Category: Tuesday

Koseleri 1 (Koseleri: Yoruba for unprecedented), was Abiola Ajimobi’s historical stunner: the first-ever Oyo governor to earn re-election; a myth of glory, if ever there was one.

But Koseleri 2 crashed that myth, even before you could mutter ‘Ajimobi!’ — and in less than four years!

In electoral hustle-and-buckle, it is a classic glory-to-gory tale!

The Ajimobi stumble is all the more humbling, as the Senate-as-former-governors’-retirement-coven, is one hubris that has evolved since 1999.

A governor completes his two terms, and feels his immediate constituents, as of right, must serenade him with a senatorial slot.  What hubris!

Ajimobi’s spectacular crash could well slow down that gubernatorial conceit.  The outgoing governor is only one of a few – if not the only case – of a failed governor-to-senator transition, much to the delight of his traducers.

Those are quite a number, for Ajimobi, like the great Bola Ige before him, doesn’t suffer fools gladly, pressing into service his razor-sharp tongue.  But that tongue, his enemies now gaily scream, has become his grand nemesis.

That is true, especially in the passionate present; and in the excitable short-run, when taunts turn free-wheeling jaunts, to further clobber the defeated.

But in the long run, when legacy trumps politics?  Ajimobi may yet triumph as spectacularly as he had succumbed. This is because, by miles, Abiola Ajimobi has been Oyo’s best governor since 1999.

In sheer wit, poise, dash and panache, none of his predecessors, since 1999, could hold a candle to Ajimobi.

In all of Oyo history, perhaps only Bola Ige — he too of the famously sharp tongue and cutting wit! — could go toe-to-toe with Ajimobi, in a boxing bout, where wit, poise, dash and panache are the prize belts.

Maybe Adegoke Adelabu too, the famous Penkelemesi, in all Western Region history?  Perhaps!  Ironically, not a few believe Penkele’s  grandson, Bayo Adelabu’s futile gubernatorial bid was collateral damage, from Ajimobi’s most galling political hour.

But then, Penkelemesi, the adjudged master of political dissembling, belonged to a different age, even if at present, his grandson is consumed by a peculiar mess of mixed (mis)fortunes!

Yet, don’t write Ajimobi off.  Long after present politics recedes into memory, legacy will emerge from that mist to robustly proclaim his case.

Politics versus legacy!  That incidentally is what, in this same Ibadan, capital of this same Oyo, has distinguished the great Awo from Adelabu, and his peculiar mess.

Adelabu, brilliant, pithy, witty and charismatic, among the Ibadan hoi polloi, was dramatic master of the politics of the moment — and he always gave Awo a bloody nose!

But Awo, no less brilliant but more dogged, acute and rigorous, was a policy Leviathan, clinically focused on the next generation.

On that score, Awo’s legacy has clearly trumped Adelabu’s immediate politics, though not a few would argue that was because Adelabu died rather young.

That would explain why Penkelemesi’s own grandson would opt for APC, a party which South West wing claims Awo as avatar; instead of the more ideologically fluid PDP, to which Penkelemesi himself could have been more comfy.

But even if Bayo Adelabu’s choice was only a convenience of the moment — in an age of unfazed vacuum in ideological politics — Awo’s legacy triumph still galvanized Lam Adesina to the Oyo governorship in 1999.

Pre-office, the late Lam was an Awoist, aside from his Ibadan nativity.  He left office still proudly Awoist.  But he, as governor, added pretty little to that legacy stock.  Which was why it was easy to shoo him off, after only one gubernatorial term.

But the band of Ibadan nativists, that shooed Lam off, were barbarians yoked to the past; not reformers primed for the future.

First, was “homeless” President, Olusegun Obasanjo’s 2003 “capture” (to use that inglorious PDP quip) of his native Southwest.

Then, there was Lamidi Adedibu (now dead), his Oyo enforcer-in-chief.

Of course, there was also Rashidi Ladoja, the pitiable gubernatorial sheep led to slaughter, because of his seedy emergence.

