I derive pleasure from insults, says Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo said that he allowed people to express their views even when they insulted him because he derived pleasure from jibes people threw at him.

Obasanjo said this while delivering a keynote address at the first international conference of the African Studies Association of Africa which had the theme, ‘African Studies in the 21st Century, Past, Present and Future,’ held at the International Conference Centre of the University of Ibadan on Wednesday.

He said, “If you visit the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, you will find thousands of newspaper comics and columns meant to spite and insult my person even as a sitting president in the archive. No individual or group of people was ever queried or jailed or repressed in expressing this freedom. Rather, I encouraged them because I derived fun and pleasure from the humour as I know who I am and nobody needs to tell me who and what I am not.”

He said Africa was moving away from its past where bad governance, corruption and human rights violations, typical of the post-colonial authoritarian regimes ruled.

The former president added that that over the years, African studies had developed into a distinct field drawing on various sources ranging from social sciences to humanities and natural sciences to agriculture. 

Obasanjo added, “The narrow vision of African studies as merely cultural studies has started to wane. Over more than half a century, the field has evolved with diverse interdisciplinary strands. I am delighted that the so-called great European historians who professed that Africa has no history lived to realise that African history and culture had impact on other parts of the world including theirs.”

While lamenting the backwardness associated with Africa, Obasanjo however blamed it on “the stain and stench of slave trade, the cold war and poor governance, which made some Africans to laud the good old days of colonialism, corruption and problem of human rights violations.”

Obasanjo also expressed his joy over the gradual disappearance of the vices from Africa.

He said, “The right to free speech, the right to express a different view-point, the right to draw personal conclusions based on self-instituted research and to query certain cultural practices and beliefs are part of the huge liberty that the continent of Africa now boasts of.”

Also speaking at the event, a professor of History, Toyin Falola, said knowledge must not be imperialised by the western world. He called on Africans to patronise their own culture and tradition.

He said, “To be free from western imperialism, African countries must develop the attitude of trading with more African countries than trading with western countries. In that way, our creativity will expand, we will keep our resources from within and we will generate employment for our people. We should stop using and patronising the western world, but we should promote our own culture and traditions.”