A don, unknown grammarian and the use of English

An intriguing Letter to the Editor was published in The Guardian of last week Tuesday, August 26th in which the author, one Kehinde Olalemi, from Ibadan, Oyo State made an arresting attempt to apologise to Prof. Keye Abiona, a don in the University of Ibadan. His reason was that he cited errors in the Professor’s publications and had the audacity to draw the man’s attention to the purported blunders.

In print and on the web where it was published, I find Olalemi’s short letter as audacious as it was instructive, almost invoking the feeling that no right-thinking person should nurse any hesitation in joining him to apologise to a scholar of Professor Abiona’s standing who is not just one of those who brought prestige to the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) in Ibadan in those days, but is also a renowned writer, playwright and lecturer.

By his own account, Olalemi’s remorse submission stemmed from his alleged arrest, detention and extortion at the Eleyele Police Headquarters (SIB) in Ibadan on account of his temerity in claiming that Prof. Abiona committed some grammatical blunders in some of his books.  He had apparently sent an SMS to the professor about the supposed error in the books, but had subsequently received a phone call from two police officers, identified as Bayo and Mufutau Aselebe, acting on the order of the university professor. 

By his published account, he was picked up on Tuesday August 12 while eking out a living as an English language tutor at a tutorial centre at Agbowo in Ibadan. Olalemi’s narrative has an inclination for vivid recollection and how an alleged acolyte of his was also picked up from his office at the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), on a day that television stations were around to cover an event at the institute, gives an indication that here is a wordsmith that ignores no useful clue. It was at the police station, however, that Olalemi and his unidentified ‘acolyte’ met their alleged adversary, the angry Prof, who demanded to know what informed the young man’s interest in his books and his qualifications in the correct use of Queen’s English. 

The saga of August 12 eventually ended with Citizen Olalemi’s alleged detention for two days, by his own account, claiming he only regained his freedom after paying N10.000 (negotiated down from the initial N40.000) at the police station, an illegality, considering that bail is supposed to be free. Ostensibly, it must be part of the attempt to assuage Prof. Abiona, perhaps on Police’s advice, that a published apology in a national newspaper became imperative. 

But Olalemi’s letter did not turn out as mere apology to the person of Prof. Abiona as it appears on face value. It is as witty as it is weighty – somewhat passing off as an allegation that underscores a deep-rooted Nigerian malaise of perpetually chasing shadows. Anyone who appreciates good education and knowledge impartation would feel hurt when unsolicited critique of an academic or creative work is done, especially with a tinge of malice. It is even worse if the challenging authority is of lesser or doubtful qualification.

So, when Olalemi says he is “contrite” in tendering an unreserved apology to the “revered and renowned professor Abiona” for spotting grammatical errors in his work, is he thinking that sorry is sufficient or he is subtly throwing up the issue into the people’s parliament?

How could this unknown grammarian not envisage a dire consequence for poking his nose into a matter in which knowledge of the Thesaurus alone may not save him? How could he not know that even if what he regarded as errors survive scholarly scrutiny, they could have been a mere printer’s devil for which the Professor may not necessarily be liable? How can he be sure that the errors he spotted were not contained in old prints that the Professor’s publishers neglected to mop up? What really would make this ordinary tutorial centre teacher correct a Professor and accuse him of committing a blunder? Could it be a question of provoked pen or a mere stunt to ride on a known name for fame? If this is not anti-scholarship, does he not know that it is at least unAfrican?

I suspect that Olalemi has been reading Malcom Gladwell’s David & Goliath: Underdogs, misfits and the art of battling giants, but should he not care that it shouldn’t be from Nigeria’s premier university that he should seek a sparring partner? Has he not been taught sufficient lesson that even the police could be at the beck and call of an intellectual whose reputation may have been injured by an overzealous neophyte? 

Sure, an apology deserves to be offered, but it is somewhat doubtful if it is the one published in The Guardian.  Scholarship lends itself to debate, verification and openness and as such the bone of contention – the alleged errors – ought to be examined if only to educate an audacious teacher for his insouciance and redirect the minds of his students to the line of proper education as far as English language is concerned.

Otherwise this might look like a case of using professorial influence as a decoy to cow a courageous, albeit indiscreet fault finder; in which case the many students and readers of Prof. Abiona’s books would have been the unsuspecting victims of flawed text. 

Steve Ayorinde