Obahiagbon on rampage again.....

Pepper souping, suyaing, big stouting, isiewulising.... Please fetch your dictionaries, encyclopaedia, and thesaurus as you read through Patrick Obahiagbon interview...

Patrick Obahiagbon, the Chief of
Staff to the Edo State Governor,
Adams Oshiomhole, in this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE, talks about his controversial way of speaking and why he chooses to speak that way.

What is your educational
background?

I am by the grace of the celestial
choir, a legal practitioner, a public
administrator, an international
historian and a diplomat. I earned a degree in Law and was called to the Nigerian Bar as a solicitor and
advocate of the Supreme Court of
Nigeria about 25 years ago and I do also have a double-barreled
Master’s degree in Public
Administration and in International History and Diplomacy.

Why do you always speak ‘big
grammar’?

I am not really consensus ad idem
with those who opine that my
idiolect is advertently obfuscative.
No no no, it’s just that I am in my
elements when the colloquy has to
do with the pax nigeriana of our
dreams and one necessarily needs
to fulminate against the alcibiadian modus vivendi of our prebendal political class.

How do you talk to your wife,
children and even your friends?

I relate with my family and friends
very warmly and in an atmosphere
of camaraderie, stripped of my
confutational habiliment and
gladiatorial homilies. I am a very
peaceful, calm, level-headed and
celestially attuned soul personality.

Is this the way you proposed to
your wife, speaking high tech
grammar?

Of course, the business of the day
when I interfaced with my wife on
matters of the heart had to be in
plain Caeser’s language and you can decipher why that had to be so. The matter in view did not permit itself of sphinxian conundrum. It’s a long time ago, so I can’t remember the exact words I used. We had a relationship for ten years
before we got married. We’re
looking at close to 20 years ago.

How does your family understand
your English?

My family and friends understand
me perfectly just the same way you understand me now though, I must admit that it depends on the issues on the piazza.

Is this the way you were speaking
in your school days?

I’m sure if you confer with my
school mates they will tell you that I no longer speak what those who just know me now call “grammar.” I could speak for about twenty minutes when I was in the university and you won’t understand one word of what I said. I must say I have deteriorated in my grammatical
construct.

How did you start speaking in this
manner?

It all happened when my father
brought me a teaser which stated
that good orators had ruled the
world and you must have to be a
feisty orator if you must rule the
world. As an impressionable young
man, I alacritously threw myself into the whirligig of improving my usage of words by amassing new words on a daily basis.

Did you write exams in school in
these big words?

I used such words very-very freely
in my exams both at the secondary school and in my university and littlecwonder I had the misfortune of my English results being seized intermittently in my O’ Levels.
WAEC released my results for the
other subjects and withheld my
English result. This happened for
about three years. Twice, I passed
the University Matriculation
Examination but I could not
proceed to the University because of my English results that were not
released. At the end of the day, it
was released after the third attempt.

Didn’t you have problems with
your teachers?

It no doubt gave me serious issues
at the university and that is because some, if not most of my lecturers, ran away with the erroneous impression that my attitudinal predilection had a deprecable tinge of academic braggadocio and intellectual megalomania. But this assumption was both mendacious
and a fallacious ad hominem. I
could not but take solace in that
Latin apothegm which states that O Tempora! O Mores.

Was English your best subject?

My best subject in secondary school was government and religion and am sure that I was drawn to religion because, I now know as a student of Rosicrucian mysticism, that I was axstudent of divine light in my last incarnation. As for government, I  just fell in love with the subject due to my early attraction in life to issues
of political-economy.

So what did you score in English
language?

English language was of course my
hobbyhorse and passion but like I
earlier asseverated, my results were constantly guillotined to my utter chagrin that I had to lapse into a jeremiad of lachrymoseim for a period of aeon. I would need to check the result again to be sure of my score.

Do you pray the same way you
speak?

God understands all languages, my
brother and I pray to God using any word that pops up. May I posit that the key points in prayers are your sincerity, purity of heart, walking within the compass and to what extent are you ready and worthy of receiving the benediction of the cosmic and the cosmic masters because as we say in mysticism- “when the students are ready, the masters would appear.”
Take my words my brother that
more than seventy per cent of
humanity don’t know how to pray
but that is a matter for another day.

By the way, are there other
names you call God?

God is variously known as Jehovah,
Yaweh, The Great Grand Architect of the Universe, The Cosmic Host and several other names known alone to heirophants but which names are so ineffable for me to mention here.

Do you know that many people
don’t take you too seriously when
you talk because they think you
are not communicating?

