The minute Dele Momodu & his supporters realize that you cannot befriend the oppressor and the oppressed at the same time, the better.

No one here has condemned Ovation!, it is simply a soft sell that celebrates Africans both at home and in the diaspora, good job. Ovation has featured many great minds and credible people on its pages; but it has also glamourized the most corrupt of politicians in Africa, with whom Mr Momodu is good friends.
All said, no one has a problem with this.

But when the publisher of such a magazine, a friend to the same thieves who readily plunder our resources decides to speak against corruption in the dailies, then we have a problem.

Added to that, he seems to confuse himself in his own column. The guy should just stick to his day job

who the f@ck is Dele Momodu??

Dele has no principles,no respect. This very first time I encountered him was when he wrote an article in African concord magazine.He was abusing Wole Soyinka.I cant remember clearly now but I think it has to do with the correct English translation for "Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole'.Soyinka wrote the English edition and titled it[b] A forest of A thousand Demons[/b]. And this small boy{then} began to insult the master!
Look,NLanders: leave the guy alone. He is still writing in Nigerian Papers to remain relevant.He is not guided by principles. or how can a man who celeberates corrupt men and women in his Ovation turn round and be writing against corruption
I think he should throw his pen away and cling to his camera. Of course posterity is already judging him as a talented man who encouraged corruption to make his money!

kosovo:

who the f@ck is Dele Momodu??

He owns the a magazine called the OVATION

Aloy~Emeka:

Not totally, BecomeRich must be allowed to roam free for entertainment purposes.

Becoomrich is a lunatic. He needs to be in an asylum and not on a forum. The guy has drawn more maps than my geography lecturer @ university.

Jarus:

MY LASTEST EXCHANGE WITH DELE MOMODU
Dear Nairalanders,
Sequel to the request here that I get their messages across to DM, I sent him this mail:

. . . and almost immediately he replied thus:


If you have specific questions you want to direct to DM, send to me and I will get them across to him. I don't want to convince him to join Nairaland himself  as some people may go overboard and might lead to exchange of tantrums and it will be embarrassing to have news across the country that Dele and some people are exchanging vituperations on NL.

Let's see what we can do. . . .

Any one holding his breath is waiting in vain.
I started reading Dele Momodu's columns since 1989 and only stopped reading Ovation a few years back.
Dele Momodu is incapable of a perspective devoid of ass licking, name dropping and
exagerrations.
When the coming revolution of the Nigerian space arrives, his type shall reap all they
have sown.
Men and women who sieve truth through the basket of convenience.
Segun Adeniyi wrote more persuasive articles, where is he today?
You cannot serve God and mammon. A time worn truth that the likes of Dele Momodu are
unable to appreciate.
How can you celebrate the oppressor while claiming to serve the oppressed?

on a more serious note, Jarus, you need to make that contact with Mr. Peterside.
that is the sole member of the elite whose words and conduct i trust (almost).

@Kosovo

I wanted to ask the same thing.

[b][/b]I had followed this thread from the start. I have nothing else to say other than the fact already enunciated by a few posters. Dele Momodu had at one point in time,wine and dine and also sang the praise-maybe through photos- of those who were reputed to have plundered this country.

The said DM is trying as I could guess put forth a new image. One that says, I'm an activist and I'm concerned,very concern about the current deplorable state of the country, I may be of help. The only problem is, he is got a reputation.


No doubt that, DM may be interested in leadership role,in politics-this is his Gd given right as a Nigerian-the problem with this however, is that we fear if he would be like one of the people he celebrated or if he truly is now "very concern" about our present plight.

Its very hard though, for the youths today to overlook the fact that, DM was published thieving politicians and even 419s. Then again as some posted noted, he was trying to earn a living, he used the politicians and 419s to gain that popularity. This same popularity is by all means is current undoing.That's the way life goes.

My recommendation for DM: start publishing hard working Nigerians who are actually patriotic, those who are charitable from their little earnings. Please, DM, use your Ovation magizine to clean your image, not rhetoric. Change the style,search for Nigerians who teach for free in secondary schools, organize JAMB lessons for free, paying school fees of kids unrelated to them.
Its time to herald the TRUE PARTRIOTS.

So, dude, be a man! Dele Momodu will not beat you.

