•‘No, he victimised me because he couldn’t stand criticism’
Mr Keye Abiona, you write ‘Boko Haramic’ English. You are a fecund pen though. From Kehinde Olalemi, Africa’s best English Language teacher.”
The above was a text message sent to a professor in the Adult Education Department of the University of Ibadan by a man who later and still claims that his right to freedom has been trampled upon, unjustly, by the don.
In this unfolding drama, which started since July, Kehinde Olalemi has been in and out of police detention for two days, and had to pay, according to him, N10,000 to the police to secure his bail.
But Professor Abiona insists that contrary to the impression created by this self-acclaimed ‘Africa’s best English language teacher’ that he was victimised by him, he (the professor) was actually the victim of harassment.
Currently, the police are on the case conducting investigations. And from Saturday Tribune’s investigation, it may eventually have to be resolved in the court of law, as the professor is aggrieved that his integrity has been tainted by Olalemi’s unsubstantiated claims and wild accusations.
Olalemi’s story, which he eventually got published in Tuesday August 26th edition of a national newspaper, was that he drew the professor’s attention to some errors in some of his published works (Professor Abiona is an author of several literary works – novels, plays etc) through a text message.
According to him, shortly afterwards, he received a call from some people he didn’t know, asking for his whereabouts.
“I did not know that two policemen were busy hunting for me… Because I had no skeleton in my closet, I described where I was. The policemen (Bayo and Mufutau Aselebe) came in and arrested me,” he said.
By his account, the policemen that arrested him then made for the National Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), where they also arrested an unnamed member of staff of that organisation – whom they said had committed the same offence as he.