Why will I be perturbed from
ensconcing myself in the palatable
arms of Morpheus because people
have deprived themselves of the
cultivation of the regime of the
mental magnitude? I read all the
farrago of baloneys and vacuous
bunkum from pepper soup
objurgators. The spirit of animadversion remains their
fundamental human right. It also
remains an indubitable fact that I getcmillions and millions of requests daily from people all over the world requesting for my verbal mentorship which positive cosmopolitan reactions have assisted my equipoise and righteous sense of pachydermatous garb. I cannot put
my nose to the grindstone daily and expect to be understood by thosecluxuriating in a modus vivendi, verging on pepper souping, goat heading, suyaing, big stouting and isiewulising. Has a philosophical wag not once pontificated that things of the spirit are spiritually discerned and that it takes the deep to call the deep? We will speak more
on this matter of critiques and
chichi dodo another day.

You were there when a teacher in
your state couldn’t pronounce
‘solemnly’, how did you feel?

I was indeed sad that a teacher in
Edo State could not pronounce a
simple word as ‘solemn’. That was
certainly one of my low moments in the service of Edo State but the
eulogies must go to Comrade
Adams Oshiomhole who put in
place the infrastructure that made it possible to detect such an egregious ambience and this government would stop at nothing in cleansing the Augean stables.

Have you ever considered
organising English classes in Edo
State?

I would have loved to organise
English classes, my brother, but you will agree with me that I am
sufficiently busy just now.

Why do you pull your trousers up
beyond the waist?

Hahahaha….That trousers style is
called Yohji Yamamoto. It was my
own audacious statement to
remonstrate against the pervasive
tendency of Nigerians especially our youths that took to the practice of putting on trousers exposing their lower anatomical contours and I will do it over and over again.

When you speak to Caucasians of
English origin, how do they react
to you?

My friends that are whites simply
marvel and sometimes get
maniacally bewildered when we
engage, most times to my consternation.

Do you think that you understand
English language better than the
owners of the language?

I have never had the ambition to
know the English language more
than the owners. However, I must
mention that they are shocked most times to find out several words from me they never heard of that existed in the dictionary. Yet, those words are supposed to be theirs. Na so we see am.

Have you ever met with the Nobel
Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka? And
what’s your opinion of him?

Professor Wole Soyinka is an
international personality. It’s either you have met him personally or by reputation. He is a great man and I enjoy reading him anytime, any day.

Can you ever be caught speaking
what many would consider as
normal English?

I speak in plain Ceasers language or what you call the normal language and let me tell you that I will hold my own even in pidgin conversation. No just try me at all at all o.

What is your take on the ongoing
crisis in the PDP?

The crisis in PDP? All I can say is
that I join some people to dey
laugh o and he be like say my
laugh go tay well well o.

Are you likely to contest for a
political office?

I am still in politics, serving the good and amiable people of Edo State. Being the Chief of Staff to the comrade governor is in itself an art of daily political engineering.

Do you look forward to
developing your own dictionary?

My own dictionary? I have never
really given that a thought, but there is a young man in one of our
universities who travelled all the way to meet me in Benin. His doctoralcthesis is on “Obahiagbonism as a style of language.”

How many dictionaries do you
read a day and how often do you
read dictionaries?

I have read and still do read a
vaudeville of dictionaries from
Websters to Funk and Wagnalls,
from Cambridge to Oxford
dictionaries, from Black’s Law
Dictionary to Encarta and from
Encyclopedia Britannica to
Foreignisms, etcetera. I developed
my corpus of vocabulary by reading omnivorously. I have also spent nothing less than an hour daily on my dictionary for over twenty years. So, whereas the dictionary for most people is a mere occasional reference point, it is for, me a vade-mecum. It may also interest you to know that there is much to learn
from our daily newspapers.

You seem to mix English with
other languages…?

On mixing of languages; that comes with reading omnivorously. You cannot but pick these words here and there if you have an audacious reading culture.

Is any of your children like you?

My children are still growing but I
petition the celestial choir and
cosmic hosts to give them the gift of kissing the hybla bee.

What is your favourite quote?

One of my favorite quotes is from
the sapiential mind of the late Ikene philosopher, Papa Jeremiah
Obafemi Awolowo, when he was
quoted as saying that, “the greatest glory is not in never falling but to rise up after a fall.”

Are you planning to contest in
2015?

I always feel flattered and smile with delight when I hear positive
commentary on my tenure at the
National Assembly and the wish of
Nigerians to see me back at the
National Assembly. I am humbled
but as a student of mysticism,
nothing happens in my life by
accident. I am a robot in the hands
of God and from that point of view
therefore, 2015 would take care of itself. All my efforts just now my brother is geared towards
complementing the efforts of the
comrade governor in the total
transmogrification of Edo State
which is enough to chew at the
moment. Let me however use this
opportunity of your question to
appreciate my numerous admirers
all over the world.

How are you coping with the
Governor of Edo State, knowing
that the two of you have strong
personalities?

When two or more personages are
united only by the bonds of
rendering service, that in itself
becomes an agglutinating fragrance. In any case, I am very clear that Comrade Oshio Baba is the Governor of Edo State and I am his privileged Chief of Staff. So we are working together very harmoniously and in an ambience of conviviality in our unstoppable desire in taking Edo State to the next level.

Via Punch newspaper.