@ Jarus, be a man your Bros. will not beat you !

LOL @ fidelio's advice.

Ok, let me attempt to send that thread to Peterside and see if he's ready to comment on the knocks and kudos Nairalanders gave him.

THE HUNTER AND HIS ANTELOPE, BY MOMODU, The hoopla generated by my column last week was not unexpected. It was not uncommon in this clime for motives to be read into everything. No one ever died in peace, or of natural ailments. He must have died of supernatural causes. It is unfortunate that we have not been able to cure some of our people of this malady of paranoia. Such is the dilemma of a writer. No matter what you do, some people must read motives to your action. Anyone who has followed my career would know how I have remained committed to writing with passion and conviction. In reality, how many Nigerians can criticize their friends or tell them the home truth when they are in control of power, wealth and influence, the way I have done these past 20 years? Is it not to my credit that I’m bold enough to risk my friendship and business for our nation by telling powerful rulers what they hate to hear?
As we grew up, I was always fascinated by the hunter’s tales. And those tales served a didactic purpose. The hunter was always depicted in many forms. He was a man of power. He was a man of magic. He was the fearless one who paraded the thick forests in search of animals to hunt down. On a bad day, and there were always many of such days, he may have returned home with nothing but wasted bullets, and bruises to his body. On other days, if he was lucky enough, he may have returned with some squirrels and grass-cutters. But on a special day, he may have shot down the antelope, the king of bush-meats. That’s when the whole village would come out to gossip about the big catch of the day. No one ever remembers what the hunter went through to get his antelope.
That is the story of the embattled Chief Executive Officers of some Nigerian banks who were summarily sacked by Sanusi Lamido Sanusi two weeks ago. Those who reacted against my article of last week, “The Rise and Fall of Man”, certainly missed the point. My opinion on the subject was simple and straight-forward. The job of an opinion writer is not to follow the crowd. It is to lead the crowd. Since I understand the temperament of our people, it was my duty to attempt to lower the temperature of the raging debate. And remind our people that we must always hold the rule of law sacrosanct in a matter where there was equal support and opposition. Expectedly, since we did not support the kill-and-go approach, I and others like Ijeoma Nwogwugwu must have been bought by our friends, the oppressors, according to their jejune theory.
Out of the five MDs that were guillotined, I knew only two, Dr Erastus Akingbola and Mrs. Cecilia Ibru, of Intercontinental Bank and Oceanic Bank, respectively. Intercontinental Bank never advertised in Ovation magazine in the over 13 years of our existence. As fate would have it, I had even called Akingbola on August 13 to complain about how his bank had failed to support our international magazine but was busy advertising on the walls of Heathrow Airport and on CNN. He was removed the following day. If I was a vindictive person, like some of those shouting “kill-them” now, this is the time to take a pound of flesh. But my faith has not taught me so. No one can deny the immense contributions of these embattled bankers to the development of banking in Africa despite the present hullabaloo. As for Mrs. Ibru, we only met once in her bank many years ago, and on three other occasions at public functions. No more. Unknown to our attackers, the rich and powerful mostly fear, and usually patronize, those publications that are capable of bringing them down. And we are not in that category.
I will defend the fundamental rights of anyone regardless of the alleged offence he may have committed. The reason is very simple. I have been a victim of success and rumour-mongering in my life. I also know what it is to build an institution. It is similar to the tale of the hunter and his antelope. No one ever saw me as I crawled through the bush of Cotonou to escape from Nigeria under General Sani Abacha. Not many people saw us when my wife and I slept by our son on a single six-by-four bed in London. There were not many to turn to at the time we had no money to buy ordinary duvet in wintery London. No one saw us as I dragged my wife who fell into labour at night, and our kid, into a taxi to get to a London hospital. Nobody saw us when bailiffs kicked us out of our offices for owing debts due to lack of funding. No one was there to see how our landlady came to evict us with the help of a Jamaican thug, and I cried like a baby. I can go on and on. No one could ever feel our pain the way we did. It was the pain of the hunter and his antelope.
But some of my staff almost went on riot when they heard I bought a house in London, and just imagine that it was bought on mortgage. And when I bought a second-hand Bentley at 42, for less than the price of a new Honda Accord, some friends grumbled that I was too flamboyant. Suddenly, I had joined the class of oppressors. No one remembered that some students I taught at A-level in 1982/83 were already Bank Directors. To them, I was not entitled to any such measure of comfort in life even if I had worked tediously and could afford it. Must we all look wretched to show that we love the poor? Our country can discourage anyone from doing good as I told Oby Ezekwesili days ago. Dr. Tai Solarin had been accused of selling out, just for wearing an unusual agbada at a People’s Bank function. Please, how did this constitute a problem to Nigeria?
Just imagine that I run a magazine that is largely pictorial. In the early days, some people had complained that we published a photo album. But when it became popular, the same people said we glorified some rogues by showing their events on our pages. I’m labeled a praise-singer for using our cameras to capture the reality of our existence as fun-loving people. I’m to blame if a man decides to marry his tenth wife. Or decides to bury his father in grand style. But the musicians, event-planners, comedians and MCs, caterers, aso ebi (uniforms’ sellers), make-up artists, ushers, security guards, officiating priests, tailors, television stations, photographers, newspapers and magazines, undertakers, jewelers, area boys and others were free to do business, except me. The price of success must indeed be heavy. I try to imagine what those bankers have gone through to climb to the top, which Sanusi has wiped out with one stroke of his pen.
