Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that he was not gloating over the death of Senator Buruji Kashamu.
He said that there were lessons, either good or bad, to be learnt when people die, but it was not good for people to be “praise-singing or eulogising the dead, especially when there is no need to do so.”
Several people attacked Obasanjo following his condolence message over the death of Kashamu, a former Ogun East senator, who before his death was wanted in the United States of America for alleged drug offences.
In the condolence message, Obasanjo had said, “Senator Esho Jinadu (Buruji Kashmu) in his lifetime used the manoeuvre of law and politics to escape from facing justice on the alleged criminal offence in Nigeria and outside Nigeria.
“But no legal, political, cultural, social, or even medical manoeuvre could stop the cold hands of death when the Creator of all of us decides that the time is up.”
However, after the lashing from a former Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose, a national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu among others, Obasanjo replied in a chat with Premium Times:
“When I was growing up, in our community, when anyone known with bad character died, we usually only mourn him and bury him. No eulogy. No praise-singing.
“There is an English saying that urges us never to talk ill of the dead. But in this case, we are not talking ill of the dead. We are only drawing lessons from the life and history of the dead. I am not gloating over his death. It is sad for anyone to die and we must mourn him.
“But we must learn from such a passage. There will be bad lessons. There will be good lessons. But we should not just be praise-singing or eulogising the dead, especially when there is no need to do so.
“We should not cover up bad histories and conducts so that the right lessons can be learned.
“But we must learn from such a passage. There will be bad lessons. There will be good lessons. But we should not just be praise-singing or eulogising the dead, especially when there is no need to do so.
“We should not cover up bad histories and conducts so that the right lessons can be learned”, the former president stated.