A friend had invited me to a social event in the thick of the presidential election campaign. At the table were my friend and two other men, one of whom was already known to me as both of us had discussed politics during some chance encounters. Proudly an Ondo town man, he never saw anything wrong with the Mimiko and Jonathan administrations while I would argue that Iroko is the worst to ever happened to the people of Ondo State since the invention of plywood and that Jonathan was the most pathetic and incompetent president in Nigeria’s history. Since I never met the other guy at the table, I was introduced by our mutual friend at whose behest I was at the event. Almost as a sidekick, our mutual friend drew, jokingly, our attention to the fact that all the three of us are from the same state, except him, being a Lagosian.
“Where’re you from in Ondo State?” the guy I was meeting for the first time asked me.
“Akure,” I replied.
“Ah! You people are not a force to be reckoned with. You’re not in charge of the state. We the Akokos and Ondos are,” he deadpanned.
“I see,” I retorted. And he went on to give me some anecdotal instances to buttress his point. I was stunned. But I listened calmly with hardly anything to say as counter argument.
What stunned me was not the veracity of his statement (as I have suspected long ago that Akure indigenes may largely be inconsequential in the state’s political scheme of things), but his audacity to rub this on the nose of someone he was meeting for the first time. That statement unsettles something in me each time I think about it.
The new Deji of Akure, Oba AladetoyinboAladelusi’s coronation came at a time when politics and the business of politics were the only games in and across the Nigerian landscape. In the aftermath of his coronation, some members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) led by Barrister Isaac Kekemeke, the state chairman of the party, paid a courtesy visit to Oba Aladelusi. In a speech to these party stalwarts, the new Deji was reported to have indicated that the fundamental political objective and directive principle of his monarchy is to see an Akure indigene in the Alagbaka Government House after the 2016 governorship election. Also, during another courtesy visit by members of the Executive Council of the Akure Community Development Forum (ACDF) led by Chief Reuben Fasoranti, in a news report entitled: “Akure is next to rule Ondo, says Deji” in The Nation newspaper on Monday, August 24, Oba Aladelusi was reported to have reiterated his earlier stance that his desire is “to ensure that the state’s next governor is produced by [the] Akure community” and that he was ready to use his “influence and connections to ensure that his dream comes to fruition.” Oba Aladelusi said his “major ambition on the throne was to ensure [that an] Akure indigene becomes the governor” and “urged politicians and other eminent personalities who were (sic) indigenes of Akure to rally round him to ensure the realization of his dream.” The monarch was reported to have “lamented that Akure, despite being the state capital, has not produced the governor since Ondo State’s creation about 40 years ago.”
One may never know if the Akure monarch’s desire to see an Akure indigene in the state’s Government House was a spur-of-the-moment, carefully crafted and politically correct rallying point to his subjects to close ranks after a rancorous kingship tussle. Neither can it be ascertained that this perceived sense of unfairness to Akure indigenes have always been embedded in the monarch’s subconscious, waiting for expression at the opportune time, which has now presented itself, having received the staff of office as the paramount ruler of the Akure kingdom. But whatever may be the reason(s) for Oba Aladelusi’s position, it was a profound and noble declaration that should be interrogated by not only Akure political elites, but also its well-meaning indigenes. It’s a call to duty that should engage the minds of Akure indigenes in a representative democracy.
While the Oba is on the right track concerning what he sees as his subjects’ political disadvantage, who, incidentally, are adjudged as having the strongest voting strength in the state, it should also be stated in no uncertain terms, however, that the realization of Oba Aladelusi’s political ambition for his subjects lies not in mere bringing this disadvantage into the public consciousness, but rather in scrupulously looking at those fundamentals that may have inhibited an Akure indigene from ascending to the highest political office in the state. A good starting point, it seems to me, is this eerie feeling that the economic and political foundations of Akure’s political elites, critical to their ascendance in the state’s body politic, are much weaker relative to the economic and political architectures of other ethnic groups with which they must contest for political power. Their rancorous and fractious dispensation of their political capital in terms of their votes, to which Oba Aladelusi alluded in the news report when he said that he “regretted that indigenes of Akure have failed in the past to unite and speak with one voice” have almost always been their undoing. Perhaps their weak economic and political strengths, coupled with their politics of “Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)” may have found their roots in their lack of psycho-emotional bonding that would have naturally predisposed them to lending each other some helping hands which seems to come natural to their ethnic counterparts such as the Akokos or Ondos. With the aforementioned, they may have unconsciously disempowered themselves, or may not have paid enough attention to how others have deliberately disempowered them in order to make it difficult, if not impossible, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other political heavyweights from other ethnic groups in the state. The present Mimiko administration which is practically a government of Ondo/Idanre/Oke-Igbo axis is a classic example. A government doesn’t get more exclusive than that.
Perhaps Oba Aladelusi may want to take stock of the political elites and other eminent Akure personalities vis-à-vis the extent of their economic and political capacity as a group in Nigeria and the Diaspora by calling a summit of Akure indigenes as soon as practicable in order to chart a new and sustainable political course for his subjects. Perhaps it’s also important to interrogate further the monarch’s political ambition to see one of his subjects at the Alagbaka Government House in light of the political machinations that brought about the emergence of the Oba from among other contestants. As much as what the monarch said was important, it’s equally imperative to listen to what was not said. As a paramount ruler who owes his staff of office to Governor OlusegunMimiko, a Machiavellian political operative who will stop at nothing – literally – in his quest to dominate the southwest politics, one hopes that Oba Aladelusi (with all due respect to the crown and his person) is not being unsuspectingly goaded by one of the two “whitlows of the southwest” into making that declaration. One hopes that the statement was not a prelude to a “political IOU” that Governor Mimiko must extract from the monarch at election time to achieve a nefarious objective of dividing Akure voters, thereby rendering them inconsequential once again. Just as eternal vigilance is the prize of liberty, cognizance must be taken of Mimiko’s Machiavellian political maneuverings in different guise and coloration. Akure’s political interest will be better served in the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the long run even if its indigene fails to secure the governorship ticket in the next election.
- Odere is a media practitioner. He can be reached at femiodere@gmail.com.