As for my column last week, there was no where I suggested that the Bank MDs could not be sanctioned by the Central Bank of Nigeria. There was no where I said the MDs were not culpable in the acts that violated and compromised their positions as custodians of people’s money. There were mistakes made, like all humans. As analyzed by the great banker and entrepreneur, Atedo Peterside, in a text he sent to me last Saturday: “The sad truth is that, anywhere in the world, relying continuously on liquidity support from your regulator (Central Bank of Nigeria in this case) as a ‘lender of last resort’ is a dangerous game. If the ‘game’ continues for too long, your ‘liquidity’ problem will become synonymous with insolvency and as CEO of that institution you become very vulnerable because the regulator will inevitably wield his axe someday”. He is right.
But I insist that Sanusi, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, went overboard and certainly beyond his mandate. He apparently did not weigh his hasty actions against the general interest of our country as well as the historical dialectics of our nation. He would have realized the problems of Nigeria were far greater than that of those five bank executives. Scapegoatism has never worked in Nigeria. He should look back at the recent past when a few governors were being impeached in the middle of the night. And some Nigerians hailed the action. I will continue to say that we can’t set a whole village on fire just to catch a few rats. What have we gained in concrete terms? Nothing drastic has been done to investigate and prosecute the former President, the multitude of governors, ministers, legislators (States and Federal) special advisers, board members, and others who have served these past ten years. The same fate shall befall this crusade.
I have three reasons for my assertion. The present composition, and the very origin, of this administration, makes it impossible for any meaningful war to be fought and won. The second is that only a benevolent and visionary dictator, and clear-headed revolutionaries, can truly fight the cancer that corruption has become in Nigeria, because nearly everyone is guilty. Even the elder statesman, Alhaji Maitama Sule said that much last week. My third theory is that the likes of Nuhu Ribadu, Nasir el-Rufai, Oby Ezekwesili, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and company, would only be able to push their revolutionary ideas when they are able to acquire executive powers at the very top. The Nigerian State is run by a few oligarchs who are intricately intertwined, and too difficult to disentangle. Sanusi would soon be frustrated like Ribadu.
I believe Sanusi was too much in a haste to show his bite. If he was not in a hurry, he would have audited all the banks at once. And award penalties without favour or discrimination. The criminalization of a few people, when less than half of the banks have been audited is, to say the least, reckless and disastrous. There was no indication that he spent sufficient time with the indicted MDs to pursue the possibility of redemption. The same Sanusi who told us at home that he would give the banks back to their owners if they can meet some stringent conditions went abroad to gleefully announce that the banks were up for sale. He must have been encouraged by the applause he got from the kill-and-go choir.
What stopped Sanusi from publishing the complete list of all debtors in all the banks? Why didn’t he throw all these debtors into jail the same way he dealt with the Bank MDs? Why is the Federal Government diverting our attention from the lack of progress in the investigation and prosecution of so many members of its ruling party? And in truth, it is an established fact that the government is a pathological debtor, and one of the veritable sources of the huge debt portfolio of some of the banks and businesses. Why did we not adopt the less destructive measures of the Americans?
The global economic crisis was largely due to the subprime mortgage lending fiasco of the US economy, where banks greedily invested their deposits as loans to the mortgage sector. This was the same way our Nigerian banks made the terminal mistake of over-exposing themselves to the Stock Market. The higher the return in any business, the higher the risk. The crisis in America nearly wiped out the capital base of some of the biggest financial icons, such as Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sach. Also, top European Banks like UBS, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays were affected.
Their home governments rose to the challenges by rolling out workable packages, under strict terms, but without our own theatre of the absurd. Foreigners were not invited to take over the banks, and their assets were not sold off, like it is being threatened in Nigeria. Those foreign banks have since recovered and are bouncing back to profitability, in an atmosphere devoid of rancor and gangsterism.
Finally, I'm not a lawyer, but I have a fair knowledge of Jurisprudence. There are three principles that we must consider. The first is NEMO JUDEX IN CAUSA SUA (A man shall not be a judge in his own cause). It is difficult to see Sanusi as a total and unbiased umpire. The second is NEMO DAT QUOD NON HABET (You can’t give out what you don’t own!), which is what Sanusi has done by sacking the MDs. And by dishing out their banks to outsiders of his choice, without making recommendations to their board, or giving them warnings and deadlines; by harassing them and their homes with forces of coercion, by freezing their personal accounts, by publishing confidential bank statements of clients etc, he has already convicted them!
The damage is total and almost irreversible in a country like ours, even if any of them is cleared tomorrow. In fact, what Sanusi has breached is the third principle of AUDI ALTERAN PARTEM RULE (The right to fair-hearing), and some of us are too forward-looking to allow such lawlessness to stick. Sanusi has combined the duties of a Complainant, Prosecutor, Advocate for the Prosecutor, Star witness, the Bailiff, and the Gaoler. It is very tragic.


