This latest Punch interview with grandiloquent speaker and current Chief of Staff to the Edo State Governor, Patrick Obahiagbon is beyond hilarious. Please, take out time and read it through.
Excerpts Below:
Why do you always speak
‘big grammar’?
I
am not really consensus ad idem with those who opine that my idiolect is advertently obfuscative. No no no, it’s just that I am in my elements
when the colloquy has to do with the pax nigeriana of our dreams and one necessarily needs to
fulminate against the alcibiadian modus vivendi of our prebendal political class.
How did you start
speaking in this manner?
It all happened when my
father brought me a teaser which stated that good orators had ruled the world
and you must have to be a feisty orator if you must rule the world. As an
impressionable young man, I alacritously threw myself into the whirligig of improving my usage of words by
amassing new words on a daily basis.
How do you talk to your
wife, children and even your friends?
I relate with my family
and friends very warmly and in an atmosphere of camaraderie, stripped of my confutational habiliment and gladiatorial homilies. I am a
very peaceful, calm, level-headed and celestially attuned soul personality.
Is this the way you
proposed to your wife, speaking high tech grammar?
Of course, the
business of the day when I interfaced with my wife on matters of the heart had
to be in plain Caeser’s language and you can decipher why that had to be so.
The matter in view did not permit itself of sphinxian conundrum.
It’s a long time ago, so
I can’t remember the exact words I used. We had a relationship for ten years
before we got married. We’re looking at close to 20 years ago.
Did
you write exams in school in these big words?
I used such words
very-very freely in my exams both at the secondary school and in my university
and little wonder I had the misfortune of my English results being seized
intermittently in my O’ Levels. WAEC released
my results for the other subjects and withheld my English result. This happened
for about three years. Twice, I passed the University Matriculation Examination
but I could not proceed to the University because of my English results that
were not released. At the end of the day, it was released after the third
attempt.
How many dictionaries do
you read a day and how often do you read dictionaries?
I have read and
still do read a vaudeville of dictionaries from Websters to Funk and Wagnalls, from Cambridge to Oxford dictionaries, from
Black’s Law Dictionary to Encarta and from Encyclopedia Britannica to Foreignisms, etcetera. I developed my corpus of vocabulary by reading omnivorously. I
have also spent nothing less than an hour daily on my dictionary for over
twenty years. So, whereas the dictionary for most people is a mere occasional
reference point, it is for, me a vade–mecum. It may also interest
you to know that there is much to learn from our daily newspapers.
Was English your best
subject?
My best subject in
secondary school was government and religion and am sure that I was drawn to
religion because, I now know as a student of Rosicrucian mysticism, that I was
a student of divine light in my last incarnation. As for government, I just
fell in love with the subject due to my early attraction in life to issues of
political-economy.
So what did you score in
English language?
English language was of
course my hobbyhorse and passion but like I earlier asseverated, my results
were constantly guillotined to my utter chagrin that I had to lapse into a
jeremiad of lachrymoseim for a period of aeon. I would need to check
the result again to be sure of my score.
Do you pray the
same way you speak?
God understands all
languages, my brother and I pray to God using any word that pops up. May I
posit that the key points in prayers are your sincerity, purity of heart,
walking within the compass and to what extent are you ready and worthy of
receiving the benediction of the cosmic and the cosmic masters because as we
say in mysticism- “when the students are ready, the masters would appear.”
Take my words my brother
that more than seventy per cent of humanity don’t know how to pray but that is
a matter for another day.
Do you know that
many people don’t take you too seriously when you talk because they think you
are not communicating
Why will I be perturbed
from ensconcing myself in the palatable arms of Morpheus because people have
deprived themselves of the cultivation of the regime of the mental magnitude? I read all the farrago of baloneys and vacuous bunkum from pepper soup objurgators. The spirit of animadversion remains their fundamental human right.
It also remains an indubitable fact that I get millions and millions of
requests daily from people all over the world requesting for my verbal mentorship which positive cosmopolitan reactions have
assisted my equipoise and righteous sense of pachydermatous garb. I cannot put my nose to the grindstone daily and expect to be
understood by those luxuriating in a modus vivendi, verging on pepper souping, goat heading, suyaing, big stouting and isiewulising. Has a philosophical wag not once pontificated that things of the
spirit are spiritually discerned and that it takes the deep to call the deep?
We will speak more on this matter of critiques and chichi dodo another
day.
Why do you pull your
trousers up beyond the waist?
Hahahaha….That trousers
style is called Yohji Yamamoto. It was my own
audacious statement to remonstrate against the pervasive tendency of Nigerians
especially our youths that took to the practice of putting on trousers exposing
their lower anatomical contours and I will do it over and over again.
When you speak to
Caucasians of English origin, how do they react to you?
My friends that are
whites simply marvel and sometimes get maniacally bewildered when we engage,
most times to my consternation.
Do you think that you
understand English language better than the owners of the language?
I have never had the
ambition to know the English language more than the owners. However, I
must mention that they are shocked most times to find out several words from me
they never heard of that existed in the dictionary. Yet, those words are
supposed to be theirs. Na so we see am.
For the full interview,
visit punch.
