By OWEI LAKEMFA
BASTARD! That is perhaps the most insulting word you can use for a Nigerian. It is therefore not surprising that retired General  Olufemi Olutoye is at war with some of his kinsmen just as former Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayoshe is with ex- President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The stool of Alani of Idoani  in Ondo State is vacant  and one of the best known generals in the days of military rule, Olutoye decided that it was his turn to rule ; he therefore joined the jostling.

But three traditional chiefs; the Sadibo , Chief Adele Musa, the  Owusi, Chief David Adetola and the Ologbosere of Idoani, Chief S. Aladetoun allegedly issued a statement that  Olutoye is not  a member of the  Obasunloye ruling house. But the general, confident of his ancestry, rejected the accusation that he is a bastard, and asserted that he is a direct descendant  of Oba  Obasunloye, the progenitor  of the ruling  house.

He said the moves to hang  the tag of a bastard  on his neck is part of the crude politics of the two other ruling houses who have dominated the throne for over a century.

The Fayoshe-Obasanjo saga is another  variety of crude politics; both had been political father and son  before being torn asunder. Both men have genetically similar traits; as president and governor respectively they tolerated no opposition, are overbearing, domineering and insulting, and some politicians who were opposed to their style, ended up dead in yet to be ascertained circumstances.

Some busybodies like  some so called “Agbekoyas” a body of farmers and hunters who were highly respected in the 1960s, are threatening to attack Fayoshe for liberally insulting Obasanjo at the  post-disgrace public outing  of sacked Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola. Part of the claim was that as Fayoshe unleashed his verbiage, the former president who never in the first place antagonised or insulted him, sat calmly through it all.

This would have been quite uncharacteristic of Obasanjo who never allows any opportunity to slip by without insulting people. He once said that he replies insults immediately because “I no give my mouth to washer man” meaning he was always ready for altercations.

The word ‘bastard’ ordinarily means someone born outside the marriage bed; born of unmarried parents. It is doubtlessly an insult. But in Nigeria, a bastard is simply a person  of doubtful parentage; usually a person with no known father or whose patrimony is in question.

If we believe the media report that Obasanjo called or inferred that Fayoshe was a bastard, perhaps he meant that the former governor was born out of wedlock; if that is the case, then that cannot be Fayoshe’s fault, but that of his parents. How does the circumstances of a man’s birth  constitute an offence ?

In fact, in many parts of Africa, there is a saying that only the mother knows the true paternity of a child; so in a dispute, it is whoever the woman awards a child to that is regarded as the father. The fact is that none of us was present at our conception, so but for the faithfulness of our mothers, we cannot be certain who actually did it; so  a bastard is actually a victim not a scoundrel.

Doubtlessly, our mothers were virtuous, loyal, faithful  and loving, but the fact is that even in our old traditional communities, there were cases of women who had multiple relationships. Nobody should be called a bastard, in any case, the Holy Bible teaches that we are all children of one living Father who hart in Heaven.

In Latin America, there is a wise saying that anybody can be a child’s father but only one person can be the mother. So the tradition there is to give a child three names; his own, the mother’s and that of the father. For example, a child’s name can be Fidel, his mother’s name, Castro and his father’s Raul; so he is called Fidel Castro Raul.

During the Second World War, the defunct Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics(USSR) lost some twenty five million people, most of them, men. So there was a shortage of men; for the Soviets therefore, a woman and a child constituted a whole family unit.

Locally, we have had series of disputed  or contentious lineage. For instance, the Oloye, Olusola Abubakar Saraki is being accused of being an  Abeokuta indigene not the Ilorin he claims. Recently, Obasanjo in a book had to take pains to detail his ancestry, perhaps to put a lie to rumours that his patrimony is Igbo, not Owu.

When Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola died, he was said to have directed in his will that DNA tests be conducted on most of his children to ascertain  their parentage.

The winner of the Cote d’Voire presidential elections, Alassane Quatara is said to be a non Ivorian which is why Laurent Gbagbo would not yield to the verdict of the electorate. The   legendary Kwame Nkrumah, the father of Ghana was rumoured not to have been a Ghanaian!

If this were true, Nigerians  would have been eternally grateful  if Nkrumah, whether he was a Ghanaian or not, had been our  president and built the type  of socio-economic foundations he had put in place in Ghana. Surely, we would have been better off as bastards with a mother than the political orphans  we turned out to be.

To me, do-or-die is not the politics of salvation or good governance but of bastardisation. Privatisation which is the wholesale  auction of our common patrimony at give away prices, is not the economics of the free born, but of the prodigal, or if you like, of the bastard.

If you call another person a bastard, do you know who you are? If you point an accusing finger at a victim, don’t you know the remaining four are pointed at you?

The way I see it, the alleged bastardisation of Fayoshe may actually be a bullying act by a retired general who found the bloody civilian, a puzzle.  At the end of the day, he may just be a lucky bastard!