Ogun Monarch Tackles Fayose For Insulting Obasanjo

By Adesina Soyooye

“Fayose, you throw stones at a colossus while standing barefoot on a hill he built. You spit towards the sky forgetting that the heavens you insult today will send the rain back upon your own face tomorrow.” – Oba Tejuosho

Unable to endure what he described as uncultured and unguarded comments against former President Olusegun Obasanjo by a former Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, a Monarch, the

Olu of Orile Kemta, Ogun State, Oba Adetokunbo Tejuosho, on Tuesday, warned Fayose of consequences.

Fayose had in response to Obasanjo’s comment during his 65th Birthday ceremony where the former President was the  Special Guest of Honour, Fayose had, in a “Thank You Message” to Obasanjo for attending, clothed him with unprecedented insults.

He called the former President irresponsible, mad, demented, and fit for the zoo. Fayose then capped it by demanding a return of the money he sent to Obasanjo to cover his logistics to attend the Party.

But Oba Tejuosho slammed Fayose, and  described his thank-you message to the former President as unguarded, uncultured and unwarranted.

In response to Fayose, on receipt of his letter Obasanjo  thsnked him thus:

“Ayo, thanks for your ‘Thank You’ message which undisguisedly revealed who and what you are — unchanged and unchangeable. Your money has been sent back through Foluso Adeagbo, who brought it, and in the same bag as he brought it, unopened by me.”

But the Monarch, in a statement titled “A Royal Rebuke to Ayo Fayose”, made available to journalists on Tuesday, said the former governor has demonstrated to the world his “hollowness and haughtiness against nothing.”

Oba Tejuosho noted that  Obasanjo was not just a former Military Head of State and a two-term President of Nigeria between 1999 and 2007, but a global Statesman and a father of Yorubaland whose influence stretches across Africa”.

Obasanjo’s  achievements, he said,  were far from “infantile”, and argued that such feats could not be denigrated by Fayose’s arrogance.

The Oba’s  statement reads in part:  “Mr Fayose, your recent message to our Baba Obasanjo was not courage; it was simply reckless and unguarded noise. It is a confession of your own moral confusion. Like Baba rightly said at the event marking your 65th birthday, there is a total difference between being courageous and being foolhardy.

“That latest action of yours was the restless echo of a man who forgets that elders are the pillars of our civilisation. You dare speak to a general while standing on ground that his service, sweat, discipline and sacrifice helped secure.

“You throw stones at a colossus while standing barefoot on a hill he built. You spit towards the sky, forgetting that the heavens you insult today will send the rain back upon your own face tomorrow.

“Mr Former Governor, your mouth did not even tremble when you called the old man such names; I am even afraid to repeat those words of yours. You have not wounded Baba Obasanjo’s honour; you have only amplified your own irrelevance. Your words show not bravery, but a staggering poverty of wisdom.

“Let me remind you: Baba Obasanjo is not just a man. He is a chapter of our national story, a pride of the Yoruba race and a sentinel of the republic.

“You were only 16 when Baba became Head of State. You had not even tasted the soil of responsibility when Obasanjo was already shaping the destiny of nations — yet you now want to challenge the legacy of such a legend.

“Your political relevance is already flickering like a dying lantern, yet you choose to bark at a lion that the entire forest pauses to adore.

“There is nothing more tragic than a man trying to wrestle with history when history does not know his name.

“You once danced around in your youth with no understanding of statecraft; you were barely 43 when this old man gave you everything within his power to support your ambition, which made you governor in 2003. You now have the temerity to rebuke a man who carried Nigeria through storms you could never comprehend.”

He said if Fayose felt Obasanjo was wrong, he should have visited him privately and had his say instead of sending what the Oba described as a “disgusting and insulting message to an elder statesman.”