By Olakunle Abimbola
For the second time in three weeks, Humpty-Dumpty looks an irresistible parallel for Aketi’s pre-election Ondo, as in Fayemi’s mid-term Ekiti (See “Ekiti’s roiling progressives”, July 5).
Is the Aketi Ondo order then primed for a great fall, like Humpty Dumpty in the nursery rime?
Don’t bet on that, for politics is no game for the faint-hearted. But the theatre of the absurd, now on the Ondo front, is humbling enough.
Imagine Sunday Abegunde aka Abena, who did the political equivalent of the poetic Solomon Grundy, that rifled through life in seven short days!
Abena bolted from the Rotimi Akeredolu government as estranged secretary to the state government (SSG), parachuted himself to a radio, and started speaking in tongues, about a “lost” election that nevertheless produced a governor, of which he himself, munching an SSG bounty-turned-sour-grape, was complicit!
To be sure, he would eat crow, hit by the stark reality that his wild emotions had flung him inside a ditch; and he repudiated, with equal excitability, his earlier claim of an election loss, with a glorious collective win, though for the ultra-”ungrateful” Aketi.
But how can an ex-SSG boast such infantile, if not outright irrational, temper? Is the Aketi order, united or divided, all whims and caprices?
Well, Abena isn’t quite replicating the Olusegun Mimiko feat of exiting as SSG to sack the late Olusegun Agagu, after a prolonged post-election litigation.
He swears fealty to one of the APC aspirants. But wherever is Abena’s next destination, he would appear a sad study in self-demarketing.
Or the case of Deputy Governor Agboola Ajayi, a gangling poster boy of unfazed opportunism, if ever there was one?
Herr Ajayi stormed out to the rival PDP, clutching tight the Deputy Governor office he won as APC candidate; even daring the legislature to impeach him, if they had the numbers!
Then, after the governor tested positive for COVID-19, he issued a 21-day ultimatum for a power hand-over, the morality (and compassion) of it all be damned!
What schadenfreude — that English German import for malicious joy, nay jeer, at someone else’s misfortune!
But for the governor’s timely COVID-19 bill of health (a political deus-ex-machina, as they do in Greek classical drama?), Ondo would by now have been battling a constitutional crisis of rotten moral provenance, among other needless distractions.
Or how else do you push the defecting Ajayi power-grab, with all its rotten moral baggage, relying on the letters of the Constitution? Yet, that Constitution’s same spirit Ajayi’s galloping opportunism has viciously raped, cantering across the partisan isle, aloft with a stolen good, yet demanding a wild cheer?
To be fair to Ajayi, however, it’s the tale of opportunism gives, opportunism takes — the most serious singular plague ravaging this polity.
Ajayi departed PDP because an opportunistic Mimiko, then an embattled, plotting and entrapped governor seeking post-power relevance, junked his Labour Party (LP), landed in PDP, and hijacked the party’s structure from the “natives”, like Ajayi.
Now, can you blame the return of the native to his darling PDP, if he could just stroll across the partisan aisle and corral the deputy governorship — when what fetched him that diadem was no commitment to any party principle, but his electoral box office appeal? Opportunism gives, opportunism takes!
Now Aketi growls Ajayi’s nomination was a mistake — is it now? When did the scale fall off the governor’s eyes? That brings the discourse to the governor himself.
With all due respect, Governor Akeredolu, though a legal silk, has exhibited little power gumption, talk less of wisdom, these last three years.
Ripples is not quite close to the Aketi gubernatorial court, so this view is at best speculative. Yet, the governor appears, from afar, a possible victim of what you may call the Rehoboam syndrome.
Remember the Bible that records King Rehoboam as victim of “useless young men”, whose misadvice condemned Solomon’s son, David’s grandson, to kissing 10, out of 12 tribes, in his father’s kingdom, bye-bye?
On FB, Ripples once stumbled on a discourse, with some neophyte, canonizing Aketi as foremost among the South West “new breed leaders”.
Ripples weighed in and told the guy — one Delta-born University of Ibadan graduate who claimed he had lived in Ibadan all his life — that he lacked the dynamics of Yoruba politics to make such a claim; and should stop shooting breeze, thus distracting the governor.
But in jumped another — the original serenade of the post — insisting the Delta guy was right on the money; and that Aketi was the best thing to happen to humanity, since Adam left Eden!
The exchange turned rather nasty, as the Aketi advocate became aggressive and abusive, just to prove his point. Later, Ripples would find out he was one of the governor’s most visible factotums.
He could well be earnest, of course; speaking out of genuine conviction. Even then, could such honest zest have negatively impacted Aketi?
How come, just after three years, Aketi appears lacking in tact to midwife the crucial political elite consensus, for the smooth-sailing of his power encore? Or is the ultra-cantankerous Ondo politics to blame?
Even then, if you can’t hold together your immediate locality, how can you pass the muster for an extended terrain? So long for flowery FB claims!
The relationship between the governor and Prof. Robert Ajayi Boroffice, Ondo’s sole sitting senator, is rather interesting.
Just suffice to say the three-time senator is not unlike the once rejected pillar that morphs into the major cornerstone, from the intrigues that surrounded the 2019 elections, which saw Ondo losing two senators to the rival PDP.
Yet, from the “reconciliatory” sound bites, the senator is talking tough, demanding the governor’s apology, and insisting on nominating Aketi’s running mate, among four other tough conditions, to back the governor.
That range of demand has even drawn a sharp rebuke from inside the Unity Forum, the intra-Ondo APC pressure group, determined to give embattled Aketi a good run for his money! Yet, the senator was virtually fighting for his political life, in the run-up to the 2019 election, for lack of gubernatorial support!
The point here is not a saint-versus-sinner scenario. Hardly is anyone either in politics, that ruthless determination of who gets what. The governor and the senator have own good and bad points.
It is rather to remind the governor — and indeed, other office holders — that power, though most visible, is the most useless, in political relationships.
Yeah, power (especially gubernatorial power) does great transactions, in sweet political pork. But even that becomes useless the moment power fades or stops — or whoever does sweetheart deals without cash?
If he survives this roaring crucible, Aketi should learn more to leverage tact and influence, instead of projecting raw power.
Indeed, influence is the gold standard of sustainable politicking. That marked respect for peers in power, builds a post-power paradise, made only possible by influence.
Still, the Ondo APC should know that it’s cheaper and better for a sitting governor to get a second term, except if he is a total disaster. That is, of course, without prejudice to aspirants’ democratic rights to contest the governorship ticket.
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