After her disappointing outing for the 100m race at the 2015 IAAF World Championships in Beijing on Monday where she finished last in a time of 11.02 seconds and failed to show up for the 200m event, the third fastest woman in the world took to her Facebook page to acknowledge the love and support from her friends, family and 'true fans'. She also used the opportunity to leave a few choice words for haters and critics. She especially came for journalists.
Prof. Wole Soyinka, has stated that he has no respect for former President Obasanjo, who he describeds as an indescribable liar. Soyinka talked about the former president on Friday night when he responded to questions during a programme tagged: ‘An evening with Wole Soyinka’, organised by Globacom.
Asked to respond to Obasanjo’s assessment of him in the former president’s book titled ‘My Watch’, where he notes that Soyinka is good at hunting and wines but a political illiterate, Soyinka said that he was hardly bothered because he believed that Obasanjo was a liar.
Soyinka said, “Obasanjo is entitled to his opinion. But the question is: ‘Who respects the opinion of a liar?’
I can spend the whole night proving that he is a liar. Obasanjo was once described by an economist, the late Prof Ojetunji Aboyade, as an economic illiterate. They nearly went into blows that night. It was Prof. Mabogunje who separated them.
“So, if an economic illiterate calls somebody a political illiterate, no problem at all.
“In ‘ My Watch’, Obasanjo told the first lie when he said he deplored lies. Anybody who said he never plotted to have an unconstitutional third term in office, even as a writer, I need a word to describe him.”
The former President and the Nobel laureate have been in a running battle taking swipes at each other over a lingering issue between them. Obasanjo had once stated that Soyinka once vowed that the differences between the two of them would not be resolved on earth.
Obasanjo had also in his book, My Watch, and at public events described Soyinka as an expert in wine matters than in political analysis.
He had said:
“For Wole, no one can be good, nor can anything be spot-on politically except that which emanates from him or is ordained by him. His friends and loved ones will always be right and correct, no matter what they do or fail to do. He is surely a better wine connoisseur and a more successful aparo (guinea fowl) hunter than a political critic.
“Wole Soyinka is a gifted man. I have always acknowledged that but he is a bad politician and I have also always said that. That is my own point of view. He may agree with it, he may not agree with it. For instance, I know that if I want somebody to give me the best wine, one of the people I will go to is Wole Soyinka and I know he has a taste for good wine and I said that in the book.”
Punch
After months of not knowing their fate, the Department of State Services personnel who served as Body Guards to President Goodluck Jonathan have been posted out of the Villa to various state commands.
Reliable sources at the Presidential Villa said that the signal for the posting of the over 150 body guards who had remained redundant following the directive by the ADC to President Buhari that they should leave the presidential villa came yesterday.
It would be recalled that following the swearing in of President Buhari, personnel of the Department of State Services who had traditionally served as Body Guards to the president were ordered to leave the Villa on the instructions of the ADC to the president.
According to the source while a few of the DSS personnel were posted to the headquarters of the DSS, most of them were posted to various state commands of the service.
The source said:
“Almost all of our personnel who were body guards in the villa have been transferred out of the state House. A new crop of body guards who were trained for the purpose have taken over. They will take over from the soldiers who were initially drafted to man the various beats hitherto occupied by the DSS personnel. That phase of transition is over” the source said.
About 250 personnel of the DSS are expected to take over the job of protecting the president from the military personnel.
It was gathered that the reason why they were replaced was sue to the bitter experience during the sallah prayers when president Buhari was almost mobbed by enthusiastic Nigerians who overwhelmed the military men that were supposed to protect him.
President Buhari himself confessed that but for God’s protection, he would have been mobbed by the crowd that thronged the Eid prayer ground.
Vanguard
