‘I said to him, ‘can you please shut up?’ By Folabi Ogunleye

Good breeding informs the best comport in some of us. Even in the face of provocation, we do our best to resist the temptation to respond in kind.

Yes, ocassionally, we respond to personal attacks by giving as much as we recieve. But because some of us were forged in the best of standards, it is rare to find us engaged in nasty altercations where personal insults fly back and forth. Our long term conditioning has been to either ignore personal insults or neutralize the sting of such attacks with dismissive humor.

I think this is the attitude of most people with a modicum of self respect. Anyone who values his esteem will be shy to expose himself to disrespect in general. Decent people do this, first, by maintaining a high standard of personal conduct. They carry themselves with a certain grace and sense of responsibility – in speech, in mannerism, in temperament – that might make possible attackers lose interest in resorting to rude engagement with them.

However, good personal conduct doesn’t always guarantee that a self-respecting person may not experience his share of rudeness or personal attacks from others. In fact, it is arguable that a gentle, easygoing or self-respecting personality might actually encourage persons who know no better to test the boundaries of civilized engagement. Nevertheless, because respect is like a boomerang, it is adviceable to make a habit of giving out that good energy to recieve same.

Hence, to whom much is given, a lot more is expected.

All of this was on my mind earlier after I read and watched reports of Tuesday’s public spat between former Nigerian federal minister Obiageli Ezekwesili and a senator representing Ebonyi State in the Nigerian Senate, Senator Onyekachi Nwaebonyi, during a live hearing session before the Ethics Committee in the senate. The room was already tense on both sides of the issue at hand, which concerned another Senator Natasha Akpoti’s claim of sexual harassment by Senate President Godswill Akpabio, with each side trying to register its displeasure for the attention of the other.

And then, just as 44-year old Senator Nwaebonyi, who is the Senate Deputy Chief Whip, was making a spirited point nearby, 61-year old Ezekwesili barked out at him in righteous indignation, “Can you please shut up!” Of course, Nwaebonyi, who was already as irritated as others were in the room, erupted in anger over Ezekwesili’s rather rude chastisement of his person, and responded by giving her a piece of his mind, telling her, among other unflattering things, that she is a “disgrace to womanhood!”

“You are the hooligan!” Shouted Mr. Nwaebonyi, before continuing. “For a mother like you, a grandmother of your age, a former minister of the federal republic, to tell a sitting senator to shut up his mouth and added that I am a hooligan,” he said, brimming with anger and momentarily refusing entreaties to end the verbal exchange. Mrs Ezekwesili, too, shouted a few more words from across the table, before they eventually let go of the barrage of personal insults, both parties visibly upset.

Easily, I find Mrs. Ezekwesili guilty for being the first to lose her temper in telling the Ebonyi senator to “Shut up!” She was a guest in that official building and her conduct was not only disrespectful of the moment, but disrespectful also to the office and to all the officials present. The conduct was also unbecoming of her age and status in the society. In that location, the former minister is otherwise too enlightened, and carried a responsibility to herself in that moment that is too important, to exhibit a behavior that is more common with people far beneath her age and status.

Senator Nwaebonyi, too, perhaps should not have taken the bait to descend to the lowly rungs where Madam Ezekwesili chose to lower herself in that moment. He however reserved the right to choose how to respond to the reckless slight directed at him by a woman who obviously had little or no respect for him, both as a fellow adult and as her host in that senate building where he serves as a senator of the federal republic. Both parties let their respective anger get the better of them, leaving themselves out there as material for [comedic] entertainment and derision by their fellow Nigerians.

Later in a television interview, Mrs. Ezekwesili justfied her response to what she percieved as unfair treatment at the hearing. “I said to him, can you please shut up?” She said.

Embarassing as the moment at the ethics committee was, it had its rather laughable aftermath in Mrs. Ezekwesili lamenting what she described as the “indecorous behavior” of some Nigerian public officials.

The Merriam-Webster English dictionary defines the word “indecorous” as “conflicting with accepted standards of good conduct or good taste.” It is not impossible that not a few Nigerians now wonder if Mrs. Ezekwesili has held a mirror to her face lately – not to see how beautiful she is but to indulge a moment of useful introspection on whether her conduct met the best standards of decorum.

Asked whether he had any regrets, Senator Nwaebonyi answered the question with a question of his own, “How can I regret the scenario? I gave it to her. Is it fair for her to address me that way? As a former minister of the federal republic and a grandmother, ask her first.”

In other words, in Naijaspeak, ‘You do anyhow, you see anyhow.’

–Ogunleye is a New-York based public affairs analyst