By joshua 
By Abu Micheal
A University Don, Prof. Gbenga Solomon Ibileye has called on the Federal Government to be more objective and decisive in its efforts and fight against insurgency, banditry and terrorism in Nigeria.
Ibileye made the call in his lecture titled, “As A Man Thinks In His Heart, So He Speaks To His World” at the 6th Inaugural Lecture of Federal University, Lokoja.
The Professor of Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics said the names given to the disparate groups involved in different forms of acts of lawlessness against the state and its citizens should be reviewed and properly objectified.
He said that there was hardly any objective and rational justification for tagging some groups as “terrorists” and others who engage in more heinous crimes as “Bandits” and even “kidnappers.”
“Any group of persons who wage war against the people and wantonly destroy them and their livelihood, also wage war against the state and seek to destroy it. After all, it is the people that aggregate the state.
“Therefore, government and its agencies of anti-terrorism must be courageous and objective in naming such groups as terrorists so as to ensure that the full weight of the law is brought to bear evenly on the enemies of the state, irrespective of their ethnic and religious affiliations”, he added.
The professor said that there was need for a linguistic reorientation that should engender deeper sensitivity towards the use of more society-developing and nation-building metaphors by Nigerian politicians.
Ibileye who is also the Dean of Post-Graduate Studies also used the occasion to draw general interest to use of language, especially by politicians to hide and disguise their true political intentions in linguistic deception.
He said that it could be argued that the failure of politicians could be attributed to the failure or insensitivity of the followership to pay sufficient attention to the language of the politicians especially during electioneering campaigns.
Ibileye posited that believing politicians’ speeches on sentiments without scrutinizing them from a critical linguistic perspective would often lead to a superficial understanding of the real deceptive intentions of the political class.
He called on the citizens to strive towards possessing some knowledge of the workings of language as a powerful tool of deception.
The professor therefore called on media agencies in both print and electronic to engage critical discourse analysts and pragmaticists more to interrogate and scrutinise the campaign promises and manifestos of political parties and office seekers.
This, according to him, will ensure that the electorate are properly and qualitatively guided in their choices.
Speaking earlier, Prof. Olayemi Akinwumi, Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Lokoja congratulated Prof. Ibileye and described him as a five-star professor who had impacted very well on the institution.
Akinwumi said Ibileye’s lecture was the first to come from the Faculty of Arts and urged other professors in the institution to key into the programme as Inaugural Lectures remained one of the key prerequisites to attainment of professorship
The Inaugural Lecture was attended by reknown members of the academia from various Universities, students, judges, the traditional rulers, friends and well-wishers of the professor from across the country.