Christ, the divine, the Jews treated like scum. They didn’t rest until they nailed him to the cross, though he committed no crime.
But after his resurrection and Ascension came Christianity, which billions today swear by. It is the nature of man to scoff at authentic heroes, secular or spiritual.
From the divine to the legend. When Chief Obafemi Awolowo exited the Western Nigeria Premiership in 1959, not a few swore his political death had come.
For one, his Action Group (AG), got drubbed at the December 1959 elections. For another, Awolowo’s traducers, federal and regional, felt they had him exactly where they wanted him — on the brutal slaughter slab.
Ferocious pre-death torture was the Coker Commission of Inquiry. The final gory chop? Awo’s conviction for treasonable felony.
But where politics faltered, legacy triumphed. The man of ideas and unfazed federalist, who ran the most revolutionary government in Nigerian history, eventually trumped his traducers.
Today, millions swear by Awo’s name. But nobody remembers his traducers and pyrrhic political “conquerors” — except for their perfidy and notoriety.
As Awolowo before him, is Rauf Aregbesola gifting the polity — at least, the historic-minded segment of it — a sense of deja vu?
1st Republic’s conventional politics laughed Awo’s policy brilliance to scorn — and for good measure, thrashed his AG at the polls.
Still, Awo’s death in 1987 marked his apotheosis into some political god, whose thinking, particularly on Nigeria’s troubled federalism, is ever fresh and relevant.
Aregbesola has run the most revolutionary, development-savvy and most impactful government, since Awo’s 1959 sign-off, in any part of Western Nigeria.
True, two other governments come in for close mention.
One, Alhaji Lateef Jakande’s 2nd Republic Lagos governorship (1979-1983). It was four years of non-stop people-focused action; which has secured Jakande’s place in history, even while he still lives, despite the Abacha era stain.
Two, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s Lagos governorship (1999-2007). That government not only re-birth Lagos as self-sustaining and as Nigeria’s economic dynamo, it also discovered Aregbesola himself, as its infrastructure czar; aside from unleashing Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, three-in-one Minister, Babatunde Raji Fashola, and a slew of others, who continue to positively impact the current federal order.
The big difference, however, is that Lagos had a head start as Nigeria’s former capital and the grand infrastructure it inherited, even if progressively decayed.
Osun had practically nothing — and Aregebsola started planting his future garden of hope, opportunities, development and prosperity, in virtual virgin land, in a virtual infrastructural desert, physical and social.
Given Osun’s barrenness by 2010, that garden has sprouted and thrived beyond many dreams, though some Osun elite continue to screech over short-term discomfort; and the state, even after Aregbesola’s eight path-finding years, is still a sprawling work-in-progress.
So, like Awo, Aregbesola felt his ground-breaking feats should gift his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate, Gboyega Oyetola, a thumping mandate.
But what ensued was the most nail-biting cliffhanger in Nigeria’s electoral history — spiced with the tragi-comedy of a dancing blob, with a wide berth from own family estate, nearly capering into the Osun governorship; and undoing eight years of unusual creativity, punishing thinking and gruelling work!
But whatever happens at the election tribunal, Aregbesola’s place in Osun history is assured; though, not unlike Awo before him, many appear too blinded by current orchestrated negative blitz, to realize just that.
An Oyetola win will secure continued hard work, on Osun’s steady but challenging march, into a glorious future, anchored on a solid foundation.
But an Ademola Adeleke win would seal a pact with Stone Age, as in Ayo Fayose’s neighbouring Ekiti; complete with had-we-known gnashing of teeth, four years down the line!
Either way — and God knows Osun deserves the better deal — Aregbe’s legacy is made.
Despite a blighted economy, the Aregbe era boasts futuristic infrastructure, of gleaming roads and glittering schools, in eight short years; never before imagined, in Osun’s puddle of routinized rot.
Should things turn awry, these landmarks would turn damning testimonies, against sordid electoral choices; like dust off the apostles’ sandals, dire evidence against those that scorned the gospel.
But should things stay as they are, the in-coming Governor Oyetola is well placed to ramp up Osun to the next level; and banish, forever, its past stagnation.
Still, not even those sparkling infrastructures would fully define Aregbe’s revolutionary “government unusual”. Rather, equal opportunity access would.
Aregbesola, even with a lean purse, started the schools feeding system, the most radical pro-poor school magnet, of his political generation.
By it, millions of children, from Osun’s most vulnerable homes, have been drawn to school; and served nutritive menu their parents could never have afforded. These children, as future adults, would proclaim Aregbe’s legacy.
But what is welfare to these kids, is vibrant lifeline to no less beneficiary adults — crop, poultry and animal farmers, food vendors and sundry value chains.
If 30 million children now benefit from the Federal Government version of this scheme, know that Aregbesola’s Osun started it all.
When Aregbe started his equal opportunity religious push, a tragically limited media scoffed it off as “Islamization” — and wrote tonnes and tonnes of goading news and vitriol-spitting editorials.
Yet, his government headed by a devout Muslim, is the first to stand for the rights of adherents to African traditional faiths, when he declared the yearly Osun Isese Day.
Yes, his declaration of the Islamic New Year has spawned the Hijab controversy in schools, which not a few would rather condemn, because it bucks the conventional wisdom of “settled” school “uniform”.
Still, today’s “secular” uniforms had Christian roots. Both the colonial government and missionaries that founded earliest schools were Christians. So is the Monday to Friday governmental work week. Therefore, the Hijab is symbol of long repressed legitimate rights, in a multi-religious polity.
It takes a deeply focused but discerning government to push such campaigns without slipping on the brick-and-mortar, which everyone can see.
Aregbesola’s Osun federalist rebranding, complete with its coat of arms, again sent a section of the media ga-ga, bawling “secession!”
Yet today, Aregbesola exits power as a proud exponent of the Yoruba identity, unfazed proponent of Awo’s developmental politics and unapologetic advocate of South West integration within a federal Nigeria, without any iota Yoruba supremacism.
Those who claim Ogbeni has “failed” are entitled to their democratic delusion. But Aregbe legacies have already dug their graves. History will bury them without trace.