Yesterday, at the National Peace Committee event, I met Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, Datti Baba-Ahmed’s elder brother and PRP chairman. I gently tapped him on the shoulder to say hello while he was standing with others. He immediately turned to me and, in the presence of his party’s presidential candidate, former Cross River State Governor, Donald Duke, declared that he was my “number one fan.”

🇳🇬 Here's What Happened

We laughed about it, but he reiterated that he wasn’t kidding. Donald Duke and I also exchanged a few words on the sidelines, including about something he has always enjoyed teasing me about. My advocacy for the legalisation of cannabis.

Later, when all the presidential candidates gathered to sign the “Peace Accord,” Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed met me again. He handed me his business card and told me that no matter what I faced, I should never change my position on social justice. Earlier today, I messaged him to thank him for his kind words at yesterday’s meeting.

He replied, again reassuring me of his admiration, and then asked whether I had read what his younger brother, Mallam Yusuf, had written in Daily Trust, excoriating me over my comments regarding former military dictator Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, on his 85th birthday.

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I hadn’t seen the piece. When I told Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed that I couldn’t find it online, he explained that it appeared in the print edition of Daily Trust. I have now read Datti’s response, and I can only pity him.

Instead of confronting the historical record of Ibrahim Babangida’s dictatorship, Datti chose to deliver a sermon about “compassion,” while attacking me personally and attempting to whitewash a legacy that Nigerians have every right to interrogate.

I have also been made to understand that Datti belongs to that class of Nigerians whose fortunes and opportunities were substantially shaped by the benevolence of the IBB-era establishment. I learned today he was an ex-military man and probably one of the military officers known as the “Babangida Boys.”

My own encounter with Datti was only once before now, ironically, also at a National Peace Committee event during the 2023 election cycle. I was seated in an area to deter the National Peace Committee’s attempt to separate those of us it did not consider “frontline candidates” from its preferred candidates. Datti confronted me, claiming I had no right to sit next to Peter Obi, his presidential candidate, because he was supposedly keeping the seat for him. I reminded Datti that, as a vice-presidential candidate, he had no superior claim to a seat designated for presidential candidates.

Then All Progressives Congress candidate Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu arrived and sat next to me. What happened next was revealing. The same Datti Baba-Ahmed whose ticket was campaigning fiercely against Tinubu and the APC suddenly became extraordinarily deferential, “Uncle,” “Sir,” “Daddy,” all in practically the same breath; he practically knelt for Tinubu in my presence. I was stunned. After all the ferocious rhetoric surrounding the election, particularly from the Obidient movement against Tinubu and the APC, here was one of its principal candidates displaying an astonishingly servile attitude toward the very political adversary his supporters were being mobilised to defeat.

When Mr Peter Obi eventually arrived, Datti was moved to the back while I retained my seat, which was where I belonged under the alphabetical seating arrangement.

📰 Source: Punch Nigeria