By Muyiwa Adetiba
The children of the late Mrs Florence Jadesola Aboderin last Friday held a posthumous 80th birthday party for their mother who was the first wife of Chief Olubunmi Aboderin, the founding Chairman of the Punch newspapers.

A call first came before the invitation card to inform me of the date and to ask if I would be available. I had no hesitation in confirming my availability. For one thing, Punch holds too many memories for me. Professionally, it was where I was shaped. It was where I churned out my greatest body of work. It was where I transited from a naïve lad who just wanted to write to a well-heeled professional.

I moved from Reporter to Writer to Columnist to Star Writer to Editor. Punch gave me all, including foreign travels (by age 25, I had been to four continents) where I met and interviewed renowned personalities. But as important as this is to my development as a professional journalist, what I often remember is Punch as a family. The three founding Executive Directors of Punch were in their 30s and they mixed very easily with us.

They worked with us, joked with us, invited us to parties and ate with us. In fact, the canteen was the liveliest section in Punch where lurid and explicit jokes were often shared. Nobody who worked in Punch during that first year would ever forget the canteen. And the bond we formed during that year is still tight and binding. We meet whenever we can and relate with each other with fondness and respect.

Mrs Aboderin often came to Punch in its early years. She was pretty but reserved. She had a small smile for you if you came close to her and was polite. On the whole, she minded her business. In my young mind, I thought she complemented my chairman who was witty and exuberant. I admired her quiet dignity and the way she handled her challenges back then which was another reason I came to honour her. The final reason was because of Wale, her first son and Angela his sister. We grew close during those early Punch years when they used to come around. I played chess and table tennis with Wale and discussed music—the past time of youths- with both of them. They were also the reason I first visited the Aboderin residence in Ilupeju. Oh, Punch does bring back memories and it is tempting to indulge in them. That is however, not my intention today except to say I am happy I honoured the invitation and its opportunity to see some old faces. May the soul of Mrs Aboderin continue to rest in peace.

Seated by my side at the table was Mr Niyi Alonge—an egbon in age and the profession. He was very close to the Aboderin family in those days and I remember the two of us once went with Chief Olu Aboderin on a professional visit to South Korea and Hong Kong. The event for which we came was slow in starting so we used the opportunity to catch-up on current affairs at home and abroad.

This was when he asked me what I thought of the chances of Mr Donald Trump as the next American President. My answer was short and direct. ‘I don’t know’. I replied. It was probably not what he wanted to hear but it was my new reality. I had earlier expected Trump to fade away but he grew stronger and stronger instead. Most voters are sentimental and emotional when choosing their candidates with many often ignoring attributes like competence and experience for something as intangible as a candidate’s view on marriage and single parenthood. I witnessed it when America chose George Bush Jnr over Al Gore. It seemed obvious to me that the latter was more competent, more aware of the issues and yes, more intelligent. Yet, America chose Bush and the rest of the world is still grabbling with the consequences of that choice.

One can say this is different in that Clinton is clearly a better candidate and picking Trump over Clinton raises the bar in ignorance and sentimentality. But we did the same thing in Nigeria in 1979 when we picked Shagari over Awolowo. I covered that election and it was obvious to me just as it was to many of the politicians at the time, that Awolowo was a better candidate. He was more astute; more recognised and respected internationally. More importantly, he was better organised and better prepared and had we chosen him, Nigeria would have hit the ground running. But we chose other parameters outside competence and experience and we are living with the consequences of our choice. Not that we learnt any lesson. Ekwueme was a deeper, more intelligent and more temperamentally suited person for the job than Obasanjo. But did we pick him? So was Falae, a respected economist and technocrat. Again we had other more primordial, baser parameters—right up to Jonathan and Buhari. The state of the country today is one of the consequences of our choices.

Back to the American election. Hilary Clinton described those who blindly support Trump as ‘a basket of deplorables’. It might be a harsh and impolitic description. But it is not really far from the truth—when you allow bigotry to override reason; when you preach hate and fear and segregation; when your hero is a man who picks Putin as his hero—a man who has scant regards for democracy or world opinion and rides rough shod on his own people; when your preferred candidate is a man who flip flops on almost all major issues and stands almost for nothing. Hilary Clinton has a lot of baggage—very few people who have been in the public eye for so long can escape making mistakes.

But she knows the issues and is better prepared than any American President to date. If nothing, the ship of the American State will be in steady hands. Donald Trump on the other hand, will not make America great again. Instead, he will diminish America; he will exacerbate the fault lines in the deeply divided country but that is not my fear. America might implode; but that is not my greatest fear. My real fear is that the ripple effect of his words—and actions—at home and abroad, will have dire consequences for the world as we know it.

If you think ‘the basket of deplorables’ is limited to America, go to the social media and see how some Nigerians are defending the indefensible and the reasons they adduce for supporting thieves and failed politicians. Read the bigotry and nepotism between the lines as they lash out and curse their own country. Read how blind, ignorant and self-serving some people are when they support a cause or a leader. Do you then wonder why we are where we are today?