FROM THIS DAYONLINE, 4TH SEPT.I think this Dele guy is confused

"No one ever died in peace, or of natural ailments. . . . "

I have to admit the man can write, and for that I always respected him. In fact I enjoyed his writings for his wit, candour and show of intellect. I don't know the politics of his connections to the supposed corruptible high and mighty. Just please let's not take his contributions to Nigerian society and his struggle for our democracy from him.

@ moves:

This is no PHD syndrome, I totally agree with Youngies that Bob D (as popularly referred) could be an hypocrite. In my opinion, the man is just a business man who has decided to pitch his tent with the highest spenders.

I can vividly remember the same man, come up on national tv years back, saying that GSM is not for every Nigerian. Using himself (being a Yoruba man- who wakes up to call his kids in the UK every morning) as an illustration. But i can guarantee u that the same man would sing another song if asked the same question today.

Mrcrackles is gradually rubbing off on Kobojunkie. Now he/she is out calling very one Agberos, very soon He/she would start soaking halle belle and urging people to gaggle or cackle.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, SOMEONE SHOULD PLS TELL DELE OF HIS GURT. I HATE HIS GURT, FOR HIS TOUGHT AND TALK TO WE IN NAIRALANDER, WE ARE NOT A PAPER HE WROTE ON &CALLED MAGAZINE ETC, WE ARE HUMAN AND CAN DO BETTER. DELE SHOULD LEARN HOW TO TALK, MOSTLY TO A CONTRIBUTIONS OF PEOPLE LIKE THIS, I GUESS HE'S TAKING NAIRALANDER PPLE FOR GRANTED, IF NOT HE WOULDN'T BE TALKING IN PARABLES OR INDIRECT INSULT TO NAIRALANDER'S. STILL SOME PPLE HERE ARE VERY WEEK TO UNDERSTAND HIS INDIRECT INSULT OR (I DON'T CARE STYLE). I THINK HE RATHER LEARN SOME POINT HERE THAN BEING WISER THAN US ON NAIRALANDER BY HIS GARRULOUS EXCUSES HERE. MIND HIM MOST OF US HERE LIVE IN ABROAD BUT CONCERN ABOUT OUR COUNTRY AND PPLE WHO STAND AS CELEBRITIES THERE, because ANY ACT OF THEM AFFECT OTHER NIGERIANS. EXAMPLE OUR PASSPORT IS NOT RECOGNIZE AGAIN, BUT NOT FROM MASSES BUT FROM THEM WE PUT ON TOP TO MAKE GOOD NAME OF THIS COUNTRY AND ENDED UP AS A CRIMINALS

Can someone put this man out of his misery?

and after all these, does he (bob D) really care about all your rantings, all he wants, he's to make more money from his magazine and may be end up a politician.

