UNDERSTANDING SHETTIMA ON OSINBAJO AND LAWAN

UNDERSTANDING SHETTIMA ON OSINBAJO AND LAWAN

By: Inuwa Bwala

Those who play around with the English word, risk being misunderstood by those who tend to translate their expressions from their literal meanings. 

This explains why it is often difficult to understand poets when they write or to appreciate literary artists when they use slangs, idiomatic or figurative phrases in conveying messages.

This perhaps was  the position Senator Kashim Shettima found himself in, when he made those remarks on Television, about the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo and the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, which are now being turned around to haunt him.

Shettima had come out to explain that, he meant no harm in his remarks, and coul not have been as impolite as he is being interpreted to be. To him, he was trying to make a figurative comparison of politics and less controversial trades, to the effect that, a hawker is a more dignified person that those who engage in competitive contests, seeking to lead.

I watched the clips over and over, trying to grasp what the Distinguished Senator was trying to make, and I feel, those phrases were actually figurative and not intended to denigrate the two personalities mentioned.

As a journalist, I understood where my friend Seun was driving Shettima to in his line of questioning and I felt, those who tried to impute meanings into Shettima’s responses were somehow being uncharitable to him.

Although not a poet nor a trained literary artists, it is true that, Senator Kashim Shettima is literarily endowed and plays around with the English language even more than some of those trained in that art.

His reference to popcorn selling or groundnut merchant in my understanding were meant to explain the public perceptions about people not cut out to play politics, rather to engage in some other vocations.

No matter how impolite he might have wanted to be, he could not have used that expression to contest their surface interpretations.

In describing the Vice President as a Goodman nice person, and too nice to occupy position of leadership, Kashim was trying to say Osinbajo as a gentleman, is better suited for a more friendly and persuasive vocation and not the competitive and rather murkier politics, that he is involved.

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Shettima in my understanding, knowing he often uses such figurative expressions to explain other situations, was trying to say, that people like his principal are known to have been in similar fights and may be ready to do it again: dirty as it seems, while  the likes of Osinbajo are strangers to the dirty brand of Nigerian politics.

I know that,his remarks were a mere coincidence with what Asiwaju Bola Ahmed was quoted as having said about the president, Muhammadu Buhari, but in seasons of politics, people ascribe deregatory meanings to hitherto innocent views.

As for the remarks about the Senate President, Shettima was referring to the public perceptions about the ordinary northerner in the south, which portrays Lawan as just another merchant of a commodity commonly found in the north.

Shettima has personally explained how he holds the duo of Osinbajo and Lawan, and I  am sure, handlers of the two personalities will explain the true imports of Shettima’s remarks.

My personal advice is that, people should not try to wedge a nail in hitherto cordial relationships for sheer political scores, as this may tend to make our politics even murkier.

UNDERSTANDING SHETTIMA ON OSINBAJO AND LAWAN