Abure “ta ku”? Or Abure wins round one?
How exactly do you couch the latest gripping melodrama from the Labour Party (LP)-Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) war front?
If you want a true classic, steeped in high-octane power intrigues, reminiscent of the titanic political battles of Nigeria’s 1st Republic (1960-1966), dub it “Abure ta ku”!
But if you’d prefer a humdrum headline, which nevertheless ruled the media roost from the late 1970s till the 1990s, toasting the courtroom histrionics of the late Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, SAM, then just say “Abure wins round one”.
Abure wins round one — because it’s early days yet; and you can’t predict the final swing of the victory pendulum.
But back to the 1st Republic Titans and classic battles.
Abure digs in — that appears the closet English equivalent of Abure “ta ku”. Still, it’s too cold — indeed, too frigid — to capture the Yoruba original’s tonal dramatics.
It echoes “Akintola ta ku”, a Daily Times front page banner headline of 28 May 1962, cast by one of Nigeria’s all-time journalism greats, Alhaji Babatunde Jose.
Alhaji Jose, a Titan of the media, was then czar at Daily Times (now defunct), then Nigeria’s media market leader and foremost newspaper chain. Alhaji Jose, in Walking A Tightrope, his autobiography and memoirs, confirmed he indeed cast that headline.
Western Region Premier, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), had just been fired by a majority in the Western House of Assembly — a majority loyal to Chief Obafemi Awolowo; in the bitter and dirty dispute for the soul of the Action Group (AG), between Chief Awolowo (AG Leader) and SLA (Deputy Leader but Western Region Premier).
Akintola balked at the so-called sack, thus jarring against British Parliamentary conventions. Hence, the dramatic Akintola ta ku — a headline, using today’s social media lingo, that immediately went viral!
That western drama, because the federal authorities tried to strong-arm the process, would trigger a national crisis that would sink that republic on 15 January 1966.
On the other hand, “Gani wins round one” would later ring out, during the best-forgotten military era, as Gani, SAM — senior advocate of the masses — won yet another of his many famous injunctions, in his many legal pursuits to secure the dignity of the powerless, against the mighty establishment.
To be sure, Gani the Great won many famous and landmark cases, to huge media applause. But that he always won “round one” did not mean he prevailed in every particular case.
That should hold some cold comfort for Joe Ajaero and his — shell-shocked? — NLC ensemble. They just got outflanked by Julius Abure.
Foxy Jules just earned himself — by hook or by crook — another four-year stint as national chair of the troubled LP, to the chagrin of boisterous Joe!
Joe Ajaero! Who would have thought! That he, the famed garrison commander of Labour’s “agbero” tactics, just got caged, if not outright cooked, by same “agbero” politics, for the control of the soul of LP!
Who would have thought! That Abure — meek and gentle Abure — would overawe the loud and trenchant Ajaero, who preens at intimidating others, over LP: via the March 27 Nnewi, Anambra State, LP convention, that just coronated Abure as LP czar for four more years!
Abure! He is Julius, yes. But he appears very far from Caesar — that flamboyant figure of imperial Rome and the tragic hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Julius Caesar!
Rather, he tends to mirror Cassius, in Julius Caesar. Caesar himself spotted the Cassius danger: “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”
But Mark Antony dismissed such fears: “Fear him not, Caesar; he’s not dangerous” — a fatal mis-advice. Mighty Caesar soon became cadaver at the Capitol: no thanks to a murderous conspiracy by Cassius, Casca and hateful gang. Even the noble Brutus — who didn’t hate Caesar but only loved Rome — was part of that envious murder.
Now, Abure may not look hungry or “dangerous” as Cassius. But he certainly is lean!
He just showed Ajaero and his noisy Aluta crowd the lean-and-mean in the realpolitik of party power grab, beyond lousy picketing and predictable hell-raising.
Who would have thought! That Ajaero and his NLC old guard could be noisy outsiders, from the LP mansion they conceived and actually built! Who would have thought!
Still, serves the NLC old guard right. For too long, they kept mum, as political hustlers and Labour merchants raped LP for filthy lucre, their much flaunted ideology-exceptional maiden, each election season. Now, they jerk awake with a start: heretics have elbowed their high priests off their high temple!
For eight long years, the LP/NLC Jerusalem was Akure, where Ondo Governor Olusegun Mimiko (2009-2017) was busy playing LP chief boys scout and high priest.
Now, Mimiko was no better or worse than the hoard of South West hustlers, often hiding behind Awo’s social democracy ideology for power and political relevance. But he certainly was no Labour ideologue.
So, when Mimiko was done with LP, he floated ZLP — Zenith Labour Party — before he hit his political nadir and returned to his PDP vomit. He probably was too shame-faced to return to the Alliance for Democracy (AD)-AC-ACN-APC tendencies because he had razed bridges, in his futile rat race for a post-power South West political juggernaut.
Alex Otti, the current lone LP governor of Abia, is even a starker capitalist — no crime.
Still, while the war rages, he plants one foot in LP. He plants another in NLC. He wouldn’t host, in Umuahia, Abure’s controversial convention. Yet, he despatched his deputy to the Nnewi show. Call it the sacred Otti doctrine of absolute non-alienation!
Peter Obi? That one is one trophy both Ajaero and Abure would feud to death to keep! Even as Abure holds fast to his poisoned chalice of a new tenure, LP assures its 2027 presidential ticket is Obi’s — except he refuses.
For that cheeky promise, Ripples would give anything to see the face of Ajaero –Ajaero, the Obi fanatic — a gargoyle of a scowl? Who knows!
Still, what Obi did was flaunt his Obidient bona fides. Obi may have lost the 2023 polls, he sang. But his Obidients clearly won!
Now, what’s that — the peripatetic Obi giving very early warning that he’d take his Obidients elsewhere, should the Labour war endure?
But perhaps too — to placate Ajaero? — Obi pronounced his distance from Abure’s controversial convention. Enter the Labour political bride of the year — long after the great Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (God bless his soul)!
The evolving doom of LP is that those who know ideology know no electoral victory; those who know electoral victory know no ideology.
Isn’t that a clear pathway to structural death for a party that keeps deluding itself with queer exceptionalism in Nigerian politics?
LP had better snap out of its self-imposed delusion. Still, the present crisis presents it an opportunity re-find itself and assert its ideological soul.
Otherwise, it should say its last prayers; and embrace the disgraceful death its partisan whoring of the last 20 years eminently merits.
