Osun election as Nigeria’s dirty mirror at 58

It is a few hours to Nigeria’s 58th independence anniversary and right there, by the tip of our noses, providence is using an otherwise small muck to dramatize the huge rot that is Nigeria. And why, at the risk of being labeled a nihilist, redemption may be very far away from this famous country.

The small muck is Osun, one of the tiniest states in Nigeria. By the way, there was this very famous poem which Yoruba pupils learnt by rote in primary schools of the 1950s, till about mid-1980s. Close to seven decades after it was penned, it still contains a poetic explanation of the electoral disgrace and messy opera which the world was treated to last week in a state which styles itself – wait for this – State of Omoluabi (integrity)!

Written by Joseph Folahan Odunjo, Western Region’s first Minister of Land and Labour and Asiwaju of Egbaland, in one of his very famous Yoruba Alawiye children book series, the particular poem is entitled Ise  ni ogun ise(Hard work is antidote to poverty). The very lyrical poem begins by addressing its listener as ‘friend’ and urging him/her to work hard and harder still because it is hard work that opens the door unto greatness. It underscores the value of having a pillar to lean on in the journey of life; and how those who shout your praise today may be the same people who will mock you tomorrow. But perhaps the most instructive for our today’s homily is the stanza which asks the friend, ti o ba ri opo eniyan, ti n fi eko se erin rin, dakun ki o ma f’ara we won (flee from a commune of people who mock education) because the hand is the most intimate friend of man and his igunpa(arm) is his family. The poem ends with an eerie finality that iya nbe f’omo ti o gbon, ekun nbe f’omo to n sa kiri(disaster awaits a child who runs away from education/knowledge).

Padded side by side this poem is the Yoruba ancient wisecrack that says, igbeyin nii dun oloku ada (the pain at the end will sober the farmer with dud cutlass). In igbeyin nii dun oloku ada, the farmer who refuses to sharpen his cutlass at cockcrow when his colleagues are heading for the farm would realize too late when others are cultivating hectares with their sharpened cutlass that he had been expending unnecessary energy to do same. Egba-born Yoruba Apala musician, Ayinla Omowura, in one of his vinyl, also toes this same path. He had asked that a young man who wakes up with nothing pursuing him should instantly seek a pursuit, so that his twilight could be glorious, which he rendered as l’owuro kutukutu, b’omokunrin ba ji, bi nkan o le, ko ya le nkan, tori ojo ale. To him, osise kii rin bi ole (the strides of a hard worker are always different from the stroll of a laggard).Today however, sparse songs underscore hard work any longer and the ones that gain currency are those which preach the supremacy of wealth above work, like Nice’s Ki n sa ti lowo… (I must have money at all cost).  

Sorry, I digressed. The person who hugely epitomizes Odunjo and Omowura’s warnings above is Ademola Adeleke, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in the electoral mockery that the triad of the Muhammadu Buhari government, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) foisted on Nigeria in a grim, eerie electoral shenanigan movie they saw between last Saturday and Thursday. It was a grotesque movie that shocked anyone with pretension to any iota of moral claim.

You will recall how shocked Nigerians were when revelations emerged that Ademola barely had a school certificate. For a man in his 50s who sat for the school certificate in 1981, there was no big deal, as the argot says, that he had an F9 in the said examination and absented himself from the rest subjects. For all you care, he could have taken ill during the examination. However, the most tragic was that since 1981, about 37 years after, Ademola didn’t see the need to re-enroll to pass the said examination and when he did last year, he allegedly did with the aid of an impersonator. Knowing its measure, he absconded from a debate through which the electorate was to weigh the ounce of his brain. His latter fate meshes with Odunjo’s warning never to underestimate the power of education. Ademola mocked the potency and usefulness of education and whatever attainment it could earn anyone who bows to its precepts. Odunjo had further warned any youth with Adeleke’s reliance on the wealth of his parents that, iya re le lowo lowo, ki baba l’esin l’ekan, ti o ba gb’oju le won, o te tan ni mo so fun o! (your mother may be wealthy and your father has a horse on the tether, if you rely on their wealth, you are done for!)

Thirty seven years after, Odunjo’s poem came back with a very lacerating whiplash on Ademola’s lazy buttocks. Poor Senator of the Second Republic, Ayoola Adeleke, father of Ademola, must have agonized terribly at how this young lad palpably disregarded the Golden Fleece and fled after the un-enduring life of a man for whom the purpose of life is strictly enjoyment. A trained nurse who, in 1948, enrolled as one of the earliest members of the pioneer union of Nigerian nurses, the Nigerian Union of Nurses and who rose to the height of becoming a notablepolitician and labour activist, indeed, Vice President of the United Labour Congress of Nigeria, Adeleke was also elected senator during the Second Republic. Adeleke demonstrated his detribalized nature by marrying an Igbo and his children are said to speak the language very fluently. During MKO Abiola’s presidential campaign to the east in 1993, Igbo audience were said to have been enthralled when the late Isiaka Adeleke mounted the rostrum and shouted, Ndibanyi, ke k’unu melu? Anam ekene unu o! (My people, how are you? I greet you all!)

His fluency in Igbo was said to have enraptured the whole of the South East at that campaign. To now have a man of educational height as Ayoola’s stature siring a child who demonstrates a fluid wriggling of his buttocks like a sissy, rather than a deft usage of the élan of his brain, must have saddened Adeleke to his grave. Young Ademola excelled in dancing orgies no doubt and could arrest a crowd with his scintillating dance steps; he nevertheless comes across as a very mentally shallow character, the type that is not needed when governance is at issue.

