Amosun needs our help

Accountants are usually reticent with words. Indeed many end up in the profession because they are more comfortable with figures than words, but what do we say when an accountant of nearly four decades throws caution to the wind saying what he should not say? Maybe that’s what politics do to people in this part of the hemisphere. Just maybe.

How else do we explain the words of our onifila gogoro governor, Ibikunle Amosun, of Ogun State on Monday that he will work against the candidate of his party, APC, in next year’s governorship elections? However, he will continue to work for President Muhammadu Buhari of the same party in the presidential election. The English admonition that you can’t have your cake and eat it surely must have been lost on Mr. Amosun who seems ensconced in his own world without bothering about what others feel or think. “Every day, I will campaign for President Muhammadu Buhari, we will do everything possible to ensure Buhari wins massively in Ogun State, but they should not miss it. I, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, will not support anyone they are bringing,” he said at a meeting with his supporters.

At certain level one does not have a dog in this fight as the APC had repeatedly shown that it is not a paragon of excellence especially when it comes to party supremacy just like other political parties in Nigeria, but when a public officer seeks to profit from where he did not sow, we should tell him in no uncertain terms. Amosun has never been himself since his preferred candidate, Adekunle Akinlade, lost out in the high wire game of who flies APC’s flag next year. He has bullied, threatened, coerced and intimidated party members from Ogun to Abuja even dragging a traditional ruler along to go and plead with his idol, Buhari. Yet, the Abuja demons of the party proved too strong for him to bind or cast out with the end result being his show of shame earlier this week. Funnily, Amosun who dissed APC openly and still does, is the party’s senatorial candidate for the Ogun central senatorial district even after eights years as governor and four years as a senator between 2003 and 2007.

One is no psychiatrist but I cannot resist psychoanalysis of his personality. His actions and outbursts bear close resemblance to what psychiatrists call grandiose delusions, which in simple English is known as delusion of grandeur or megalomania. Grandiose delusions symptoms include “grossly exaggerated beliefs of self-worth, power, knowledge and identity with exceptional relationship to a divinity or famous person.” We know he has never hidden his love and affection for Buhari which most likely only his counterpart from Kogi might be the other person who loves or claims to love the president more than even the president’s wife, a reason why he seems not to have come to terms with the fact he is dealing with allied forces. Forces so strong that even his friend, the president, cannot defeat. Even the first lady told us that two individuals are frustrating her husband’s good intention to do well as our president so it is unsurprising thata combination of Bola Tinubu, Olusegun Osoba and Adams Oshiomole cannot be easily cowed into submission, something a smart general like Buhari recognizes too well. But not Amosun who continues to behave like a fly, which pursues a corpse into the grave.

Despite the fact that he has spent 12 years holding elective positions and still hope to get at least four more, he believes in his invincibility politically that he assumes he is equal to APC in Ogun State. He even claimed that God would not forgive him if he supports his party’s candidate; one wonders when he started speaking for God or where God told him that His forgiveness is predicated on Ogun governorship election. We might not blame Amosun too much, however, as our governors forget too often that they’re humans like the rest of us. Sadly we deify them too often that were it not for the constitutionally imposed term limit, most will prefer to be in office till eternity. If Governor Amosun is so entrenched politically without the incumbency factor, why not move en masse with his supporters to another party? Why staying put in APC? For someone under whose watch campaign banners and billboards of Gboyega Nasir Isiaka, the governorship candidate of African Democratic Congress (ADC), were vandalized over the weekend in the state capital, he must be so popular indeed.

Amosun must recognise that no one wins all his battles in life; you win some and lose some. A wise general knows when to retreat and fight another day. By the way, hope the governor still has time to consider the horrors that Lambe and Akute residents go through due to the non-completion of the road projects his government started? That and the unpaid salaries of staff of the Tai Solarin College of Education and other serious issues demand his attention rather than fighting a lost battle.