So, when Adedibu started laying claim to 30 per cent of Ladoja’s security vote; and the governor owed his tenure, not to the pleasure of his electors but the brute of his irate godfather; and the democratic president growled his garrison commander had the veto in a state governed by law; you knew new anarchy was loosed upon Ibadan, the town Awo’s dutiful policies conferred respectability, despite Penkelemesi’s empty theatrics!

But Oyo would hit its nadir under Adebayo Alao-Akala (2007-2011) — first, rogue governor during Ladoja’s illegal impeachment. Then, “elected” governor, under Adedibu’s absolute suzerainty, in the 2007 elections considered Nigeria’s worst ever.

By this time, Ibadan was mincemeat, whenever Eleweomo, Auxillary and allied local NURTW thugs decided on their turf wars — which were pretty often!  Adedibu’s golden boys were in town; and everyone had better dive for cover!

It was this prehistoric debacle Ajimobi had to clear — and he did so with uncommon brilliance.  Security, from near-absolute chaos, is perhaps Ajimobi’s prime legacy.

Then, winsome infrastructure.  That started with a simple flyover solution at Mokola, Ibadan, which Ladoja and his pre-historic crowd even tried to bad-mouth.

That soon snowballed into an urban upgrade, never seen since the era of Military Governor, David Jemibewon (Western State: August 1975-March 1976; then, newly created Oyo State, now Oyo and Osun states: March 1976-July 1978).

All of a sudden, the notorious Alesinloye and Mokola traffic gridlocks all but vanished.  The Adamasingba-Jericho-Onireke GRA areas received new vim — did anyone ever think, from that corridor, Eleyele was just a flit away?  So did Challenge extension, with its expanded four-lane free-way.

Outside Ibadan, the eternally abandoned Oke-Ogun areas were proud beneficiaries of Ajimobi’s infrastructural touch.

And a profile in courage!  Ajimobi’s stumble over the Olubadan chieftaincy question is only a future come too soon.  If you doubt, there was a time splitting the Ibadan Municipal Council (IMC), at Mapo, was political heresy.  Today, that era is gone and forgotten.

Then, the Ayefele Music House crisis, and its eventual resolution, was the quintessential Ajimobi: never shirked tough decisions because of public growls — a profile in courage!

And the environment?  In just four short years, Ibadan, almost always the dirtiest of places was striving among the neatest, thanks to Ajimobi’s street cleaning and waste disposal reforms.

When the first-term governor sought a second term, a cynical campaign stirred, to de-market his great infrastructural strides — “Se titi laa je?” — best captured in pidgin: “na road we go chop?”

Koseleri 1 triumphed over all that, as Ajimobi romped to unprecedented victory, on account of policy clarity and brilliant performance.

But Koseleri 2 also sundered all that, as Ajimobi slumped to unprecedented defeat — his tongue as ruthless nemesis!

The gripping epitaph of the Ajimobi era?  Policy brain and beauty ruined by a reckless tongue!

With Jide Sanwo-Olu’s triumph in the March 9 governorship election, Akinwunmi Ambode becomes the first one-term governor of Lagos, since 1999.

It’s a dramatic, if painful, departure from the fate of his two predecessors:  Governors Bola Tinubu (1999-2007) and Tunde Fashola (2007-2015), who enjoyed their maximum two terms.

So “Ambo” is not unlike the comet — vanished before you even see it!  Indeed, the quintessential bitter-sweet he is!

Bitter is his fleeting perch, on the Lagos gubernatorial couch; when re-election was his to lose.  By all objective criteria, he isn’t the worst governor in town!

But sweet may yet be his fate, given his stoicism in the face of adversity, most of it self-inflicted, though.

Nothing prepared Ambode for his novel but chastening role: a sitting governor, undefeated by a partisan opponent; yet condemned to handing over to another of his party mates, because he lost re-nomination.

But Ambo has scaled that daunting test with uncommon calm, unbelievable grace and audacious dignity.

History may yet be kind to him — but that would be in the long run.

Talk of Ambo bitter and sweet!

Still, Ambode is master of his own doom, which again could turn long-term grace.

His opening power days, on the Lagos traffic street, ended in a humiliating fiasco.  He went to war, unprepared, with officers and men of LASTMA — Lagos State Traffic Management Authority, the ubiquitous Lagos traffic police.