But history is a mocker, capable of throwing ancient debris by the doorstep of those who deride its lessons. Young Ademola, scion of wealth and acclaim of his late father, acclaim of his late Senator brother and the wealth of his multi-billionaire elder brother Deji, must have argued all this while that the life of a sybarite he was used to from youth was enough for him. Poor Ademola, how could he have known that a day would come when fate would thrust responsibilities far above his mental capability on him? A senatorial ticket on the laps, an almost sure governorship coupon for him to win and a baton to lead a state of the educated and those who hold store by knowledge, are surely not for someone who derides education this recklessly.

The truth of the matter is that, if Ademola had been properly schooled, he would have won that election at the first ballot because it was his to win. Apart from a war chest as huge as the maggot-filled money Rauf Aregbesola and his Lagos gang chaperoned to the voters’ purses, votes cast for him were not necessarily for him but actually, votes against Rauf. Knowledgeable teachers, civil servants, pensioners and the elite of Osun who wanted to be liberated and decolonized from the eight-year misrule of Rauf and his Lagos gang, loathed voting for him but took their votes to Iyiola Omisore who, paradoxically, later shoveled same votes to the people’s Lagos oppressors. The elite who voted for the dancer did so because his party, the PDP, was not a fringe party for which a vote was a waste and had to subject themselves to the equivocation of voting a man who had sore disregard for knowledge. Many of them however couldn’t stand lending their hands to the charade of a dancer as governor: they absented themselves from the poll.

Huge lessons were in that poll for Osun voters and those who repose trust in politicians. Omisore didn’t think twice to accept the offer of offspring and scions of those who vilified him perennially over his alleged hand in Chief Bola Ige’s death, even after his victory at the courts. They visited him in tow to offer him their usually plastic smile and tenuous comradeship. I imagine how Omisore felt sitting at the Abere Government House with tormentors of the same people he swore he wanted to liberate, pumping hands with them and pretending to have been their Siamese twin. A politician’s heart is indeed desperately wicked!

For the Buhari government, the Osun election is its final unmasking. To have a Buhari who wears a Messianic and saintly band on his lapel congratulate the awardee of that sleazy mis-election, sent his Secretary to Government to join the political fawners on pilgrimage to Omisore and reportedly called Omisore himself, is an underscore of the fact that his is not any different from the PDP government he replaced. How can the President look anyone in the face after the Osun electoral corruption perpetrated by his henchmen, with his obvious abetment, and say he is fighting corruption?

For Gboyega Oyetola, the inheritor of the fortune of this electoral heist, the lesson is even huger. If after eight years in office, Aregbesola had to deploy a combination of thugs, army, police, INEC etc. and a groveling by the feet of an ancient adversary to win – with less than 500 votes – someone who has no certificate and is a common dancer, it speaks volume of the fact that the people detest his governance. I stand to be corrected – it is unprecedented in Nigerian electoral history that an incumbent governor would win election by such lean margin. This was even after Vice President Yemi Osinbajo had to lower the esteem of the presidency to visit Osun and distribute mere N10,000 to supposed poor people and perpetrate the governmental preferential corruption of giving Rauf N16 billion Paris refund by the backdoor, a sizeable chunk of which disappeared into the palate of governmental leeches. That should tell Oyetola – barring the judgment of the courts afterwards – that he should distance himself from the people-phobic policies of Rauf which ostensibly didn’t resonate with Osun. Apart from his predilection for elephantine projects, you will recall that it took Rauf two and half years to put in place his cabinet, against the tenets of presidential democracy. Oyetola should hit the ground running and announce his team even before November 27.

What happened in Osun isn’t any different from the sorrowful song and tearful tale of Nigeria at 58 years of independence. Since after the military hijack of power in 1966, we have been putting square pegs in round holes. We are now at a critical juncture where Nigeria is hostile to excellence and anything good. The worst of us rule over the rest of us. Today, we have a President who is being shielded from a public debate and opportunity for the people to size up what he has upstairs; who embarrasses us at national and international meets with his Adeleke-type mental depth. Nigeria doesn’t have a leadership and even a following imbued with or fascinated by excellence. We are rather fascinated with maggots and sewers. If I will not be labeled a nihilist still, my grim proffer would be for us to smash this Nigerian porcelain on the rock and begin to piece the pieces together afresh. What we have on our hands is no country, is no society that can move a people forward.

For Doxy – sorry, Kabiyesi and Oduyoye

The Orangun of Oke-Ila, Oba Adedokun Abolarin, was sixty years on earth last Monday. So also was former Alliance for Democracy (AD) Whip at the House of Representatives, Chief Babatunde Oduyoye, who clocks 55 tomorrow. Abolarin was a teacher and lawyer with very strong passion for intellection. He taught at the famous School of Arts and Science, Ile-Ife alongside his friend, Dele Momodu before veering into law. Called Doxy by all and sundry, until now when tradition/decency forbids appending such alias on an Oba, Abolarin mentored so many youths of my generation. While on the editorial board of the Tribune in 1999, until he took up appointment as Special Adviser on Legal Matters to the then Senate President, he always counseled and encouraged upcoming youths to pursue knowledge. He has historical figures and events at the back of his hands. My only encounter with the late historian, Professor Akinjogbin, was facilitated by him. I remember once writing a piece which I entitledSo, I have Kabiyesi’s jacket! It was a product of a jacket he once gave me sometime in 2001 when he saw that my budding sartorial pursuit was getting to an appreciable level. As the Orangun, he personally built a school for the poor where he teaches from time to time.

Oduyoye, whom I have known for over 20 years now, is a principled politician with the heart of a dove. He was President of the University of Ibadan’s students union in 1985, 33 years ago and is one politician with disregard for the vanity of politics.

Here is wishing Doxy – (looks like my pen is seeking royal rebuke!) – Oba Abolarin rather, and Oduyoye, a happy birthday.