Patrick Obahiagbon Reveals The Secret Of His ‘Big Grammar’

“My Idiolect Is Not Advertently Obfuscative,”

Patrick Obahiagbon, the Chief of Staff to the Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, knonw for his very confusing grammer, reveals in recent interview his reason for speaking that way.
See excerpts from the interview below.
Why do you always speak ‘big grammar’?

 

I am not really consensus ad idem with those who opine that my idiolect is advertently obfuscative. No no no, it’s just that I am in my elements when the colloquy has to do with the pax nigeriana of our dreams and one necessarily needs to fulminate against the alcibiadian modus vivendi of our prebendal political class.

 

How does your family understand your English?

 My family and friends understand me perfectly just the same way you understand me now though, I must admit that it depends on the issues on the piazza.

 

How did you start speaking in this manner?

It all happened when my father brought me a teaser which stated that good orators had ruled the world and you must have to be a feisty orator if you must rule the world. As an impressionable young man, I alacritously threw myself into the whirligig of improving my usage of words by amassing new words on a daily basis.

Do you look forward to developing your own dictionary?

My own dictionary? I have never really given that a thought, but there is a young man in one of our universities who travelled all the way to meet me in Benin. His doctoral thesis is on “Obahiagbonism as a style of language.”

 

How many dictionaries do you read a day and how often do you read dictionaries?

 I have read and still do read a vaudeville of dictionaries from Websters to Funk and Wagnalls, from Cambridge to Oxford dictionaries, from Black’s Law Dictionary to Encarta and from Encyclopedia Britannica to Foreignisms, etcetera. I developed my corpus of vocabulary by reading omnivorously. I have also spent nothing less than an hour daily on my dictionary for over twenty years. So, whereas the dictionary for most people is a mere occasional reference point, it is for, me a vade-mecum. It may also interest you to know that there is much to learn from our daily newspapers.