HON. PATRICK Why I speak the way I do Sincerely speaking, I want to tender an unreserved apologia to my colleagues and all those who feel that my language is obscurantist. The truth is that I do not set out deliberately to mystify my audience, to deposit my audience in a portmanteau of indecipherability or in portmanteau of conundrum. No, no, no, no! Far from it. The cosmic force would not allow me to do that. But, you see if you ask homo sapients who have interfaced with me for close to twenty years now, they would tell you that I no longer speak high sounding language. I have reduced it radically. If you have the opportunity to listen to my speeches or debates ten, fifteen years ago, then it would have been a different kettle of fish all together. So, I am convinced that I’ve tried, I am trying and I will continue to try to ensure that my language, or my idiolect is as limpid and as diaphanous as possible. But, let me say that I am an omnivorous reader and I put my nose on the grinding stone to read for more than 7 hours a day when most innocent men are sleeping, and night marauders are doing their business. I am on my table, in my Library for 7 hours. And that has been on for over twenty years. And like I always tell people, the dictionary for me is not a reference point; the dictionary is a vade mecum, a constant companion. I spend on the average not less than an hour a day referencing the dictionary for the past twenty to twenty-five years. So don’t be maniacally bewildered if I speak most times, from what I draw while reading. But, really, the intention is not to deliberately befuddle or obfuscate my presentations on the floor. My Political experience I was a student Union activist all my years in the University of Benin. Little wonder, as soon as I left the University and finished my Youth Service, I dabbled into the aqua of political arena. If I remember vividly, I contested my first election into Oredu Local Government Area (LGA) as a Councillor only one year after my Youth Service. So I have been in State and National politics effectively from 1999. But it has not been a bed of roses, giving the miasma, given that convoluted phantasmagoria, given the prependalism and all the intrigues in Nigerian politics. I contested several elections and lost several elections. Some not because I lost, but because of course, we are in Nigeria, and the X factor in Nigerian politics is still very important. But, I knew right back from when I started, that I had a date with history, with destiny. At every time I lost an election, I would decide to be more recusant rather than being recumbent. I decided to be more quixotic rather than being laisser-faire- to challenge my destiny the more rather than relapsing into a cocoon of levity, or into a cocoon of political narcissisms. And I thank the great galaxy of the universe, after several attempts at political office in 1999, my bread was buttered.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 19:01:26 +0000
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