A season of ‘Lyions’

Vincent Akanmode

Few people would dispute the fact that the lion is one of the most dreaded creatures on earth. No one prays to come in contact with it beyond a visit to the zoo. That explains the bated anxiety that gripped the residents of Kano between October 19 and 20 last month when a lion escaped from a zoo in the historical city and no one was sure of the direction it headed.

The dreaded animal was said to have escaped on October 19 while the rangers who took it for an agricultural show in Nasarawa State were trying to return it into its cage. Husbands called out to their wives and parents called out to their children as everyone in the city took cover in the confines of their homes in a feat of self-imposed curfew. The usually busy road that leads to the zoo was completely abandoned by motorists for the long hours the search for the fearsome animal lasted. The spell was finally over with the announcement the following day that the lion had been found in a cage that housed goats within the zoo premises. But that was not until the deadly animal had devoured all the goats it met in the cage.

Early in the week, the social and traditional media were awash with the news of a house occupied by an Indian on Muri Okunola Street in highbrow Victoria Island part of Lagos, where a lion, not a dog, was the animal on guard. The Head of Lagos Task Force on Environmental and Special Offences Unit, Mr. Yinka Egbeyemi, was quoted as saying that the discovery was made by some residents in the neighbourhood, who then wrote a petition to the state government. Mercifully, officials of the task force were able to tranquilise the animal after keeping watch on the house for three days, and took it to a zoo.

The dust was yet to settle on the Lagos incident when a Lyon roared, this time in the Niger Delta, with a sitting governor as his prey. I am talking about the governorship election that took place in Bayelsa State last Saturday and the upset caused by the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), David Lyon, who defeated Duoye Diri, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ably backed by the sitting governor, Seriake Dickson.

Considering the grassroots credentials of Governor Dickson, an appeal that earned him the sobriquet of Countryman, and the fact that the Niger Delta region is a stronghold of the PDP, very few people had given Lyon (pronounced as lion) the chance of a victory over Diri. But at the end of counting, it was a landslide victory for the APC candidate who swept six of the eight local government areas in the state, polling 352,552 votes against Diri’s 143,172.

In spite of his philanthropic disposition and his profile as a former Commissioner for Sports and CEO of Darlon Security and Guard, a private security firm based in Bayelsa State, Lyon remained largely an obscure individual until he was propped up by the current Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Silva, to take part in the governorship primary of APC. Silva apparently realised that with Dickson-backed Diri as PDP candidate, the APC had a mountain to climb to win the governorship election.  He decided that a super monster, if only in name, was needed to overcome the monstrous support for Diri. And who else would that be if not a Lyon?

Guided by the saying that a lion leading an army of sheep can defeat an army of lions led by a sheep, APC settled for Lyon as their candidate. The ruthless manner he won the election is an indication that a lion, whether spelt as L-I-O-N or as L-Y-O-N, is a lion. And it matters nothing if it comes in the form of an animal like the one in Kano or in the form of a man like the one in Bayelsa.

Since the shocking defeat of the PDP in the Bayelsa governorship election, I have heard commentator after commentator say that the PDP has lost the state for good, given the coalition of forces that worked against Dickson and in favour of Lyon. But there is no problem without a solution. I am told that as ruthless and domineering as it is, there is yet an animal the lion itself dread like salt does water. The lion, according to a popular fable, would run the distance from Lagos to Ibadan in utter fear at the shout of a donkey. It is one of the biggest mysteries of life and one that PDP can deploy to a great effect in the next governorship election in the oil rich state.

The party must immediately commence the search for a candidate with Donkey as his name and field same for the governorship election in 2023. I wager that the election will be a no-contest as candidate Lyon will be forced to flee at the shout of candidate Donkey.