A piqued LASTMA, folks whispered, promptly sabotaged the new government. Lagos turned instant traffic Armageddon with hideous gridlock.  The thoroughly smitten new governor beat a hasty retreat.

An opening gambit was never more crushing!

Then, an initial skirmish with LAWMA — the battle-tested Lagos State Waste Management Authority — an earlier version of which, ironically, Ambode himself had had a stint, as a rising civil servant.

Ola Oresanya, highly decorated general, in the bruising war against virulent Lagos filth, was the bruising victim of that skirmish.

Folks claimed the new governor was after the so-called “Fashola boys”.  But Ambo’s own new voices banished such this-Pharaoh-knows-no-Joseph tales, insisting the new governor was after no one, but reforms.

Still soon, an Ambode-Fashola antipathy became clear, though driven more, it would appear, from the new governor’s end.

That followed complications from Ambode’s own rancorous emergence as governor, against the wish — and will — of many a Lagos All Progressives Congress (APC) powers and principalities.

The first of those events was the formal presidential commissioning, of the expanded Ago Palace Way, Okota; a road artery that links Okota to Amuwo-Odofin GRA, Festac Town and the traffic hub of Mile 2.

Though former Governor Fashola, who did most of the work during his tenure was there, new regnant Lagos protocol near-totally ignored him, even as Vice President Yemi Osinbajo did the commissioning.

The other was the widely publicized Lagos-Federal Government row (read Ambode-Fashola tiff), over the Lagos Airport road re-development project; which the governor alleged his predecessor was subverting, in terms of federal approval, even if Lagos had the cash to proceed.

All that squabble, however, receded; after the Power, Works and Housing minister visited his successor, at the Lagos House, Ikeja.

Soon after, in a racy, glorious two years, Ambode launched his own policy and infrastructural foxtrots, which sent not a few gushing.

In a virtual wink of the eye, Ambode had delivered the Abule Egba flyover, with a sparkling fountain to boot!

At the Lekki end, he had also delivered the Ajah flyover, bringing immense traffic relief to the denizens of two ends — the one high, the other low — of the sprawling Lagos metropolis.

It was a stunning triumph of his “One Lagos” philosophy, away from the perceived elite area developmental skew, of the Fashola era.

In rural Lagos, at the Alimoso end, Ambode’s name is etched in near-permanent gold.  Suddenly, infrastructure only dreamt of — smooth roads and glittering streetlights — all of a sudden, stood at their beck and call!

But it’s in Ambo’s native Epe that the outgoing governor stands to be a folk hero, with stupendous community value.

In less than four years, Epe, that seemed to have snoozed and snored all ages, suddenly leapt up — gloriously recalled to life!

With the renewed Epe Marina, glittering and penetrating network of futuristic roads, linking mainstream Epe to the adjoining Ejinrin and Eredo, Epe is making a dash into modernity, after slinking, for much too long, back into the past — all in less than four years, thanks to Ambode’s audacious infrastructure.

But that’s only Phase 1.  The incoming Sanwo-Olu government should not abandon the Phase 2.  If it did, that would be Deputy Governor-elect Femi Hamzat’s albatross.

But even metropolitan Lagos won’t forget Ambo in a hurry.

With the imminent delivery of the new Lagos Airport-Oshodi road, the new Oshodi exchange and mart, the Pen Cinema, Agege, flyover, as well as the Abule Egba-Oshodi Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) track, all in four years, Ambode’s infrastructural legacy appears cemented.

The other corridor though — the Orile-Okomomaiko-Ijanikin section of the Lagos-Badagry expressway, with its planned integrated rail track — will probably curse the Ambode governorship, for culpable abandonment.

Still all these, benediction or malediction, would pale before a present contagion — the resurgent Lagos refuse, under which a buried Ambode jerked, bawled and yelped for second term; but to which everyone feigned merry and proud deafness.

First, was the ignominy of losing re-nomination.  Then, now comes the pain of premature power surrender when, in fact, only a few of the re-elected governors can match his sheer achievements.

But from this deep pit may yet spring Ambode’s eventual resurrection.

