IF GOD DID NOT ANSWER HIS LAST WISH

*By Razaq Adedeji Jimoh*

By Razaq Adedeji Jimoh They are wishes no doubt, but Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola (“Aregbe”), the Interior Minister, eventually got a wish granted by God on Saturday, July 16. If Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu had lost the presidential primary election of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in early June, it would have been a wish granted beyond his wildest dreams. That could not be so because his request implied being a cause against “God’s Will, Allah’s Way”. But in his recoil to a moment of sober and pensive mood of disappointment, God appeared to have sent Angel Gabriel to deliver a consolation wish He had granted him: that Adegboyega Oyetola will not serve a second term of office. God in his mystery way of work, yet made this to happen never in the wildest dream of many that included this essayist.

Nevertheless, observers of the political events leading in process to that governorship election would be apt to believe that Senator Ademola Adeleke’s victory could as well be pyrrhic as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) set up the machinery of its own electoral euthanasia right from the process of its primary elections, which according to the position of court in a subsisting judgement, was never conducted in full compliance with the Electoral Act. By the conclusion of the judgement, PDP went into the election without a valid governorship candidate.

Aregbe, to the extent of his outbursts earlier this year, will by now lock in the emotion of joy for making the Abere seat of government neither his’ nor Oyetola’s later from this year. What remains thence is to reflect upon how he could be savouring his undisputable pyrrhic victory of bittersweet oxymoron. It is worrisome that things could turn out this way. For a once vibrant and ardent progressive politician to extol a pride working with the conservative to rid his party of power, particularly the like of Aregbe whose path to power was a bare-foot walk through a thorny lawn; it should worth an inquisition into a correlative emotional grandeur to causal effect of treachery in human sociology. This is the perspective this essayist intends to apply in looking into the last Osun State’s governorship election.

Accordingly, it must first be acknowledged that Aregbe would have a basis if not bases for his actions. The question to follow is whether this/these basis/bases should worth(s) towing the path of perdition for a man of his like is another mystery to resolve altogether. Whether his animosity is against Tinubu or Oyetola, it is no longer news that he holds the dispute against both of them and the origin was the conflict of interest between him and his leaders over the governorship succession planning of the party in 2018. It was clear that he made a grudging exit from the seat of power when his second term elapsed because he was denied the right and freedom to choose his successor as he believed to be the convention of his channel of political tutelage under the party’s National Leader – Tinubu . But his bases of anger could be multifaceted. Sources also pointed out that whatever reasons they may be; there was no doubt that they were further enhanced when Governor Oyetola allegedly refused to second him for a Senatorial seat in the Second term of President Buhari. That Tinubu nevertheless intervened to get him the slot did not appear to make any difference for Aregbe to _Jebure awo olugbebe_ – meaning to be pacified.

The reason, in the opinion of some analysts, was not farfetched: Aregbe had crossed over into a repeat of the Ladoke Akintola’s episode of the First Republic anti-Yoruba treacherous adventure. This according them, was because he had conceived a leadership battle against the duo of Chief Bisi Akande and Tinubu after “he had literally submitted himself into being the Northern conservatives’ porn in the chest board of the 2023 game, set to use the religious weakling of the Vice-president Osibanjo’s Christian belief for enhancement of a Northern candidate’s chances to return as President in 2023.”

In equal proportion, opinions have also been divided whether Aregbe could be deemed to lack in rigours of political sagacity and the right tact to read the ethnic game plan despite what his political idiosyncrasies are wont to so suggest. The consensus nevertheless converged on the fact that he had premised the basis of his battle on false or, better said, confusing impression of his source of the influence to his ministerial appointment. He holds the belief that a clique in the Presidency facilitated by the Vice-President got him the appointment. Another part to his bases of anger as information available at the disposal of this essayist was a thoughtful disparage he believed to have suffered from Asiwaju Tinubu before a crew of his (Aregbe’s) political subordinates in Alimosho. This version of the shindig revealed that Asiwaju had once attempted to set the record of his ministerial slot straight when he called a meeting of the Alimosho leaders to his Bourdilon residence with Aregbe in attendance. The attendance was said to comprise members of the ‘G18’, a creation of Aregbe as the apex decision making body for Alimosho Progressives; and two members each from ‘G12’ – the LCDA-level replica of the G18 across the six divisions of the LGA. But Aregbe thoughtfully saw the meeting as rather humiliating to his perceived leadership of the Local Government, which had been differed to him even all through his era of the Osun State governorship. This, according to source, was due to Tinubu’s display of anger, querying the significance and relevance of Aregbe wherever he (Tinubu) stood in the annals of Nigerian politics. “Who is Rauf? I made him whoever he is today. Even the Minister he is now, I made it possible”, Tinubu was quoted to have said.

Possibly not exhaustive, these may be left to suffice for his cause of anger, which to him, were right to justify his trod on the anti-party lush lawn. And now that he has found fulfilment of his conscience in the shellacking of Oyetola, what should make the right sense of Justice is to evaluate the about dozen years of the APC rule in Osun holistically in other to find the weight of probability against whom the party’s loss became a moral burden between him and his successor – Oyetola. This should be accepted as a due imperative if the APC or any other political party for that matter would seek to avoid fallen into the storm of a tyranny of blackmailers now widely ubiquitous across all structure in the slang of aggrieved party aspirants. It is a caveat evolving as an inference drawn from the coincidental post Osun election Summit of the Forum of APC Organizing Secretaries, comprising zonal and state organizing officers in that capacity, held recently at the Party’s National Secretariat, Abuja. The theme of their meeting – “Discussion on How to Streamline the Responsibilities of the Zonal and State Organising Offices for Effective Programme Delivery" - was indeed an inevitable practice direction required to get the best out of the party in the elections ahead. However, their conclusions on the party’s loss of Osun did not seem to reflect on the substance of the cause.

