character, Ernst Janning, with the following statement: “Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and death of millions by the government of which he was a part.
“Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial. If he and the other defendants were all depraved perverts, if the leaders of the Third Reich were sadistic monsters and maniacs, these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake or other natural catastrophes. But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men – even able and extraordinary men – can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination.
“No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs… The murder of children… How easily that can happen! There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the “protection” of the country. Of “survival”. The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn’t a rock. And it isn’t an extension of one’s self. It is what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world – let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth… and the value of a single human being!”
You see, to me, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, for sure, is a tragic figure. Here is an erudite Professor of Law who became a University Lecturer at the age of 23, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), a former Attorney General of Lagos State, an ordained Minister in the Redeemed Church, a protégé of Nigeria’s foremost incorruptible Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Bola Ajibola, SAN, and husband to Barrister Oludolapo Osinbajo, (née Soyode), the granddaughter of revered and respected Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the first and former Premier of Western Nigeria.
Now, how does a man with Prof Osinbajo’s pedigree become the second in command in a government that, for eight years, excluded members of certain Nigeria’s geopolitical zone in critical security and executive positions in government? What has he said or done in eight years as Nigerians in the Middle Belt and other parts of the country are mercilessly massacred by Fulani Herdsmen and so-called Bandits?
What has he said or done as Nigerians their can no longer travel safely by road, air or train or children attend school without fear of being kidnapped during their administration? What did he do or say as his government refuses to obey court orders, and raids the houses of Judges and Justices they consider a threat at wee hours of the morning, and even removed the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen, in a most vile and unconscionable manner in violation of the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria? What has he said or done as Nigerians still can’t have access to their own hard-earned money because of his government’s inept monetary policy?
Does Osinbajo really believe that by coyly reciting these lyrical politically correct platitudes, that history will exonerate him from his complicity in the worst nightmare that ever befell on Nigeria in the name of a government? No, he can’t for Dr. King was right in reminding us of Dante Alighieri admonition that “the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.”
Prof. Marshall McLuhan in the first chapter of his Book, “Understanding Media,” tells us that “The medium is the message,” which is that the medium through which we choose to communicate holds as much, if not more, value than the message itself.
Precisely, Professor Yemi Osinbajo’s message, even if it resonates as a lullaby, should not put any sane person to sleep because a screwed-up medium can not produce a “watershed-moment” speech as General Ojukwu’s “Ahiara Declaration,” or Dr. King’s “I have a Dream,” or President Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.”
Those messages were propelled by the moral impetus of the medium, the messengers that delivered them, which Osinbajo lacks as a medium because of his complicity in Nigeria’s contemporary nightmare called Buhari’s government. As Americans say,” talk is cheap,” and as my good friend and classmate at Government College Umuahia, Prof. Ernest Ojukwu, SAN, will say, “na yabis.” Osibanjo’s message na yabis. History beckoned, and he went AWOL and ended up a tragic figure.
…Charlie C. Chikezie a great analyst from Umuahia in Abia State spoke the mind of so many in this article
