After a fairly consistent period of reading a particular newspaper columnist, you naturally begin to understand and even anticipate the form and content of his/her writings, the issues that motivate the columns, the overall style, language and analytical tools typically deployed in those interventions. Having started on a wide and rich diet of very distinguished columnists assembled on the editorial pages of The Nation newspapers, I soon gravitated towards a few columnists and settled with them almost on a ritual basis: Palladium by Idowu Akinlotan happens to be one of them.
Notwithstanding my admiration for the many fascinating skills of this columnist, I have had several occasions to completely disagree with both the form and content of some of his columns. For instance, I am usually very miffed at his ingratiating lack of restraint especially when talking about senior public citizens; his seemingly accustomed tendentiousness; his unrelieved sense of magisterial authority to declaim on any and everything and; the occasionally blatant and unpardonable partisanship of some of his interventions (Kogi State and its recent governorship elections is a prime example).
His column of Sunday October 15, 2017 under the topic ‘Ajimobi, Olubadan, Buhari and Southwest APC” is the immediate trigger of this rejoinder. My concern will however be strictly limited to his references to Ajimobi and Olubadan while Buhari and SouthWest APC will preferably be left out of the scope of my interest for reasons that should soon be obvious.
While Mr Akinlotan may be tolerated, even welcome, to his typically indecorous, gratuitous and hasty characterization of a whole group of elected leaders as ‘third rate’ people with ‘demonstrable lack of assiduity in projects conception and implementation’, he should not be allowed to get away with the very rude description of Governor Abiola Ajimobi’s media briefing after his recent meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari as illogical with such insouciant verbiage thrown in to describe the governor as a man that is ‘imperceptible’, and whose “sense of history may be a little troubling’.
How much more illogical and uncouth can you get when you use such words and phrases for a man who was the elected Governor and symbol of millions of people? This haul of insults is to a man who stated quite early and clearly that the whole matter of the Olubadan came up with the president only because of its security, and even political, implications for the State.
Periodic intimation of goings-on in states is a normal routine, especially between governors and the President, particularly when they belong to the same political parties. Just a few days ago, the Governor of Kogi State (whom our columnist dislikes with a passion!) was seen in Aso Rock, and in fact spoke with reporters and was thereafter quoted as saying he came to brief the president about some critical issues that he thinks the President ought to know about his state. Few days afterwards, a delegation of about eight governors including Emmanuel, Bagudu, Abubakar, Akeredolu and Ahmed were led into a meeting with the President by Governor Abdul’Aziz Yari under the auspices of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. So, whether in groups or as individuals, governors have always visited the President either to brief, hold meetings or simply to pay courtesy calls. One is therefore bemused that the author of Paladdium and others like him consider Ajimobi’s visit any special and deserving of his acerbic comments.
Briefing the president on the Olubadan chieftaincy review basically arose out of the need to acknowledge that while some dust had ben raised in certain quarters ostensibly in civil opposition, the real truth and present danger was that the whole process had been hijacked by a chieftain of an opposition political party and his group with grave security implications.
Unknown to some, including our columnist, this group had surreptitiously converted the Olubadan’s palace not only into its operational headquarters but as a staging post from where it had started to deploy its political missiles and weapons of mass deception. Recall that a few weeks ago, some hoodlums were said to have made a dramatic appearance at the Olubadan’s palace during a chieftaincy ceremony. They were said to have been seen shooting sporadically at some guests for more than fifteen minutes in the full glare of a contingent of security operatives after which they sped away without as much as anyone getting a picture of any of the marauders. We are hopeful that the security agencies will eventually unmask the real actors. In the meantime, there are those who would swear today that the event was not only a theatrical charade made to look real, but that its primary purpose was to blackmail the government by creating the impression that the mayhem was sponsored against the Palace and its opposition cohorts. How ridiculous! Thankfully, that ploy failed as most citizens refused to buy into the obvious humbug.
The red herring failed to fly because most stakeholders are not only fully aware of how trenchant Ajimobi’s government had been about issues of security since he was sworn-in in 2011, they have indeed celebrated the restored calm as one of the best dividends of democracy they had ever been given since 1999. Conversely, they also know too well how sworn-to brigandage this particular Opposition leader has always been and how inseparable his group is with all things violent and unruly, as demonstrated during their reign of terror when Oyo State, particularly Ibadan, was infamously known as a garrison of mercenaries.
