Former Governor of Oyo State, Senator Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, may not strike you as a brilliant man at first sight. But those who misread his brand of politics often live to regret it. His major strength is the tendency of his traducers to take him for granted, equating his looks with the strength of his political machinations. But those who take him for granted never remain on the political front to tell the story. He makes a mince meat of them with his deadly political punches.
But Ladoja could be dour and uncompromising when he chooses a particular path. Perfecting the Adedibu school of politics—tar-brushing political opponents, making them unworthy and ramming in the final nail—he seldom has a rival in the mastery of this political weapon. It is a methodology that is serviced by falsehood and crude mudslinging.
For instance, aware of the populist disposition of the Lam Adesina Alliance for Democracy (AD) government and desirous of making an inroad into the government of the time, Ladoja began the systematic tar-brushing of the governor as an Ebira man. His disciples, who cut across a broad clientele, were summoned to spread the gospel of this mudslinging throughout the nooks and crannies of Oyo State. Before Great Lam could wake up from his defence that his great grandfathers’ umbilical cords were interred on Ibadan soil, Ladoja’s lie had festered in the consciousness of the people like cancerous cells. During the April 2011 elections, his group also spearheaded the campaign round the state against Adebayo Alao-Akala. They alleged that he served school children poisoned bean cakes. The rest, as they say, is history.
Right now, Ladoja is fighting the political battle of his life. Calculative and wily, it must have occurred to him that at age 72 in 2015, if he fails to make an appearance at the Government House in Agodi, his political fate would be sealed forever, hence the obsessive desperation to hone his political skills and make ample use of the wiles of his trade. But, at a point, Ladoja was in a dilemma. Virtually in every nook and cranny of Oyo State and even beyond, the popularity of his cousin and nemesis, Ajimobi, was becoming unbearable. Indeed, the encomiums freely poured on Ajimobi are a great indictment on Ladoja’s stint in office as governor.
Undoubtedly the most debilitating of the punches rained on Ladoja by Ajimobi’s strides is the construction of the Mokola fly-over in Ibadan. Because Mokola is critical and strategic in the transportation network of Ibadan in terms of commerce and being one of the earliest roads in that part of the country, it was necessary to have the fly-over. Also, travellers commuting from Lagos to Oyo had to pass through this route while transportating their goods. This has thus caused a traffic implosion that renders the intersection extremely busy and jam-packed. This fly-over is thus a tool to reduce traffic conflicts, reduce accidents, loss of lives and wasted man-hour. Hence, this fly-over is mindful of the historical import of the route and takes into cognizance the trajectory of the Mokola-Sango-Dugbe Road.
Administrations had come and gone and none found the need to break this logjam expedient. But as soon as Ajimobi began the construction of the bridge, Ladoja realised the shine it would take off him, so he tried to appropriate it. On a radio interview, he told his audience that he owned the fly-over blueprint, as it was one of the bridges he had dreamt of constructing. Assailed by the deluge of kudos to Ajimobi over it and the massive encomiums he is receiving for restoring the beauty of the state, Ladoja began his usual campaign of hate and calumny targeted at weakening the support base of the Ajimobi government. And he has been making a good job of it.
His attacks are based on a quartet prong. One, that the fly-over is substandard. Second, that its price was inflated and third, that it was not necessary. On a different level, he attacks the government as not having a human face for, in his words, removing traders from markets without alternatives. To buttress his argument on the first charge, he wondered why barriers would be placed on the fly-over, maintaining that it means the bridge is not strong enough.
Even though the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Oyo State sees the weakness of Ladoja’s arguments as unbecoming of an engineer, it failed to see the Ladoja gambit in totality. The truth of an argument is inconsequential in Ladoja’s tar-brushing propaganda.
