Some gods and kings ate their sons in Greek mythology. Crazy caution made some of them conscious cannibals. A dead and eaten son cannot kill his father. Cronus killed his father, Uranus, by castrating him. Cronus was asked to do it by Gaia, his mother, who was tired of being made pregnant by Uranus, her son, who had become her husband.
Cronus, to escape a possible fatal filial fury, ate his children at birth. He had killed his own father. He did not discriminate, eating both male and female offspring. But one of the babies survived. Zeus was hidden by his mother and he returned as an adult to kill his father.
s was a king and not a god. He was an accidental cannibal. He was served his son on a plate by his queen, the boy’s mother. The queen was named Procne and she had a sister called Philomela. They were the daughters of Pandion, the king of Athens. Tereus, Procne’s husband, was the king of Daulis.
s raped Philomela and severed her tongue to stop her from telling Procne about her violation. But Philomela managed to convey to her sister her ordeal at the hands of Tereus. Procne used their son Itys to prepare a dish for the king to deal him a devastating blow.
The lives of many mythical Greeks revolved somewhat unhealthily around sex. Cronus castrated his father. Tereus raped Philomela. Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. A man who is cuckolded must feel castrated.
Tension between father and son throbs in several Greek myths. Oedipus’s father, King Laius, tried to kill him as a child after an oracle told him that his son would supplant him as king and in the romantic affection of his wife, the boy’s mother.
Dr. Gbenga Obasanjo has made allegations against his father, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, that suggest that his father is another King Laius, a man who seeks the destruction of his own son. He claimed he was cuckolded by his elderly father.
A magazine published in January 2006 an interview it claimed Dr. Obasanjo granted one of its stringers. Dr. Obasanjo protested that he had not granted a formal interview, that he had been under the impression that he was chatting with a fellow Nigerian that he had given a ride in his car.
Dr. Obasanjo was unguarded in speaking about his father to his passenger. In the column published on Friday, 20 January, 2006, I asked: ‘Is there something Oedipal about Dr. Gbenga Obasanjo’s relationship with his father? Does he resent his father for something he has done and wants to exact a mentally painful revenge?’
I continued: ‘There may have been verisimilitude in Dr. Obasanjo’s verbal victimisation of his father, President Olusegun Obasanjo. But he should not have been so casually free with his opinions about his father. It is possible, of course, that his artlessness was studied insouciance and not that of a young, unschooled child.’
Chief Obasanjo has a reputation for philandering. His son hinted at this in the ‘interview’ and I made this comment in the column from which I have already quoted: ‘Dr. Obasanjo called his father, though in a somewhat oblique way, a Lothario. A Lothario at over 70! Imagine calling his father a dirty old man!’
Dr. Obasanjo told his passenger that he was getting a divorce. But he said nothing about his father’s alleged betrayal being the cause of the collapse of his marriage. He made the allegation after his estranged wife’s counter affidavit. He claimed that his father had enjoyed an abnormally close relationship with his wife.
Chief Obasanjo is generally hated—he was loud and lordly as president—and many people have pronounced him guilty of the infamy of seducing his son’s wife. Even ordinarily intelligent people have not suspended judgement; they have jumped to conclusions with the instinct of a rabbit leaping to get a carrot. People with rotten private lives have sat comfortably in judgement over Chief Obasanjo.
Dr. Obasanjo has made an allegation that he has not yet proved. He stated that he knew ‘for a fact’ that his father misbehaved with his wife. A fact is sometimes fancy. A fact is not a physical pillar. It is a conception and not concrete. A fact is like an architectural plan that needs bricks to give it solid structure and appealing shape. Dr. Obasanjo has hurled brickbats and it is time to produce the bricks of believability. He should deploy his troops of substantiable proof.
There was proof that Xerxes I of Persia, a warrior king, had slept with his son’s wife. When Xerxes failed to interest his brother’s wife in a physical relationship, he turned his lustful attention to her daughter, his son’s wife. Her name was Artaynte.
Artaynte fell for the blandishments of her father-in-law and uncle. The king cuckolded his son Darius. Xerxes’s wife suspected and set a trap for the cheating couple. Amestris, Xerxes’s wife, got her proof and took revenge on Artaynte’s mother. Xerxes was murdered by one of his officials in 465 BC.
Does Dr. Obasanjo’s anger with his father have more to do with bequests than betrayal? In the ‘interview’ published in the magazine, Dr. Obasanjo said he was flat broke. Dr. Obasanjo has impressive, even outstanding, qualifications. Why did he not get a regular job? It seems he expected his father, who was the president of Nigeria, to put easy millions into his bank accounts.
The ‘interview’ published in the magazine must have created a permanent rupture in father-son relationship. There is no question that the ‘interview’ angered Chief Obasanjo. Dr. Obasanjo did not attend any of the ceremonies marking his father 70th birthday, which came after the ‘interview’ was published.
Some children who feel unwanted lash out at their parents, especially their fathers. Dr. Obasanjo was dominated by two extremely rich men, his father and his father-in-law. He is better educated than both men, but they possess the resources that count in the Nigerian society.
Dr. Obasanjo has made serious allegations against the two men. Did his wife actually tell him that her father had sexually abused her? There was an epidemic of ‘false memory syndrome’ in the United States in the 1990s. Many women claimed that they had suddenly remembered that their fathers sexually abused them as children. They had the recollections during ‘recovered memory therapy’ sessions.
Many of the men accused by their daughters were hounded by the media and some of them were charged with incestuous child abuse. But it was soon discovered that the women’s memories had played them false.
Of course, there are sick men who sexually abuse their daughters. One white South African raped his three teenage daughters with the help of his wife, the girls’ mother. A Camerounian recently admitted in court that he had coerced his 16-year-old daughter into having sex with him. His daughter is carrying his baby.
Bazarov, the protagonist in Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, is a nihilist. He holds his father and men of his generation in contempt. He is a scientist and sneers at sonnets. He wants the old order destroyed.
Bazarov returns home and his doting parents are overjoyed. He still snaps at his parents, but not as often as in the past. He has one or two agreeable conversations with his father. Then Bazarov catches typhus and asks a favour of his father. There is unspoken reconciliation with his parents. The old couple regularly visit their son’s grave.
Dr. Obasanjo’s grave allegation against his father may have made reconciliation impossible. And if Chief Obasanjo betrayed his son, his behaviour is execrable and unforgivable.
MEND should be seen by all as a terrorist organisation. The movement must be crushed at all costs as it does not represent the true yearnings and aspirations of the Niger Deltans.
Its leaders must be charged by the United Nations with war crimes and crimes against humanity. - King Yemmy Adu, Benin City
All militant groups in the Niger Delta should desist from this criminality under the veil of struggling for improved living standards.-
tribune.com.ng
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