First: none for him, a sensational huff into “enemy” camp, to seek a renewed mandate.  The Lagos PDP had hoped for such blind Samson complex.  But they have been sorely disappointed.

Then, after a whispering post-presidential election campaign, the governor just delivered Epe for his party — and incoming successor.  That’s a study in rare grace, when faced with unbearable pains.

Ambode started his exit from power as the clear and present danger to party unity and cohesion.

But he could well have ended it the ultimate exemplar, in submission to party discipline, at its most rankling, most painful and most humbling worst.

If it can happen to a sitting governor, it can happen to anybody.

Babajide Sanwo-Olu had better learn from the Ambo odyssey; and not allow power to get to his head.

Otherwise, the whip used to tan the old wife, could well be nestling and resting in the rafters, to thrash the new!

 

 

“Correct the mistake of 2015.  Vote out the corrupt legislators” – That has been a running campaign, by this column (check the column mast), no less than two years now.

From the National Assembly election results, at least 60 senators won’t return to the 9th Senate.  The actual tally is between 64 and 66.  That suggests, others things being equal, severe voter anger with the 8th Senate – and by extension, the 8th National Assembly.

Contrast that with the thumping triumph of President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), and you could easily see who the voters are angry or pleased with.  That revalidates the general perception that the outgoing National Assembly has been seriously remiss in its duty.

To suggest Republican Ripples galvanized this voter anger would be vain, sweeping and simplistic.

But it is also very pleasing that a substantial segment of the voters – even among the unlettered, who couldn’t have read the column —  shared its anger; to the extent of turning their ballot into a sweeping red card.  That is the severe majesty of democratic choice!

Even more pleasing: Bukola Saraki, outgoing Senate president and unfazed symbol of that legislative blight, topped the electorally guillotined – not unlike Lucifer, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, heading the cascading tumble, of fallen angels, from paradise to hell!

Better to reign in hell, Lucifer had huffed, than serve in heaven!  Legislative Lucifers, filled with conceit over their electors, and bristling with proud hostility to voter aspirations, sure got their wish.

True, a few like Dino Melaye somewhat escaped the drop.  So did outgoing Speaker, Yakubu Dogara.

Even then, this voter mauling should be, for them, enough warning – never again to take their electors for granted, no matter the hollow delusion they might erect around themselves, in that otherwise hallowed chamber.

Still for Kogi West, fighting a Yahya Bello to flaunt a Dino Melaye is nothing but a net loss.  But again, who can question the majesty – and severity – of democratic choice?

But beyond the mundane and sundry mauling, there would appear something mystical about these elections.

All of a sudden, there appeared strange realignments, which seemed to echo Prometheus’s famous quip, in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Masque of Pandora”, written in 1875: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

First, Saraki forgot the Baba Oloye’s most sacred rule: never leave the ruling party!  He did and plunged into doom – and just as well!  By the time he woke up, O-to-ge had swept away his Kwara empire of democratic feudalism!

Olusegun Obasanjo, former two-term president, one-time military head of state and perhaps the most opaque of Nigeria’s political heart of darkness though he glows in incandescent hypocrisy, suddenly located his core in Atiku Abubakar, the fellow he had battered and traduced, all his post-presidential years, since 2007.

His Atiku about-turn was resonant hubris: he had forgiven  Atiku, though all he wrote about him, in his My Watch, was true.

Atiku had repented; apologized to Obasanjo. Obasanjo had forgiven him.  So, Nigerians too must! All that fitted pat into Obasanjo’s earlier boast: he had made up his mind to remove PMB from office!

In Nigeria’s political equivalent of the Biblical whited sepulchre, leading lights of Nigerian religious faiths were gathered – all come to push Atiku’s re-beatification, in Pope Obasanjo’s holy cathedral!

There, was Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, Winners Chapel Bishop, David Oyedepo, with an unforgettable smack on his face; and, on the Muslim divide, Sheik Abubakar Gumi, all gathered to plead Atiku’s case – Atiku that Obasanjo had always stridently declaimed!

Even a segment of Awoists also made own pro-Atiku visitation to Obasanjo’s Vatican City – no crime!  But in the present heat of passion, old foes freely jumped under the sheets, to push a lost cause!