Widely travelled persons will intuitively mock Ladoja on the first score of his criticism. Even Lagosians would laugh him to ridicule. That a barrier was put at the foot of a fly-over indicates that it is weak? You do not even require the rigour of an engineering school to realise the falsity of this assertion. Down there in Lagos, the Amuwo-Odofin/Festac, Kodesoh, Mobolaji Bank Anthony, Yaba, Airport Road bridges, etc all have barriers at their feet to discourage articulated vehicles. That a former governor of a state in this century, who claims to be an engineer, would level this kind of allegation speaks volumes of the retrogression that befell Oyo State in the years he held sway as governor.
That it was unnecessary? This contradicts even Ladoja himself. If it was, why did he, according to him, have the blueprint for it in the first instance? If it is unnecessary, why does he now advocate that the bridge should have been dual carriage? The truth is that there is no need for the fly-over to be a double lane bridge, otherwise it would amount to colossal waste. Even the Molete fly-over is not necessary as a dual carriage bridge as there is sparse traffic on it.
Ladoja’s mischief is most vivid on the cost of the fly-over. On a recent radio programme in Ibadan, he stuck at this dross shamelessly while comparing the one in Abeokuta with the Mokola fly-over. Again, was the falsehood being peddled by Ladoja as a result of mischief or naivety? For instance, rather than the length of the Ibadan bridge being 550 metres, he called it 470 metres and the Abeokuta bridge that is 400 metres, he says it was 620 metres. It is the usual Ladoja misinformation machinery.
But the most significant answer to his caterwaul of naivety and mischief is that while the Abeokuta fly-over truly costs N1.5 billion, Ibadan’s cost N2.9 billion but the variances in their packages make the difference. First, before the award of the constructions, the two governments never came together to compare notes and as such do not have same Bill of Quantity. Second, being a rocky town and sited on a rocky foundation, the Abeokuta bridge apparently requires less cost on its foundation. But Ibadan does not have a visible rocky outcrop as the foundation of a bridge should be based on solid rock strata. Thus, the foundation type of the Abeokuta bridge requires less rigour than Ibadan’s. Again, the Ibadan bridge goes with several ancillary furniture, which the one in Abeokuta does not have. These are 500mm water mains of steel pipes of about 2km, as the old water pipelines were replaced. Second, there is a 1.2 kilometre road network that was rehabilitated and widened beside the Ibadan bridge, which is included in the costing. There is also the cost of relocation of NEPA (electrical) and telecommunications facilities. Also included in it is the cost of compensation for demolished buildings and beautification around the fly-over.
Not done, Ladoja has intensified the campaign to paint Ajimobi’s government as inhuman due to its removal of street traders. He cited the example of the Bola Ige government which relocated traders from Old Gbagi to Old Ife Road. Again, the Ladoja misinformation is that Ajimobi never relocated traders from any market but street traders, for whom he has constructed an ultra-modern shopping complex and is still building more. But the question to ask Ladoja is, while he was governor and he pulled down shops, did he construct any in replacement? Why the escapism of citing Ige when he could have given the examples of himself? And why would a man who, as the Ashipa of Ibadanland, is close to being the Olubadan of Ibadanland, relish such misinformation? This, apparently, is why the Olubadan recently sought to bar his chiefs from politics.
To achieve the aim of acting as the dissembler of the panagyrics heaped on his cousin, Ladoja has sent his henchmen to the streets; mechanic workshops and the nooks and crannies of the state, on a mission to tar-brush the governor and odorize him. For this, he made up with a major hatchet man of his successor and sent him on the errand to achieve this in the media. Also, anyone who runs foul of government’s environmental policy and is made to pay a fine, his henchmen are always on hand to pay, exchanging Ladoja’s call card instantly. What a coy politicking!
A psycho analysis of Ladoja is that of a man desperate for power, thus making him a mamba provoked and ready to sting. But why would a man who should be a statesman embark on such Samsonic Pull Down the House campaign that can be likened to the proverbial Yoruba rat which vowed that rather than not having a bite of the cowpeas, it would scatter the beans tray?
•Hassan teaches English Literature in a secondary school at Monatan, Ibadan.
