Obasanjo-My-Watch

I don’t want to start any controversy except to draw your attention to Ikhide Ikheloa’s Facebook status regarding ex-President Obasanjo’s recently published memoir, titled My Watch.

Word on the street says the memoir will cause a “political earthquake” when it hits the market. If the recent legal sanction against publishing the book is anything to go by, there just might be some truth to this claim.

So naturally, there’s been a good bit of anticipation around the memoir—except in Ikhide Ikheloa’s corner of the Nigerian literary community.

Yesterday, Ikheloa called for the memoir to be boycotted.

Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo has a memoir out. It is NOT called, My Loot: How I pillaged and raped Nigeria, stole everything and left the carcass for buffoons.

It is interesting that there was a book launch even when the courts had ordered otherwise. As usual Obasanjo the Horrible, with the collusion of his publishers, is above the law. This is not the change that we seek.

I will not be buying this self-serving memoir; the sordid truths of how Obasanjo squandered Nigeria’s promise and trashed his personal life are on the Internet. Google is your memoir. If you love Nigeria, do not buy the book. Because if you do, you will be lining the pockets of Obasanjo, Enemy of Modern Nigeria.

It is my ernest hope that the book bombs in sales, that the hooliganism that this awful man visited on Nigeria is visited on the book, by pirates who will sell the pirated copies for pennies and pocket all the change. Not that he needs the money; I am sure that at the “book launch”, semi-illiterates sprayed millions of Naira on the alleged memoir.

I will not be reading the book; there is nothing Obasanjo will tell me that is either new or the truth. I urge you to boycott the book. But that is a silly wish; you are a Nigerian intellectual, you will buy the book, beg for an autograph and take a selfie with the man that has ruined your children’s present and future. You deserve the book, Obasanjo, and your fate. Nonsense.

Ikheloa is a Nigerian blogger known for his fire-brand technique of criticism.

As you can see, by the end of the Facebook post, Ikheloa has succeeded in insulting everyone associated with the book. Obasanjo is a lying Hooligan. Farafina is in collusion with a reprehensible man. The reader who buys the book has no moral compass.

Farafina is the Nigerian publisher for many leading African novelists, including Chimamanda Adichie, Wainaina Binyavanga, Mukoma wa Ngugi, and others.

Is Ikhide suggesting that there’s something illicit about Farafina’s publication of the ex-president memoir? Is he going to0 far calling for a boycott and throwing shade, however so subtly, on Farafina?

Let us know what you think.

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Image: Victor Ehikhamenor’s Instagram