This minority segment, of the South West progressive mainstream, hid behind “restructuring”, their twin sour grape: virulent peer envy against Bola Tinubu and his All Progressives Congress (APC); and ethnic condescension against a so-called “Fulani” president!  But only the most obtuse of fanatics was fooled by their amusing disguise.

Indeed, those the gods would destroy, they first make mad!

Which is why Obasanjo-slaying would appear the most humbling metaphor of this election.

But it is less Obasanjo as a person, though his over-due personal debacle would fill not a few with immense mirth and intense joy; knowing the polity would be spared, at least for now, his sanctimonious cant, served with galloping ill grace.

Obasanjo-slaying epitomizes the electorate’s sensational checkmate, of a post-Yakubu Gowon military plutocracy.

Though these blokes pushed the country to the brink in almost every facet, they insist, as the so-called “owners of Nigeria”, on enthroning and dethroning, subject to their wild whims — even if that would mean junking the “electorate” for a “selectorate”, to quote that brutal pun, by The Nation on Sunday columnist, Tatalo Alamu.

Their saving grace though is that PMB, their electoral nemesis, also came from the same generation of former military officers.

Besides, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, another belonging that troubled military epoch, has comported himself with exceeding grace, dignity and nobility, since his post-head of state years. So, theirs is not an entirely “wasted generation” — again, to use the immortal words of our own WS.

Obasanjo-slaying also symbolizes the routing of spiritual hustlers who, at the most critical juncture of their country, sided with graft and sleaze, despite the havoc free-wheeling corruption has wrought in this polity.

These hate-preaching hustlers, with their weird presidential election prophecies, became Nigeria’s political equivalent of the Jewish Medium of Endor; who couldn’t exactly help King Saul, after the king had gone against Yahweh’s express instructions.

For the media, Obasanjo-slaying is but a stern warning.  The Nigerian press, over the ages, has made itself the doughty hero of democracy and good governance, just because it locates the people’s pulse; and serves as dutiful and honest tribunes.

From the media performance since 2015, however, that can no longer be taken as given.  It is therefore time to pause, reboot and restart.  Or else, the Fourth Estate risks self-doom, thus becoming part of the problem, instead of the solution it is contracted for.

Overall, however, the real owners of Nigeria – the long-suffering people – have won this one.  It’s a new dawn for genuine patriots.  But it’s also excruciating work, to snatch Nigeria from perpetual noxious forces.

“They call you a thief, yet you prance around with newly stolen kids” —Yoruba proverb

The morning, after a crushing electoral defeat, is full of mourning – and moaning – for the vanquished.   But for the victors, nothing tastes like that light-headed cheer.

Yet, it’s no time to gloat.  Winners are not saints any more than losers are villains.  Those the voters prefer are just temporary “kings” – at least till the next cycle of elections.

As the popular Nigerian cliché goes, it’s all in the spirit of democracy.  Your loss validates my win.  Negative or positive, democracy wins in everyone!

Still, that should come with a rider: that each side plays the game decently.  To be sure, that is an ideal seldom completely attained, even in the best of democracies.  Still, if 80 per cent of the public, parties and electorate alike, stick to decency and civility, a positive attitude to democracy would still have prevailed.

That appears still dicey here, though Nigeria’s latest shot at democracy hits 20 years this year (1999-2019).  It can only get better, though not a few think bad democratic conduct changes rather slowly – in fact, too slowly.

That re-echoes the opening Yoruba proverb: they call you a thief and you still caper around with newly stolen kids!  That speaks to horrible conducts en route to these elections, which nevertheless the emerging results appear to sensationally punish.

Take the case of Bukola Saraki, the sitting Senate president, who won’t return to the chamber.  Saraki, since 2015, has been the unfazed poster boy of everything wrong with our politics.

Beat-me-if-you-can fashion, he has trumped everything sane and decent in political conduct.  His “win”, as Senate president, was a study in concentrated perfidy.

His brazen trade-off, for personal gain, of the deputy senate presidency (DSP), would make even Niccolo Machiavelli scramble from the grave for fresh tutorials!

