Yoruba names can be picturesque — Arapaja! Just imagine a human octopus brimming with many arms and landing telling blows in an impassioned scuffle! Arapaja!
That was the combative image that gripped the battle for PDP Deputy National Chairman (South) — now lost and won — between Oyo’s Taofeek Arapaja and Osun’s Olagunsoye Oyinlola, an Okuku Prince and, to boot, a retired brigadier-general of the Nigerian Army!
More than his blue blood and jackboot flexing, Oyinlola in that battle represented the PDP old guard, with its retired military wing that loves to crush everyone; and Arapaja, the more civilianized bloc that wanted to gore the old guard.
Remember then President Olusegun Obasanjo bolstering Col. Ahmadu Ali, his militarized chairman, to tell the cudgelled Governor Rashidi Ladoja to surrender to Lamidi Adedibu (aka Alaafin Molete) as his Oyo garrison commander?
Irony of ironies! This same Taofeek Arapaja was part of the Oyo Obasanjo military-political complex! He paired Adebayo Alao-Akala to toss Ladoja from Agodi into the Ogunpa River, even after the embattled governor had survived a most humiliating but illegal impeachment.
So, you can understand Oyinola’s grand delusion that that military muscle, reminiscent of the Obasanjo high noon, was still there — there to checkmate Arapaja, protégée of the callow Seyi Makinde, governor of Oyo State, political neophyte and bloody civilian to boot! Well, Oyinlola reckoned wrongly and he got roundly trounced! To think old beneficiary of the military-political complex would turn present nemesis!
It was good old Greek, Heraclitus that said you could never step in the same river twice — it’s such a flux that it’s a different step, a different river. Our very own Harrysong crooned: after the reggae comes the blues …
Well, at the Eagle Square, Abuja convention grounds, the PDP military reggae had vanished! All Oyinlola tasted was the blues, for he was well thrashed. Indeed, Heraclitus-speak: the river had changed. But how was Oyinlola to know?
But the political Arapaja, the one whose many arms beat Oyinlola black-and-blue, is only a synecdoche for the current PDP gubernatorial brood that want to muscle everyone — not unlike the Obasanjo caste of old. It’s some grim poetry: muscling the old muscle!
Still, the governors’ penchant to gobble up everything may well be their nemesis. Somewhat, they seem playing out the Achebe tale of “All of You” — remember the rogue tortoise of that emergency name, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart? Well, it re-christened itself All of You to corner all the lollies. But then, he came crashing from the skies …
Well, it’s early days yet. But while Oyinlola and his political military caste lick their wounds, the PDP Governors must beware of the All of You complex in them.
Even more: though they checkmated everyone else at the convention, making a near-clean sweep of party offices, they should be wary of the sure triumphalism to come; and a false sense of invincibility that often breeds Pyrrhic victories.
Meanwhile, Arapaja! The princely ‘Lagun and his old guard won’t forget that name in a hurry!