In Jimi Agbaje, suave gentleman and pharmacist, as Lagos candidate, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has altered its preference for roughnecks as South West gubernatorial hopefuls.
Witness: Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose, demagogue of the first rank; and, from his gubernatorial deeds so far, constitutional outlaw, if he can get away with it — for which gubernatorial kind would get his budget “passed” by a rogue parliament of seven ultra-minority members (less than a quorum of nine in a legislature of 26); and claim to be in constitutional governance?
And Osun’s Iyiola Omisore: a truly controversial figure, with suspect community value, that ran a truly menacing gubernatorial campaign, complete with hooded gunmen, even if that campaign eventually failed.
In Mr. Agbaje, however, it is something refreshingly different. Obviously, Eko o ni gba-gba ku gba (Lagos won’t take any nonsense)!
Akinwunmi Ambode, Mr. Agbaje’s All Progressives Congress (APC) equivalent, is made of no less stellar stuff.
A famed civil service technocrat and professional accountant, the former Lagos Accountant-General and permanent secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Finance, was reportedly the silent wheel behind the financial re-engineering that kept Lagos afloat, when President Olusegun Obasanjo bared the fangs of his imperial presidency, over the creation of additional local governments in Lagos, under the Bola Tinubu administration.
Still, whatever Mr. Agbaje did as a private investor; and Mr. Ambode, as a public sector technocrat, are all in the realm of supposition, since neither had taken direct charge as the Lagos chief executive.
Therefore, their first point of contact, with the electorate, at least, would have to be their proxies — mentors, if you like: show-me-your-friends, fashion.
For Mr. Agbaje is the triumvirate of Olabode George, Adeseye Ogunlewe and Musiliu Obanikoro.
In a spade of a few weeks however, Mr. Obanikoro has turned Mr. Agbaje’s co-contestant for the Lagos governorship ticket; sworn virtual enemy, on the allegation that the primary was rigged in Mr. Agbaje’s favour; and now a supporter of a sort, on account of some post-primary intra-PDP entente.
For Mr. Ambode would appear former Governor Bola Tinubu and current incumbent, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN.
Though Asiwaju Tinubu said before the Lagos APC gubernatorial primaries that he backed no candidate, whispering campaigns persisted Mr. Ambode was his man. Since the candidate emerged, Governor Fashola, from his public comments and actions, appears backing Mr. Ambode to the hilt.
So, where stand the two, proxy-wise?
That Chief George and former Senator Ogunlewe broke into an involuntary embrace, after Mr. Agbaje’s win over Mr. Obanikoro, spoke volumes. Why?
No prize for guessing right — for it needs no especial perspicacity: some merry real-politik trade-off was afoot.
Both George and Ogunlewe need Mr. Agbaje’s good name. Mr. Agbaje, on the other hand, needs the twain’s political structure, on which to erect his own gubernatorial run. Quid-pro-quo: a sweetheart deal was born!
Yet, from that initial merriness, Mr. Agbaje’s brand appears heading for collateral gloom, considering the duo’s rather unflattering public perception, when the issue is Lagos.
Mr. Ogunlewe, as a senator of the Federal Republic, was one of the first sets of renegade Alliance for Democracy (AD) Lagos senators, that gifted PDP their AD mandate, resulting from former President Obasanjo’s AD destabilisation plot. The senator had the temerity to come back, in 2003, to re-contest the Lagos East senatorial seat on the PDP platform.
He was electorally guillotined — his seat given to Senator Nimbe Mamora, who after two distinguished terms, rose to become widely acknowledged as one of the finest senators of his age.
That 2002 sweet poison of soulless defection would come back to purge the federal ruling party, with the APC defection of Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, prompting the rash police invasion of the National Assembly. Talk of parents eating sour grapes and children’s teeth being set on edge!
Still, Mr. Ogunlewe was not done with Lagos. As President Obasanjo’s Works minister, he levied virtual war on Lagos, with his Federal Roads Maintenance Authority (FERMA) corps, that tried to elbow the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) corps from Lagos roads, claiming they had suzerainty over federal roads in Lagos.
In one of the senseless skirmishes, Mrs. Derin Disu, then chairman of Lagos Island Local Government, was thoroughly assaulted and harassed. Her “crime”? Having the temerity to confront Mr. Ogunlewe’s FERMA corps!
Mr. Ogunlewe’s partner in the Jimi Agbaje project, Chief George, has contributed little to the public space, except military conceit and insufferable arrogance. He invented the word “capture” for winning elections, so many times thundering the PDP would “capture Lagos”, a diction that has a ring of do-or-die, foul-or-fair menace. Even as military governor of old Ondo State (now Ondo and Ekiti states), George’s record was nothing to crow about.
Mr. Obanikoro too would follow Mr. Ogunlewe’s template of defecting to PDP with his Action Congress (AC) senatorial ticket, after ironically replacing the late Wahab Dosunmu, who committed a similar electoral perfidy by taking his AD ticket to PDP. Like Mr. Ogunlewe too, Mr. Obanikoro sought election (though as Lagos governor), but was defeated by Mr. Fashola.
Ironically too, both George and Obanikoro appear doomed to the Ogunlewe script. While Ogunlewe used FERMA to traumatise Lagos, Obanikoro has accused George of using the SURE-P cadre, a bric-a-brac federal corps noticeable on Lagos roads, as alleged armed bouncers to fix elections.
Obanikoro himself, as short-lived Defence minister of state (Army), wasn’t shy of despatching his soldiers to disrupt work at the Ilubinrin, Lagos Island housing project of the state government, aside from trotting them to try and fix elections at Ekiti and Osun gubernatorial elections in 2014.
This would appear Mr. Agbaje’s exalted company in his gubernatorial quest!
Mr. Ambode’s company? Former Governor Tinubu and the incumbent, Governor Fashola.
Now, in the eyes of the other camp, Tinubu is the worst that could ever afflict any polity. And Fashola is nothing but his eternal stooge! That might well be. Besides, one man’s meat is another man’s poison; and, in war, all would appear fair!
Still, on a less emotive plane, the Tinubu-Fashola lineage has brought a 1999 Lagos from its abyss of infrastructural decay, environmental paralysis and sheer anomie, depressing results of years of hopeless military rule; to a 2015 near-financially independent Lagos, renascent and vibrant, confident of facing its future, even if it is always work-in-progress.
Inversely, the PDP at the federal level, has brought a 1999 Nigeria, flush with cash but nevertheless inefficient and wasteful, to a 2015 Nigeria, broke and beggarly, set to enter again the debt trap, it only exited in 2005/2006. That is Mr. Agbaje’s preferred space shuttle into governance. Wish him the best of luck!
There is partisan muck, of course; of which both camps are not necessarily guiltless. Still, Mr. Ambode would appear rooted in an already established tradition of developmental Lagos, tested and proved, with verifiable results. That, with all due respect to his good name, cannot be said of Mr. Agbaje.
Ambode’s reported rich contribution to Lagos’ financial re-engineering is reassuring, giving the impression that with him, Lagos would remain in safe and tested hands, and not just passing to partisan rivals, bustling with a me-too syndrome, but hardly exhibiting any cogent reason it could raise Lagos higher.
That is the clear choice Lagos must make, between Mr. Agbaje and Mr. Ambode.