I really dont blame him, cos in my country u put ur mouth where ur money is, you dont expect him to come and dine and wine with the poor, where he has all the rich guys at his disposal.

And those asking, why he keeps referring to MKO in all his write-ups, MKO was his mentor, and introduced him to theiving politicians in nigerian

ObamaUS:


I will defend the fundamental rights of anyone regardless of the alleged offence he may have committed.

As for my column last week, there was no where I suggested that the Bank MDs could not be sanctioned by the Central Bank of Nigeria. There was no where I said the MDs were not culpable in the acts that violated and compromised their positions as custodians of people’s money. There were mistakes made, like all humans.

But I insist that Sanusi, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, went overboard and certainly beyond his mandate. He apparently did not weigh his hasty actions against the general interest of our country as well as the historical dialectics of our nation. He would have realized the problems of Nigeria were far greater than that of those five bank executives. Scapegoatism has never worked in Nigeria. He should look back at the recent past when a few governors were being impeached in the middle of the night. And some Nigerians hailed the action. I will continue to say that we can’t set a whole village on fire just to catch a few rats. What have we gained in concrete terms? Nothing drastic has been done to investigate and prosecute the former President, the multitude of governors, ministers, legislators (States and Federal) special advisers, board members, and others who have served these past ten years. The same fate shall befall this crusade.

I believe Sanusi was too much in a haste to show his bite. If he was not in a hurry, he would have audited all the banks at once. And award penalties without favour or discrimination. The criminalization of a few people, when less than half of the banks have been audited is, to say the least, reckless and disastrous.[/color] There was no indication that he spent sufficient time with the indicted MDs to pursue the possibility of redemption.


The same Sanusi who told us at home that he would give the banks back to their owners if they can meet some stringent conditions went abroad to gleefully announce that the banks were up for sale. He must have been encouraged by the applause he got from the kill-and-go choir.[color=#990000]

What stopped Sanusi from publishing the complete list of all debtors in all the banks? Why didn’t he throw all these debtors into jail the same way he dealt with the Bank MDs?

The global economic crisis was largely due to the subprime mortgage lending fiasco of the US economy, where banks greedily invested their deposits as loans to the mortgage sector. This was the same way our Nigerian banks made the terminal mistake of over-exposing themselves to the Stock Market. The higher the return in any business, the higher the risk. The crisis in America nearly wiped out the capital base of some of the biggest financial icons, such as Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sach. Also, top European Banks like UBS, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays were affected.
Their home governments rose to the challenges by rolling out workable packages, under strict terms, but without our own theatre of the absurd. Foreigners were not invited to take over the banks, and their assets were not sold off, like it is being threatened in Nigeria. Those foreign banks have since recovered and are bouncing back to profitability, in an atmosphere devoid of rancor and gangsterism.

Finally, I'm not a lawyer, but I have a fair knowledge of Jurisprudence. There are three principles that we must consider. The first is NEMO JUDEX IN CAUSA SUA (A man shall not be a judge in his own cause). It is difficult to see Sanusi as a total and unbiased umpire. The second is NEMO DAT QUOD NON HABET (You can’t give out what you don’t own!), which is what Sanusi has done by sacking the MDs. And by dishing out their banks to outsiders of his choice, without making recommendations to their board, or giving them warnings and deadlines; by harassing them and their homes with forces of coercion, by freezing their personal accounts, by publishing confidential bank statements of clients etc, he has already convicted them!
The damage is total and almost irreversible in a country like ours, even if any of them is cleared tomorrow. In fact, what Sanusi has breached is the third principle of AUDI ALTERAN PARTEM RULE (The right to fair-hearing), and some of us are too forward-looking to allow such lawlessness to stick. Sanusi has combined the duties of a Complainant, Prosecutor, Advocate for the Prosecutor, Star witness, the Bailiff, and the Gaoler. It is very tragic.


