On HA’s Clamp Down On Akinwunmi Ambode’s “Astute Avarice” -By Segun Ige

“The liar argues, if I say, ‘I am lying,’ then if I am lying, I am telling the truth. And if I am telling the truth, I can’t be lying. And if it is the truth, it must be true that I am lying.” This paradox of pseudomonas, the science of lying, is, on the surface, quite quizzical but, if we may put somewhat simply, “it only means that if you admit to a lie, you are being truthful,” says Lekan Sote, when particularly taking about “The truth about lying”, in the PUNCH.

But does that ultimately mean that those who admit they had told lies are truth-tellers? Typically, if I say “I’m sorry. I told you a lie. That’s not my nature,” does that imply my truth-telling would inhibit my depravity and venality; yes, even though it’s not consistent with my character and ‘truth-telling condition’? Well, maybe temporarily. But then, she truthfully believes my confession that once “I was a liar” but now that I’m ‘born-again’, “I will always tell the truth,” she is firmly and fully persuaded.

Now, Could you relate the truth-lying scenario of the headlines of a particular press – “UPDATED: Lagos Assembly threatens to arrest Am bode”, “Ambode heads for court to stop Assembly probe”, “Lagos Assembly lists Ambode’s ‘deadly sins’”, “Bus purchase: Assembly threatens to order Ambode’s arrest” – and how the Lagos State House of Assembly indeed appears to ‘clamp down on’ or ‘crackdown’ the former governor’s allegedly ‘astute avarice’ of uneconomic purchase of 820 buses, which, they claim, is a breach of budgetary provisions?

After all, after the presumably governor’s ‘putative approach’ to earnestly contend his undeserved profligation, he says, of the prosecutors and ‘persecutors’ at the Assembly, by accordingly blazing his lawyer, Mr. Tayo Oyetibo (SAN), concerning Ambode’s arrest, one could not but be befuddled by the ‘politicsism’ in Nigeria in general. Rebuffing the House’s summon, Ambode calls for a recalibration – in one way or another – in the constitutional chequeredness of the country, in particular, the State’s stereotypical syndromes of signing inordinate and untraceable bills. As such, he did put the ‘lawmakers on notice’ as forewarned by Justice Adesanya. And the Judge’s justification immediately reads: “The said processes are hereby ordered to be served on the 1^st to 12^th respondents forthwith.” Being justified by faith, Ambode’s astuteness and alacrity saved him from that shaming condemnation.

Ultimately, then, it might be mimed from those aforementioned headlines, that, to be sure, the Ambodean tenure was fraught with ‘stinking hypocrisy’ and ‘cowardly silence’. And so his gubernatorialism was a ‘gun-shot’ in the back of the cabals in the corridors of power. And that, by and large, his then-politicking was largely infantile and puerile, which was being been proudly sponsored by the APC demagogues. Semantically speaking, these presuppositions are ideologically revealing the unwanted and unwholesome Ambodean politicshood, which, of course, tends to be infested with certain infirmities, “according to them.”

Segun Ige, a public-affairs journalist, writes from Lagos, Nigeria.