The Bible tells the story of Saul turning into Paul on the way to Damascus, after encountering God. Could there be an evolving Nigerian story of a Paul turning Saul, somewhere between Owo and Ife, after an encounter with mammon? I just wonder!
This musing came after reading “South-West: Lest we forget regional integration”, a piece by Bola Bolawole, in his “Turning Point” column on the back page of the Wednesday May 22 issue of Daily Newswatch.
Normally, it is trite in logic that leaving the message to attack the messenger is bad writing and bad thinking culture. Indeed, that fallacy is called ad hominem. In this case however, engaging the writer, in the context of his writing, is both logical and legitimate, since he ab initio, smuggled himself into the write-up in a most supine, abject and illogical manner, that suggests his readers must be fools.
Wrote he: “In Osun State, I wish Governor Rauf Aregbesola would not be returned for second term but that PDP would take over the state in next year’s election.”
To start with, that was absolutely presumptuous and without rigour. As far as I know, democratic choices are past the realm of wishes. If wishes were horses, goes the saying, every fool would ride – and perhaps break his neck! Democratic elections are made of more rigorous stuff – at least they should be, since man is supposed to be a rational and pain-avoiding animal. So, on what account might Governor Aregbesola lose the next election, when in two years he has done more than Olagunsoye Oyinlola and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) power scavengers did in almost eight years?
Not so long ago, Bolawole had in his column in the Nigerian Tribune, rubbed in the sand the nose of Iyiola Omisore – he of the sinister scowl, violent politics and push-and-mug mentality. He claimed Omisore had so many questions to answer and that he would have nothing to do with him.
Barely months after, however, he was inviting fellow journalists, particularly seasoned columnists whose voice have influence, to come have close tete-a-tete with Omisore who claimed he had acquired some PhD on some newfangled area – and needed right thinking members of the society to help validate his claim. Bolawole probably succeeded with some. But he gloriously failed with not a few; and for his and continuing impiety, his principal remains a pariah to decent and respectable society.
So, why might an Owo native that Bolawole is, be so obsessed with a governor from a neighbouring state losing an election; and a PDP, that had, beyond any reasonable doubt, proved its incompetence and uselessness, win? Apparently between Owo and Ife, a former Paul of the Nigerian media, bristling with propriety, decency and justice, had turned to a Saul, in the service of the pig-and-muck manor of Omisore, the decency-challenged enforcer nursing the delusion of being governor.
Well, Bolawole has a right to pick his camp. He also has the right to ally with God or with mammon. But he does not have the right to unleash blatant presumption on readers, hiding behind South West integration, and making outlandish claims against Governor Aregbesola who, by the dint of focus, commitment and hard work, would continue to be the nemesis of Omisore and his Osun PDP freeloaders, even with their illicit and so-called federal might.
Bolawole opened his piece with a fallacy: because Labour Party won the Ondo gubernatorial election, the battle for the soul of the South West was lost and won! That might be fine logic in the Omisore rigour-challenged political pepper soup joints. But it is clearly asinine in cultivated circles.
To follow the Omisore tradition of extreme contempt for readers, Bolawole went on to inflict another blatant lie: since the loss of Ondo election in which the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) made South West integration a campaign issue, and of which Aregbesola was prime driver, nothing had been heard of the project again.
Yet, at a four-day South West Expo: Grassroots Business and Investment Forum 2013, from February 6 to 9, an event to practicalise South West integration organised by The Nation newspaper and Ceedee consultants, and hosted by the State of Osun in Osogbo, newspapers widely reported Aregbesola’s personal invitation to Governor Olusegun Mimiko to join his brother governors on the South West integration project. He added that since election was over, it was time to join hands to develop the region. Prince Bola Ajibola and Dr. Omololu Olunloyo and other distinguished guests from this clime graciously attended the event.
Besides, participants after the event agreed on a 17-point resolution, Number 4 of which declared: “Ondo State should, as of right, take its place in South West integration programmes and activities.” Indeed, Dipo Famakinwa, director-general of the DAWN Commission, the policy implementing arm of South West integration, with its headquarters at Cocoa House, Ibadan, was even one of the resource persons who delivered papers at that event.
So, where comes Bolawole’s yarn that nothing had been heard of the project since the Ondo election; or that Aregbesola, in Bolawole’s view, “the acclaimed coordinator of regional integration for ACN … has not said a word about regional integration since his party lost in Ondo”? It is of course the empty gas that comes from the Omisore sinister house of push-and-shove politics.
That brings the matter to Bolawole’s reasons for his “wish” that Aregbesola lose the coming election: that the governor played politics with everything – religion, education and regional integration.
From this piece so far, it is clear that Aregbesola playing politics with regional integration is a fiction of the jaundiced imagination of those whose stock-in-trade is emotive blackmail, not reasoned discourse. As for playing politics on education, if scaling up educational infrastructure in terms of new school buildings, Opon Imo, the computer tablet for senior secondary school pupils, free school uniforms that also provides jobs for local tailors and designer, and free meals for junior pupils are politics, I think the Osun people would have been glad Omisore and his exuberant party played such politics when they were in power for almost eight years of stolen mandate!
As for Bolawole’s charge on politicking with religion, it is a classic example of giving a dog a bad name to hang it. But any right-thinking person knows that Aregbesola’s religious policy is based on equal access, equal opportunity and fairness. Even the Hijab issue epitomises just that; and the access to traditional believers even more epitomises this equal access and equal opportunity policy, which is however beyond the ken of irrational rabble rousers, whose forte is stark ignorance.
The good thing though is that our people have left that Egypt of ignorance and are cruising toward the Promised Land of development and prosperity under the charge of Aregbesola. Not a billion Omisores and his misguided chorus singers and court jesters can stop that.