But even if that manoeuvre were bitter politics, its crossover into legislative (mis)governance was fatal to voter interests.  Saraki bossed the National Assembly, and changed the people’s assembly into a reactionary coven, subverting urgent infrastructural efforts to lift the economy out of doldrums.

The most visible casualties are the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and the 2nd Niger Bridge, which completion got deferred, no thanks to cynical juggling of appropriated funds, for junk constituency projects.

When he finally defected, still keeping his Senate presidency, he became Nigeria’s first minority Senate president, even if blatant parliamentary defections-with-seat-intact had become a sickening norm, across party lines.

So, when Saraki spectacularly crashed, with his Kwara PDP virtually wiped out in all the nine constituencies at stake (three senatorial and six House of Representatives), an emerging rime rammed it all in: “When O-to-ge! (Enough is enough!) trumps O-tun-ya! (Let’s do it again), it is O-to-pe! (it all ended in praise).

O-to-ge was the anti-Saraki battle cry.  O-tun-ya was the pro-Saraki counter.  O-to-pe was the post-battle crow.  Great drama, sweet and bitter!  It’s all the mo(u)rning after!

But how might the morning after be, in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s camp?  Obasanjo was he, in his Atiku support, tried to demonize the electoral process in advance, envisioning wide rigging and dreaming free-wheeling Armageddon.

The Ebora Owu might yet rally his “international community” friends, for whatever cause.  But in fairness to him, after he voted, he sounded much more conciliatory and unbelievably nuanced, in contrast to his earlier sabre-rattling.

Still, one thing is clear: from the emerging trend of results, Obasanjo and his proverbial co-”owners of Nigeria” would learn to take the Achebe Igbo quip much more to heart: those whose kernels are cracked for them by benevolent spirits, should learn to be humble.

But away from winners or losers, a Muhammadu Buhari win, which appears only awaiting formal confirmation, would be a plebiscite on many issues.

Take the economy.  From the dawn of the 4th Republic on 29 May 1999, the economy, at least from the Nigerian federal government, has been an expert’s mystique, with the masses expecting some trickle down manna, from that esoteric haven.

But the practical manifestation (whether by corruption or delayed trickle-down) has been a near-total collapse of local infrastructure – and manufacture — which consigned the country to the mercy of imports, even of the most basic of products, that could be locally made.

Since 2015, there has been a radical shift from that path, making not a few, even in the general media outside the esoteric conclave of economists, to label that shift as “ancient” – in any case, not “modern” enough.

Yet, that “ancient” mode has wrought comparatively great wonders: in increased electricity power, extensive road construction, rapid rail modernization and a boom in agriculture which, in less than four years, has catapulted Nigeria as Africa’s No. 1 cultivator of rice; setting the country on the path to food security.

A Buhari win would confirm voter approval for such a rapid shift in economic policy.

Since 1999 till 2015 also, poverty had wreaked great but silent havoc.  The rich had been lulled into a false sense of security.  But the poor too had been seething in quiet rage, snorting something, sometime, somehow would give.  That was putative class war, ticking like a time bomb!

But again from 2015, there has been a conscious and concerted effort at pro-poor welfare.  The most significant symbol of that is Tradermoni, a scandalous novelty, in a polity rippling and bristling with a poor, overwhelming majority.

But Tradermoni is scandalous not because it was introduced — on the contrary, it is highly praise-worthy.  Rather, it is because it took the federal authorities 16 years into democracy, and a change of partisan guards, to birth a specific pro-poor policy.

Even then, much of the media has been too distracted, along inane lines, to realize how this specific basket of pro-poor policies could have saved the country from avoidable but looming tragedy.

But then again, a Buhari win would have secured a robust voter plebiscite to further deepen pro-poor programmes (Tradermoni, schools feeding programme, conditional cash transfer to the society’s poorest and most vulnerable, N-Power volunteer jobs, etc) – at least, as stop-gap measures until improved infrastructures start expanding the economy, and everyone can fairly fend for themselves.

Still, as winners soar and loser sink, the one beams and the other scowls, both camps must realize that the joy of victory, or grief of defeat, is no monopoly of anyone.  Other things being equal, it is reward or censure for using or misusing public trust.

On that sweet and grim note, let democracy win and public service thrive.