Hardball
Have you heard the latest in the Oyo council crisis? It is mammon and cant raised as the fundamental principles of state policy!
Or how else would you explain a government offering to shell out cash, in exchange for electoral mandates? And after the “sacked” council officials’ rejection of that audacious — nay cynical — offer, imagine the cant issuing from the government side?
“Let it be accordingly stated that the government of Oyo State is ready to pursue its case in court against ALGON,” The Nation reported Taiwo Adisa, Governor Makinde’s chief press secretary, as bragging. “The decision by the state to pursue the path of peace on the council issue is well thought out.”
Indeed, the golden path of peace — offering cash to truncate councillors’ mandate, upheld by the Supreme Court!
Now, what is this — the point where executive delusion reaches the point beyond redemption? It is becoming crystal clear the Oyo government is not only telling itself sweet lies, it is beginning to believe those lies! Who will put it out of its self-imposed misery?
But just a recap on the crisis, totally avoidable, in Hardball’s opinion.
Shortly after taking over the reins on 29 May 2019, Governor Makinde purported to sack elected Oyo chairmen and councillors, all opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) partisans, whose party just lost the governorship to Makinde’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
It was probably real-politik that Makinde would purport to void council mandates, not armed with any court judgment, simply because he was the new governor. It wasn’t the first. It probably won’t be the last — for this criminal conceit runs across party lines.
But Makinde’s ill luck is that he doesn’t have the legal muscle to enforce his impunity. The Nigeria Police, of which Oyo has a state command, is under the Federal Government.
So, when the Supreme Court in December 2019 ruled that governors had absolutely no power to dissolve elected councils, he knew his goose was cooked. When the federal attorney-general and Justice minister primed the Oyo Police Command to enforce the apex court judgment, Makinde knew the game was up.
So, thus started a relay of cunning and time-buying, just to stonewall doing right by the law. For starters, the councillors’ suit challenging their purported sack by the governor, was still in court; and it was the governor’s cynical idea to use its sub judice status to impose his preferred partisans on the councils.
When he found he couldn’t stop the councillors from regaining their offices, he rushed to court for an interlocutory injunction to freeze all action. At the first sitting the court after, he dangled an out-of-court settlement. That so-called settlement is his proposed cash-payout-for-council-mandate!
But as the governor hides behind a finger, playing endless executive pranks, goaded by faceless careerists and partisans, he should be wary of becoming the tortoise in the Yoruba folktale, who swore not to return home until he was disgraced!
Playing gubernatorial czar, over council mandate over which you have absolutely no power, is wide and merry way to gubernatorial perdition.
Those who have ears, let them hear!
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