AKURE—The former Secretary to the Government of the Federation and former Minister of Finance, Chief Olu Falae, on Wednesday in Akure, the Ondo State capital, said he served as a minister without collecting any salary.
He said this when former Governor of Kano State and immediate-past Minister of Education, Mallam lbrahim Shekarau, paid him a visit in his residence in Akure over his recent abduction by some gun men, known to be Fulani herdsmen in his farm.
“Chief has served this country meritoriously; he did not deserve such treatment in whatever manner, he is a man that should always be celebrated,” he said.Shekarau, who arrived Falae’s residence at exactly 4: 40 pm, thanked God for bringing him home safely, adding that it would have been dangerous to the unity of Nigeria, if something untoward had happened to him.
Shekarau also spoke on the need to encourage community policing, saying this would help in reducing the menace of kidnapping in our society.
In his response, Falae thanked Shekarau for his visit and the brotherly gesture he extended to him through his visit despite the tight schedule.
He said when he was Finance Minister, he was never on salary, but he served in the interest of and for the progress of the nation.
Falae, however, lamented that he had been paying the price of being a nationalist since he joined politics.
He said that he survived the abduction through the grace of God as the abductors attempted to kill him.
According to him, “ God has a way of doing His things, I know God just decided to spare my life, God really saved my life, they tortured me, stripped me naked and did a lot of things to me in their den, they even attempted to kill me but they did not succeed.
“I also thank God for making me to survive the ordeal because if they had killed me there, many lives would have been lost too, it would have become an ethnic war between the Yoruba and the Fulani. So I thank God that the matter did not get to that level.”
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How doubly sure was the Chief when he averred that were he had been killed by his abductors that such dastardly act would have become an ethnic war between the Yoruba and the Fulani? Who would have started and indeed championed such ethic war for the Chief and behave of the Yoruba? The Ekiti people or the entire Yoruba nation going to war with the Fulani? What kind of war: media war, war of words or visible combat?
There’s something warp about this kind of submission partly by the Chief and largely from many of those that are genuinely sympathetic to Chief’s moment of ordeal in the hands, nay, den of those abductors. The belief that ‘others’ will go to war for someone/group because someone/group melted out certain level of injustice and brutality to someone/group is illusory, exaggerated and self-deification.
Others will stand up for and indeed speak out against any perceived and/or real attack directed and/or unleashed on others, particularly ‘their own’ but such brotherly solidarity are largely premised on certain conditions and considerations, not principally of personal grandstanding.