The case for plain English in Nigerian politics

“We must halt this ludicrously lugubrious kakistocracy. We must demur against demurred. No onomatopoetic extrapolation intended. The quotidian stentorian atrabilious ululation is abyssopelagic. The country is on a precipice of apocalyptic crepuscule.”

Chief of Staff to the Edo State governor,
Mr Patrick Obahiagbon

Whilst some organisations and governmental institutions in Britain are campaigning for the use of plain English in public, hence, the award of Crystal Mark, some individuals in Nigerian government are embracing jargon and gobbledygook in English communication.

Some Nigerians find the Chief of Staff to the Edo State governor, Mr Patrick Obahiagbon funny, others think his communication in English language is completely meaningless and is made unintelligible by excessive use of technical terms.

Below are 10 famous quotes by Patrick Obahiagbon during various debates in Nigeria. It’s your call. You decide if you would like a debate with this Nigerian government official.

1. Instead of saying we must investigate and put aviation right, or else we all die flying. Obahiagbon said “We must halt this ludicrously lugubrious kakistocracy. “We must halt this ludicrously lugubrious kakistocracy. We must demur against demurred. No onomatopoetic extrapolation intended. The quotidian stentorian atrabilious ululation is abyssopelagic. The country is on a precipice of apocalyptic crepuscule.”

2. He could have said, I am shocked that John Obi Mikel did not get the award as the African Footballer of the Year. Yaya Toure shouldn’t have gotten the award.
He said “I am maniacally bewildered, overgasted and flabber whelmed at the paraplegic crinkum crankum that characterised the Glo CAF awards culminating in an odoriferous saga cum gargantuan gaga!

The jiggery pokery of CAF in crowning Yaya Toure instead of our very own prodigy John Obi Mikel is a veritable bugaboo that must be pooh-poohed bya all compos mentis homo sapiens! The perfidy and mendacity of all the apparatchic of sports suzerainty is not only repugnant but also insalubrious!”

3. Obahiagbon could have said something like, Nigeria’s system of government is not democracy. Instead, he said: “A celebration of democracy or a deprecable apotheosis of an hemorrhaging plutocracy, cascading into a mobocracy with all the ossifying proclivities of a kakistocracy? with our ‘democracy’ enveloped in a paraplegic crinkum-crankum, we must all rise up to bring to docal hiceps and biceps, Nigeria’s Pluto-mobo-kakstocracy… certainly not democracy!”

4. He was asked to comment about the death of Nelson Mandela, and he said: “Alas the last of the great Titans… The great one who pricked himself on a senticous bush as he pushed for the freedom of his people from oppression. An epitome of sophronisation… We shall not cry, rather we will celebrate a life truly well lived… Rest in peace Madiba…”

5. He has this to say about the death of Ghana’s President: “President Professor John Atta Mills’ passing on is a mere ephemeral recumbent hibernation; an empyrean paradisiac rendezvous lies ahead. Heaven is the terminus. The ecclesiatic, executive and legislature and all Ghanaians at large have lost a solitaire. Any veritable verification of the verity of President Professor John Evans Atta Mills’s demise? I am in a state of metagrabolised melancholia.”

6. Below is what he thinks of the death of Anthony Enahoro – Nigeria’s anti-colonial and pro-democracy activists. “Certainly the fall of another titan. Chief Anthony Enahoro’s modus vivendi, whilst he peregrinated through this will-o-the-wisp of a three dimensional world, resonated with a divine halo of an iconic personage who was propelled by the PIRKEAVOTHIAN apothegm which urges man to realise that the day is short and the work is great. No wonder that – from a very young age, he engaged in self abnegation and mortification of the flesh in a Spartan, clinical and cerebral bid to salvage the Nigerian project even at the expense of his health infrastructure. He ceaselessly fulminated against vagabonds in power whose primus mobile had philistinic anchorage in a depreciably mindless crave for vacuous hedonism and ingratiating megalomania.”

7. Obahiagbon did not support the government’s plan to increase the cost of petrol. He said: “I have read with acatalectic disgust, governments asinine and puerile ratiocinations attempting to justiceate the proposed removal of subsidies from petroleum products. It has asserverated that it’s intentions is guided by the need to checkmate the odoriferous excesses of a Machiavellian and Mephistophelean cabal and I have said to myself, what a shame? what a self-indicting admittal of the failure of governance? What an hocus-pocus?”

8.His tribute to the Ikemba – Chief Odimegwu Ojukwu “The invitation to the Celestial Lodge of the soul personality of the irrefrangible and suigeneris Ikemba himself Dim Odimegwu Ojukwu brings again to focal hiceps and biceps the ephemerality of life. Beyond the state of lachrymoseism his celestial ascension has and would continue to righteously bestir. I do hope however, that we take immutable cognition of the fact that the fundamental issues which Ikemba confronted has now even coagulated and ossified into gorgon medusa.

For Nigeria to progress, we must apotheosize our centripetal proclivities above our centrifugal excrescence, All hail the Ikemba.”

9. His view about church leaders is “I cast my vote for Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah and Pastor Tunde Bakare in their demosthenic vitriol against spiritual megalomaniacs whose modus vivendi has become increasing byzantine and repulsive narcissistic. We must all begin to deprecate this razzmatazz and Nestorial braggadocio in the ‘House of God’ because when there is no difference between the values of a pastor and a typical Nigerian politician, then it’s truly a bolekaja ambience…”

10. Here he shares his opinion about the Christian Easter season: “As we join Christians in the celebration of Easter, may we truly reflect on the quintessential modus vivendi of Master Jesus The Christ who peregrinated this incarnation as an exempli gatia of self abnegation, puritanical excrescence, spartan discipline, mental, magnitude, hierophantic candour and altruistic effusions, qualities which have become a desiderata for national resurgimento.”

The independent Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland has told prosecutors that their reliance on legal jargon confuses the public.

Inspectors demanded that the Crown Office’s Response and Information Unit (RIU) respond using plain English. They also suggested that the RIU avoid using terminology unless they’re prepared to explain it.

One case involved a woman who wanted to know why her elderly husband had been arrested and kept in a cell overnight. The response she received included phrases like ‘appear from custody’, ‘libelled a charge’ and ‘liberated on an undertaking’.

Whilst the Scottish and English government are doing their best to eradicate jargons, the Nigerian legislature are using words like “ludicrously lugubrious kakistocracy.”