Chief Abdulkareem Adebisi Akande (Bisi Akande) for short, former Osun governor (1999-2003), who turned 80 on January 16, has a vice: brutal frankness. Though that spectacularly undid him as governor — and as politician — it has bolstered his image as a citizen and personage; and enhanced his prestige, even among fellow politicians.
Stubborn honesty may never endear anyone as a politician (not a few still believe the great Obafemi Awolowo, Akande’s political icon, like other Yoruba progressives, never attained the Nigerian presidency because of his brutal frankness). But it enhances your reputation among co-compatriots.
Still, Chief Akande paid a stiff political price for his stubborn frankness. As Osun governor, he bluntly told irate Osun civil servants, rallying for the new minimum wage, that the state’s finances could not support such a burden. Instead, he counseled them to pick their current wages and go back to work! That, among other voter hurts, would cost him a second term.
When Akande became Osun governor, it was a bedlam of demands, almost on all fronts — infrastructure, physical and social, general welfare, crisis of high hope (after the cul-de-sac of years of military rule) and even media spends to beam the government’s achievements. Osun had never had a great governor; and the expectation was acute.
Governor Akande applied his personal credo of self-denial for the good of the collective, honed on Spartan discipline and punishing frugality. That didn’t endear him to many, even among his own party mates. But that legacy would lay the foundation for a post-governorship glory, that has earned Akande nothing but admiration, among friend or foe.
That stubborn resolve to funnel ultra-scarce state resources to critical infrastructure was manifest in how his government, within four difficult years, built a futuristic Osun State Secretariat, complete with the Bola Ige White House, the Governor’s Office complex, without borrowing a dime. To stretch every kobo for the best possible value, he explored involving the Army Engineering Corps in the construction of critical road arteries. Thus he was able to do more, with less resources, thus chalking some muted acclaim.
Muted acclaim, because as he stretched every kobo to the limit, almost every segment of the elite was up in arms. The politicians wanted pork, but little pork was coming. The government spent little money on media propagation, believing a good product needed no advertisement. Thus, when the chips were down, it had virtually no one to argue its case.
Teachers too bemoaned a controversial job restructuring, which placed much emphasis on the sciences. That led to job losses, for some teachers teaching art and commercial subjects. That eventually cost him the governorship, even if not a few partisans still believed that sitting President Olusegun Obasanjo’s stealthy take-over of the South West gave the Akande defeat a lot of helping.
Still from that Sheol of defeat came a future paradise of exemplary reputation. After all the noise had quietened down — the whoop of victory and the yelp of defeat — Akande became the exemplar, against which others were measured, for probity and integrity. His world is the straight-and-narrow. But all around him is a bedlam of decadence, on the wide-and-merry. It’s a rare moral authority, in a character-challenged era.
Chief Akande is famous for his eternal mentoring of the younger ones. That earned him the moniker: “Baba Awon Omo Ke-Ke-Ke” (Yoruba for father of little children). But what many don’t know is his large heart, especially if it is forgetting personal hurt for the collective good.
A good example was the rather rankling political deal, among many if not most, Western progressives, with the then Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. It was pre-2011, and there were moves at rapprochement, between Gen. Buhari Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and Akande’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). Chief Akande was already seeing prospects in such a detente. When scandalized comrades reminded him that a military government, headed by the same Buhari had unfairly gaoled him, he countered that he who didn’t forget old hurts was fated to a miserable life!
That attempt fell through in 2011. But a subsequent one led to the merger of legacy parties: ACN, CPC, ANPP and a faction of APGA, before being latterly joined by a faction of PDP (rPDP), would birth in the present ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was the arrowhead of that merger but Chief Akande weighed in to build confidence, and went on to nurture the new party as its first national chairman.
But as Chief Akande dreamt of a progressive phalanx coming to Nigeria’s rescue, after the umpteenth misrule of conservative forces, he also gave a lot of thought to the future of the Yoruba South West, in the context of a federal Nigeria. He was therefore one of the prime forces behind the Development Agenda of Western Nigeria (DAWN) document, a developmental agenda, that seeks synergy and intra-regional economic integration, among the six South West states.
At 80, Chief Akande is well and truly an exemplar of everything good and decent in the public space. We can only pray that God grant him many more years yet.
