“See finish” — that’s the brutal lingo for it in pidgin English. The Yoruba — and that concept isn’t exclusive to them — also quip: lies may travel for eons. But the truth zips past fibs only in a jiffy.
So stands former President Olusegun’s penchant to bathe his public rot in a sacred halo; and only whine and brag about injustices done him — like ending up in Sani Abacha’s gulag for a phantom coup. That was unfortunate, to be sure.
But as the Yoruba also say: the stabber can forget — not the victim that nursed the gash, and lives with the scar ever after. So, it is for former Oyo Governor, Oba Rashidi Ladoja as he recalled, at 80, savage gashes Obasanjo dealt him.
Speaking at a radio interview, Oba Ladoja said many claimed the late Lamidi Adedibu, the political “Alaafin Molete”, Ibadan, impeached him. If you recall, Adedibu was Obasanjo’s garrison commander of Oyo politics. He decreed elected Governor Ladoja must bow and worship at his shrine. That was classic Obasanjo democratic feudalism.
But Ladoja said Adedibu didn’t. Nor did the late Adebayo Alao-Akala, Ladoja’s deputy but Adedibu’s mole. Still, don’t be too hard on the dead — or on the living for that matter. Both Ladoja and Akala were Adedibu’s magical picks, in the 2003 magical poll that “captured” the South West and sacked the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD).
Obasanjo — yes, as then sitting president, drunk with arrogant power — did. And why? Because Governor Ladoja told President Obasanjo to shun the illegal third term he badly ogled. Baba Iyabo had always claimed he never wanted — or attempted — a third term. In the face of Oba Ladoja’s latest expose, he can tell that to the marines!
Obasanjo lugs the worst democracy record by any 4th Republic president since 1999. If he was wasn’t organizing hellish elections (witness 2023, which only was mere dress rehearsal for 2007: he dubbed it “do-or-die”; and ensured 2007 lived up to that evil billing in blind steal), he was organizing phoney impeachments for governors whose faces he didn’t like, just because he could as imperial president.
Obasanjo’s most potent tool for this presidential outlawry was his beloved “simple minority” — legal provisions for impeachment be damned!
Sweet double irony, though: Governor Ladoja was the first to successfully challenge that era of jungle impeachments. He got reinstated by the courts. But he never won a second term. At 80 too, in all of his post-politics glory, Oba Ladoja pulled a double to tell an ugly truth Obasanjo would rather bury in his immaculate robe of eternal hypocrisy.
At 80, Oba Ladoja has gifted the polity an invaluable present: Obasanjo-era seeping dregs and stench. It’s a ugly window into the PDP power years, when Obasanjo laid all the bad examples and created needless problems for his successors. Yet after, and he kids himself he’s Nigeria’s sacred political godhead, akin only to Christians and their Christ Jesus; and Muslims and their Holy Prophet Mohammed! What hubris!
Still, it’s the futility of playing God. Thank God Baba Iyabo is still alive to see himself in the unflattering mirror of Oba Ladoja.
