Simon Kolawole Live!: Email: simon.kolawole@thisdaylive.com
He looked at me straight in the eye, clearly agitated. “I swear by Allah,” he said, solemnly, “Hosni Mubarak was better than Mohamed Morsi. We regret voting for Morsi.” It was at a shop in Dubai a few months ago. The shop owner had introduced himself as our “African brother” while urging my wife to buy a pair of sunglasses from him. He told us he was from Egypt, and as it is my custom, I began to discuss local politics in his home country. So I asked if it was true that Egyptians were regretting deposing Mubarak through a revolution, the so-called Arab Spring, two years ago. His emphatic “yes” drew another question from me. “You miss a dictator who ruled you for nearly 30 years?” I asked, cynically. And then he swore.