FROM THIS DAYONLINE, 4TH SEPT.I think this Dele guy is confused

I think Dele momodu made valid  points on the issue of  the sacked MDs.

The only question i wanna ask Dele Momodu is: will Chief MKO abiola be happy with u celebrating all this pple if he was still alive?

i want u to think about that questionn very deeply cos we all know what MKO was killed for and since u claim he is your mentor,will ur mentor be happy with you celebrating the likes of ibrahim babangida?
food for thought gor you dele

“Flatterers are the worst kind of traitors, for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing, but so shadow and paint thy follies and vices as thou shalt never, by their will, discover good from evil, or vice from virtue.
- Sir Walter Raleigh

There is something pernicious in a columnist who devotes himself in blaming the people of Nigeria for the folly foisted on the polity by the same leaders he devotes his entire career praising and adulating. That columnist happened by the way to be This Day’s gypsy writer: Dele Momodu, a self confessed purveyor of junk journalism, someone whose claim to fame is etched in flattery of celebrities; from Shina Peters to M.KO. Abiola; from Dora Akunyili to Terry Wayas of this world.

One can safely conclude that Dele Momodu had never found a government official he can’t flatter, because he never found a Nigerian government official he cannot patronize. The sad state of journalism in Nigeria is such that some of our journalism has turned patronage into a profitable enterprise. First they will take a deliberate jibe at a celebrity or political office holder, excoriating him/her for a well deserved non performance in office. Once you do that, pronto the particular politician will come running to you for favors. You then load your subsequent write up/column with the usual pejoratives praising their supposed “sagacity”, something you have suddenly discovered after you met with him/her.

Meanwhile, the people these so called government official are supposed to serve continue to suffer with little or nothing to show as democracy dividends. This indeed is where the likes of Dele Momodu hurt not only their credibility but the very institution of journalism that brought them into prominence. We all know that in journalism, to be persuasive, you must be believable; to be believable, you must be credible; to be credible, you must be truthful.

In his latest article in This Day, Momodu, consistent with his latest itinerary which allows him to junket around Africa on behalf of a corporate behemoth like Globalcom Network, get into a rhapsodic state of effusive praise for the host country president. What is not lost on us his readers is that we invariably know that this is usually a hollow attempt to launder the image of that president because it has recently approved GlobalCom business license.

Most salient readers knows that every time Mr. Momodu travels to any African nation two things will invariably follows: An effusive praise of that country leadership; be it Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and now Benin Republic, followed by an invective laden, crocodile tears about the sorry state of Nigeria. His latest installment follows his most recent trip to Benin where he found Benin to be an Eldora do where Nigerian are running in drove to due to the misrule of his friends in power.

The irony apparently is lost on him as he devoted three paragraphs in the same column to an effusive praise on President Umaru Musa Yar’adua; for settling a dispute between a member of his cabinet, and the Executive Director of National Communication Commission. He concluded that Yar’adua is a good man, because the latter reads newspaper.

My first retort is to yell, “Yes you are damn right he reads newspaper! I bet he reads your columns filled with flattery. After all, “the art of flatterers is to take advantage of the foibles of the great, to foster their errors, and never to give advice which may annoy.” When you keep blaming the customs man at Seme’s border whilst you excused the corruptions of ministers and ex-governors why will he not read the garbage you spew every week!”

The one thing that jumps out at me from his latest piece is the amount of "arguments" constructed on things like "I am beginning to think” , “it would probably”, “I should be able, ” , “We were forced to think, ”, “It was my conclusion”, “you probably, ", "I bet you, ", "I'm sure you, ", and the like. Assumption is piled on supposition, mixed with profanity, and sprinkled with pejorative, in an endless series of virtuoso displays of muddled thinking. No serious attempt to think through the policy permutations that led to the status quo on both sides of the border. No serious effort made to excoriate the authorities involved in the misrule going on in Nigeria. No attempt to challenge the re-branding crusade of his patron, Ms. Akunyili.

