Say what you may, politics is a beautiful game. It breaks down barriers, dislodges dogmas and it carries with it puzzles and complexities that you can only find in the game.
I grew up to learn that Egba people of Ogun State always reach unanimity on issues of common interest; that they hardly argue among themselves on issues of commonality. “Egba meji o ki nja’ra won niyan”, they are wont to saying.
But see how politics is dislodging that long-held dogma. Or, haven’t you been following ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s relentless assailing of President Muhammad Buhari and his policies, actions and inactions lately?
“Buhari is a failure; he doesn’t deserve re-election for a second time”, proclaims the Egba high chief at almost every opportunity that offers itself now.
Yet, his town’s monarch, the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, is convinced to the contrary. He described the president as “a focused and sincere leader, who had charted a worthy path for the nation to transform it to an enviable height.”
The oba was quoted as having made the statement in his expansive palace while receiving one of Nigeria’s mercurial politicians and former governor of Abia State, Chief Uzor Orji Kalu and his chorus team touring the country and canvassing for Buhari’s re-election.
Politics? A game of wits of which you must always be mentally alert, that is, as late irrepressible former chairman of the Second Republic’s National Party of Nigeria, Chief Augustus Meredith Adisa Akinloye once prided himself when he was regaling me in his palatial home in London South West in the late 80s of what his A.M.A initials also stood for: “Always Mentally Alert”.
Could the schemers of Buhari’s second term bid have crafted this to take the battle into Obasanjo’s courtyard and confirm the truism in the Yoruba saying that you kill the tortoise with the sharp edge of its own shell (Ida awun n’o fi npa alabawun)? The high chief versus his own monarch? I bet we are in very interesting times.