Another inconvenient truth that is obviously lost to our columnist is that this group and its many agents had virtually succeeded in misguiding our revered monarch into public conduct unbecoming of his high esteem; these include but are not limited to the series of highly provocative and incendiary public statements emanating from the palace. Even when he could have explored all the usually open avenues for dialogue with the governor, the old man was – to the embarrassment of all men and women of goodwill – goaded into embarking on a public show of his disagreement with government by going round major streets and markets, openly campaigning, inciting and dividing the people against the government. Despite these many regrettable assaults on proper protocols, the Governor only returned the favour with a consistent demonstration of courtesies and reaffirmation of respect and loyalty to the monarch and his proud Ibadan heritage.
When Akinlotan therefore asks the rather lame question: how many other governors have toed his line and reported their monarchs to the President, our short response can only be, ‘how many governors have the same kind of potential security breaches unwittingly exacerbated by their monarchs?’
Perhaps the most egregious statement is when our author questions Ajimobi’s ‘understanding of the city’s proud history and heritage’ as if he is any competent to claim superior understanding. This is to a man who is not only a full-blooded Ibadan indigene but a thoroughbred with noble family roots that stretch back to the foundations of the city and connect to some of the most revered family trees in Ibadanland – from his father’s direct lineage and ancestry that goes back to the legendary Agboluaje-Ibadan to his mother’s equally illustrious ancestry that traces its heritage to Olugbode. Even in contemporary times, the Ajimobis occupy an enviable place among the pantheon of Ibadan greats. Well, I suppose that it is not unusual to occasionally encounter an immodest fellow who brazenly claims greater knowledge of the origins and meanings of a song than the one who actually composed and sang it!
As to Akinlotan’s judgment that the review of the Olubadan Chieftaincy Declaration was carried out to weaken and threaten the obaship institution, we can only assume that he had not been following the many arguments in favour of the review by a variety of eminent scholars, prominent Ibadan indigenes as well as the overwhelming majority of the custodians of traditional institutions including the eight members of the nine-man Olubadan-in Council. If he had, he would have been sufficiently educated to know that there was no way the governor would have conceived of the notion, not to talk of the act, of executing any assault against his
fatherland. Why would he plot an assault against an institution of which he is a major beneficiary having recently been honoured with the title of Aare of Ibadanland by this same monarch of whom he is very fond? Conversely, his actions in the regard are very strictly motivated and guided by a fervent desire to help guide the institution into modernity as we have seen across other major cities in Yorubaland. Not only was the idea for the chieftaincy reforms the culmination of several decades of community-driven demands, all due processes were followed to ensure stakeholder participation as well as strict compliance with the rule of law and traditional protocols. Mr Akinlotan may wish to adequately enlighten himself by reading the public documents before and all through the proceedings of the Judicial Panel of Enquiry as well as the Government’s duly published white paper on it.
It certainly begets mischief to suggest that a review that enjoyed such citywide applause threatens that institution just because of a few politically motivated and strident criticisms whose sole purpose was to exploit the circumstance to fight a proxy war with the hope of achieving visibility and relevance after their serial political losses on the electoral field. One would have thought a well-regarded columnist would be circumspect in joining such an army of political ‘arsonists’. But apparently, you never know how some contagion spreads.
As promised, this riposte is not concerned with the many pseudo-intellectual pronouncements, innuendoes and suppositions against President Buhari and Southwest APC. All I can add here is that Ajimobi, like his colleagues in the region, has been working assiduously to champion the cause of the Yoruba nation within the context of the country’s emerging political matrix. He has also been a rallying point of APC governors in the South-West to strengthen the party and reposition it for greater chances in coming elections.
As anyone who has ever been in or around government will tell, and unlike what armchair critics would say, it is not as easy to weld a people together towards the attainment of a crystalline vision, especially when beholden to the many centrifugal and peculiarly Nigerian forces that militate against the most enthusiastic and gifted of leaders. Standing out – looking in is a much more convenient sport than working in and battling through the murky labyrinths of conflicting interests and values. Only the deep can speak to the deep as our columnist would say.
The fact that a state house reporter and his newspaper chose to exaggerate and distort the sequence of a story or use a headline that masks actual context does not excuse a presumably more knowledgeable columnist to follow their track. Why would any state governor board an aircraft for Abuja just to ‘report’ a monarch who ordinarily is answerable to one of the local government chairmen? It is not only unfathomable that any governor would do that, it is preposterous for anyone to think so.
- Layinka is the Special Adviser, Communication & Strategy to Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State.
