There has been a lot of rejoicing in the camp of some political warlords in Oyo State in the last one week or thereabout. Violence, which had disappeared from the state in the last three and half years, suddenly reappeared like a malevolent spirit. For that long hitherto, their political albatross, Abiola Ajimobi, governor of Oyo State, rode the crest of popular acclamation. The horse he rode to the crest of the people’s hearts was no other issue than one in which, in their previous eight years of being in power, the political warlords failed woefully to address, and in some respects, found to have abetted. It was the issue of peace.
With a peculiar swagger, Ajimobi mounted the rostrum and told the world the story of his pedigree of peace. He reeled into a comparative statistics that was damning to the past and eulogizes the present. Literally calling the proverbial short memory of the Nigerian to a contest, he reminded the people that under the duo of Governors Rashidi Ladoja and Adebayo Alao-Akala, Oyo State could be likened to either Syria or Lebanon. Guns boomed and daggers kissed human blood at whims. National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) kingpins held court and bloodshed became almost a state policy. Specifically under Ladoja, an NURTW kingpin and his co-thugs invaded the House of Assembly where the revered Obafemi Awolowo brought policies that transformed the West, shooting guns, smoking hemp at random and declared the Speaker ‘impissed.’ This kingpin was eventually shot dead in cold blood under Alao-Akala government’s watch and the allegation of his killing hung over the neck of another PDP gubernatorial aspirant. Vandalism of property became the norm and investors avoided Oyo State like a plague. It was that chaotic.
You needed a travel advice to walk through Ibadan and a war arsenal to navigate through Olomi, Iwo Road and many other areas of the state capital. In the heat of this, NURTW kingpins and thugs were alleged to be permanently domiciled in the Government House and governments of the day abetted them. Indian hemp smoking became official norm at the Government House and its environs. Life was nasty, brutish and short.
But like a genius, Ajimobi came and decreed a stoppage to all that. What was the magic wand? His pedigree of peace. He disconnected governmental link to the violent groups in Oyo State and sternly vowed to pounce heavily on malefactors. Against the grain of time past, he shut government door against the cells of violence and Indian hemp smoke disappeared from the firmament of Government House. He told NURTW operatives to appoint their officers independent of government prodding. Suddenly, thugs went out of job and hired killers lapsed into hibernation.
Ajimobi followed this up with giving security forces a sense of belonging. He activated the anti-crime outfit codenamed Operation Burst and gave all the forces a sense of belonging. Funding them heavily, he purchased vehicles, equipment and provided logistics for the operatives. The latter thereafter went into the nooks and crannies of the crime world in the state and smoked them out. Crime statistics started to tumble, to the chagrin of violence cells of the political arms of the state. The calm jolted them and the peace gave them sleepless nights. Their bother was that Ajimobi was scoring ‘cheap’ gains at their expense as his mantra of eliminating violence jarred their nerves. And rightly so, because Ajimobi’s renown was hitting the length and breadth of the world. He was called Mr. Peace at every engagement and states, organizations seized in the jugular by violence started coming to him for a refresher course. Indeed, foundations and organizations within and outside the country invited him to deliver talks on how to turn a violent state into a peaceful hub.
Then sprang the gang-up. Old political fox, Senator Ladoja, led the pack. He wrote a powerfully worded petition to the Presidency, alleging that Operation Burst was being used to witch-hunt political foes. And the Presidency leapt into action, interrogating everybody and everyone. At the end of the day, the authorities smelled the heavy aroma of the peculiar politics of Oyo in the allegation and shoved it off like an affliction. But the acrimony within the political gang would not abate over Ajimobi’s ‘cheap’ victory of peace.
Ajimobi and subsequent events in Oyo State were to even infuriate the political warlords further. Financial Times of London did the first damage on their psyche as it ranked Oyo State as one of the 10 investment destinations in the whole of Africa. The warlords cried blue murder. A federal institution, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) rammed in the final nail on their coffin. As revealed in its report, total capital imported into Nigeria stood at $5.8 billion as at the end of the second quarter of 2014, relative to the $3.9 billion recorded in the preceding quarter. Of these, Oyo State’s capital importation increased by 697%, approximating $3.49 million, up from $500,000 between the first and second quarter in the year. This was like their death knell.
Concrete facts of traffic of capital investment began to show. Investors trooping into the state have shown that these statistics are no mere fluke. A leading soya milk manufacturing company, largest bread-making factory in West Africa, Number One day-old chicks agricultural company, biggest support-service provider for the telecoms industry, largest vegetable oil production in Africa, etc have berthed in the state, not to talk of the largest Shoprite outlet in West Africa that has been recently sited in the state. Like a man who wears his accomplishments on his shirt sleeves, Ajimobi boasts that none of these investments could come in a hitherto chaotic Oyo State under Ladoja and Akal. No one can gainsay the fact that, with this, he had stepped on a live rattlesnake, courtesy this bloated swagger of his.
To compound Ajimobi’s complicit infuriation of the political warlords who had been feeding the people the story of his hatred by the people, Ajimobi had the temerity to embark on a tour of the 33 local governments of the state on November 3, 2014. Oke Ogun area was his first port of call. This was where the opposition told the world Ajimobi was detested like a pestilence. The governor moved Government House to this hinterland, breakfasting with the people, lunching, supping with them and drinking their water in its rawest form. He mended fences with the aggrieved, dissolved age-long acrimonies and decreed projects into reckoning. The crowd of enthusiastic supporters burst at its seams. The warlords were jolted. The way this ‘blighter’ was going, they reckoned, the rug was caving in finally from their feet.
Ibarapa followed. The same spellbound crowd trooped out. You didn’t need to be a psychologist to read the enthusiastic acceptance on the people’s faces. This writer veered off the governor’s convoy and meshed into the crowd. Comments from the ordinary folks were exceptionally patronizing. They perforated the misleading thesis of the warlords.
Egged on by the widespread acceptance of his persona and government, Ajimobi thereafter proceeded on the final lap of the tour on Friday November 21. Ido and South West councils were slated. At Ido, the crowd was in an electrifying joy in their thousands. Security reports said the warlords were crestfallen and sad. How could this Ajimobi folk perforate all the concoctions and calculations this peremptorily?
Ajimobi was still in Ido by the evening of that Friday when words came. The deed had been done! The river of peace had been finally polluted. Bile had been sprinkled into the still water. A policeman had been shot dead in Oke Ado area of Ibadan and the permutation of the warlords had come full throttle. Ajimobi’s thugs had killed a policeman, they sent the words into the bush telegraph. The All Progressives Congress (APC) vest-wearing thugs who allegedly shot the policeman must be Ajimobi’s thugs, they chorused. On Sunday, two days after this, and even on Monday November 24, a band of thugs unleashed mayhem at the Bon Photo area of Ibadan, maiming and destroying shops. The machination of the warlords had come full circle.
But the logic they try to sell to the world could be perforated by even an aspiring student of philosophy. How come a government which in three and half years succeeded in eliminating crime, murder, thuggery and violence and which had been basking in the euphoria of this achievement all over the world, will, few months into the end of its first tenure, willfully destroy this flagship of its? How come Ajimobi toured 32 local governments and a few hours to the end of the tour, in his local government, “his thugs” will pollute the result of this success?