It is as if Momodu’s tortured logic bestrides the gargantuan facts like a colossus. Why would any serious governmental official take such write up seriously? An exercise in flattery superimposed with a contorted attempt to blame the masses for the wrongs of their leaders. Like Samuel Johnson famous quote: “"Men who stand in the highest ranks of society seldom hear of their faults; if by any accident an opprobrious clamor reaches their ears, flattery is always at hand to pour in her opiates, to quiet conviction and obtund remorse."

One can safely opine that the “shame on us” tour of Momodu is better directed exclusively at the “us” exemplified by Momodu’s and his cohorts in power. It is self evident that the mischief of flattery by the likes of Momodu’s perpetuates the corruption going on in Nigeria; as Edmund Burke rightly pointed out “Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.”

Francis Adewale

Spokane, WA

U.S.A

tioluwanimi@yahoo.com

na_so:

I think Dele momodu made valid  points on the issue of  the sacked MDs.

 Same here, Dont understand why people believe he doesnt have the right to express an opinion,
For those complaining that he cannot photograph the corruptly rich and in another medium slam them for being corrupt, Are these socalled corrupt complaining, so why are u guys drinking panadol for someone else headache, because commonsense will behove that the corrupt that he accuses of our pitifalls as a nation should be the one complaining whilst paying him to feature them in his Ovation magazine,

Can You guys name 1 publishing house/newspaper  in Nigeria that is not connected in someway to a purported corrupt elite,

@Xavier, you do not have to @MrCrackles to know the obvious, or do you?

We, as a people act as AGBEROs on the most part and that image continous to dog us even outside of the country. From Nigerian's in China to those here in the US. It is sort of hard to miss that when you witness a gathering of our folks. We act as if the world belongs to us and in pride reveal our inner AGBERO. If you tell me you never knew this until @MrCrackles probably mentioned it to you, then I worry about what else you do not already know of your own.


@Otukpo, does posting that on nairaland make it true? For all you know, I could even be from the same hamlet as you are from. All the wishes in the world will definitely not change that, if it were so.

I notice people are associating politics with Dele momodu. But bet me, He cannot make it in Nigerian politics. He doesn't even have the grit and gut. People are mistaken popularity to politics or political leadership, far fetch from it. Take for example; there is this socialist cum money bag, a US base and popularly called “bode D-way”. This guy contest and lost election in Kwara state 2007. I think at PDP primary level. Thinking that his popularity will help him out . What is Dele Momodu political antecedent to the masses? Does he really have the money to run in Nigeria? Let him stick to his photo journalism pls., and stop playing on our psychology

dele, slash the price of your ovation

I didn't read thru the whole thread, but from the little I've seen I must say that Nairalanders on average possess a unique form of poverty mentality!
Must we criticize everybody that has attained some form of success.
Abeg leave Dele Momodu alone! The guy is doing perfectly in his own space.

You people are still debating?

I like OVATION, Dele Momodu's photo album of celebrities and movers and shakers.

Dele Momodu was a co-sponsor of my "Sleepless Night" on the June 12 crisis in 2002.

I appreciate him.

nobilia:

Born praise singers, I hate you all. What has he said to address issues raised against him rather he found it a good time to promote Ovation and his facebook fans.
Dele didn't find it worthwhile to join issues with us on nairaland or defend our criticism and some of you are here praising him still.
I spit on you all two edged swords and praise singers. I stand on my words that Dele should limit his articles to praise singing and entertainment news, any article on national discourse from him is a no no for me.

BECAUSE THIS DELE OF A MAN HAS BEEN STRIPED OF THE RIGHT OF BEING A CITIZEN OF THE FEDERAL REPULIC OF NIGERIA, THAT IS WHY HE SHOULD
, (limit his articles to praise singing and entertainment news, and that any article from him on national discourse from him is a no no, (thank GOD at least it's for you!!!!!!!!!!


EASY WITH THE VERNOM, WOTS WITH ALL THE HATE HATE HATE, NA WAOOOO PPLE LIKE NO DEY WASTE TIME TO FIGHT FOR PUBLIC.

ABEG MY BRODA TAKE AM EASY,

ezeagu:

Well I don't blame you, it's because I decided to communicate with you that you think I am a fellow lunatic as yourself, nairaland's mad dog.  

BTW YOU LOOK CUTE ON UR PROFILE

peruso:





BTW YOU LOOK CUTE ON your PROFILE

*blushes*