By Abdulrasheed Saadudeeen
A brief political remark by Dr Lawal Olohungbebe has generated an unusually intense backlash. What should ordinarily have remained a contest of political opinions has increasingly become an attempt to put his education, professional record, and personal integrity on trial.
That deserves a pause.
Politics thrives on disagreement. Public officials will be challenged and their words scrutinised. That is democracy. But criticism of what someone says should not become an attack on who the person is.
Hannah Arendt, the German-American political thinker who wrote extensively about truth and political power, understood this tension. She warned about the danger that political interests could blur the boundaries between facts, opinions, and manufactured narratives.
That distinction matters here.
Olohungbebe’s choice of words may be questioned. It may even be considered unnecessarily sharp. But being provocative, politically inconvenient, or even wrong does not amount to intellectual or professional dishonesty.
His worldview also recognises that political outcomes are beyond the absolute control of individuals. Political participation is, therefore, an exercise in conviction, while the outcome belongs to the people and, in his faith, ultimately to God.
This is the burden of political honesty: speaking from conviction without pretending to know tomorrow.
Perhaps our politics needs less personalisation of disagreement and more engagement with ideas.
For when every uncomfortable political opinion becomes an invitation to attack the character of the person who expressed it, we risk creating a politics in which everyone speaks cautiously, but nobody speaks honestly.