The call to party leaders across all level to embark on genuine reconciliation of aggrieved party members was a right advice that should not be lost on such August body to pass in evergreen strokes. It should also be taken to sum up to their belief that disaffections among party members/leaders cost the party that avoidable tragedy. This writer believes that this latter part of their implied conclusion could as well be a misplacement of fact. Thus so, the basis of their angst display had only helped them to miss the right judgement of the true situation from substances of the matter.

Where courage was not lacking to stand out for a call to the immediate resignation of _Ogbeni_ Rauf Aregbesola as a minister in the administration he worked to deplete its regional strength and value, it should not be out of place to openly condemn the audacious role he played, even if deemed to be in form of traumatic psychological assault, in contribution to APC loss of power. The reason for the call to Boris Johnson to resign as British Prime Minister did not short by any iota of the unconventional idiosyncrasies Aregbe brought to governance in Osun. It also makes a strong simile to the American world of Trumpian time for which the Americans rejected him for a second term. By fact, to blame the loss on Aregbe’s denial of Oyetola the due and right support could at best be missing the point even if it could be deemed right to the extent of evaluating the Osun voters as a clan of comic lovers, who would be ready anytime to sacrifice the value and substance of power to enthral with circus show of jesters and dancers. That was why Aregbe succeeded in mesmerizing them such that until they exhausted themselves only to find that their salaries had vanished – _won f’owo osu wo gelede Aregbe tan._

In actual facts, the class of discernible have been quick to identify core reason for Aregbe’s wish of the Oyetola’s fall. The convergence of their opinions is the belief that he sought to submerge his failures, which turned out to be the nemesis of his successor, in the eventual “dancers uprising” – as Tatalo Alamu defined the Adeleke’s victory to mean. The purported failure stemmed from the Aregbe’s 8years of ‘Cuban’ socialist experimental governance that ended up being a political disaster for his party. But his areas of unpardonable failures went beyond the ephemeral economic woes that established the emotion of lives with misery in the electorate. It extended to poor judgement of history at a time his party should look forward to his leadership acuity and astuteness for that. Putting it putatively that Aregbe’s indignation and whatever efforts he put was insignificant in the APC loss, Idowu Akinlotan posited that “indeed, Mr. Oyetola did not lose because of the division in the APC”. Attesting to this further, Tatalo Alamu (pen name) said: “Several things must have gone wrong in Osun State…But two things must be pointed out for clarity”. He mentioned the loss of Adeleke family as a progressive’s asset to the PDP as caused by Aregbe and how the culture of dancing makes a flow of the elite’s connectivity with the proletariat in matters of governance.

Therefore, it may be accepted that the reality about Osun’s electoral loss, as beyond the matters of failed electoral ‘logistics’’ appropriation Oyetola had been accused of, was that APC had lost the governorship election way back in 2018 at the expiration of Aregbe’s tenure. The implication of this for fact was that he failed to deliver the state to the party for continuity thence in sound health. But those who should know from the right gaze of political evolution in Osun would be apt to agree that even the APC loss was already established way back from 2017 when Senator Isiaka Adeleke died in April of that year. It could be said that it was an episode in which Aregbe, as the party leader in governorship capacity, began to dissipate the party’s electoral assets.

He displayed a myopic reading of Osun politics to underrate the factor of Adeleke dynasty in the matrix of Osun politics when he denied the Adelekes the right of first refusal to fill their slot after the demise of the Senior Senator Adeleke. But Aregbe would not want that, even if it would have been a moral decision to defer to the mourning mood of the family and to accord the late Adeleke the honour of his political weight for which he was found worthy to get the senatorial ticket of the APC hours after defecting from PDP in 2014. There was no doubt that Adeleke’s electoral value made a significant impact in Aregbe’s re-election in 2014. He was bidding to contest for Osun governorship on the platform of PDP. But when the Minister of State for Police Affairs assaulted him with abuse of State power that underscored the morbid obsession of President Jonathan for second term, he (Adeleke) left the party for APC, where he settled for the senatorial ticket. There could be no doubt that if Adeleke were to be alive today, he would still have been a nemesis to the ruling APC both in the 2018 and this 2022 because he would surely have been an aspirant on the party’s platform. What may not be adjudged right about this now is how the party might have held him in esteem, having been the first Executive Governor of Osun in the Third Republic.

Consequent upon this, any reference to Aregbe’s possibility of making a difference in the election if he had not denied Oyetola the needful support may not necessarily be a fair judgement of the election. The verity of this could be found in the margin of Adeleke’s victory vote which runs into about 27,000 votes. This is something the Lasun’s Labour Party’s less than 300 votes cannot offset. But analyst may want to go further to look at Oshogbo and Iwo votes where Oyatola’s wide margin in the 2018 were erased to a very close proximity with Adeleke’s in order to conclude that Aregbe and Adeoti’s respective strongholds in the two local governments should have to be reckoned with as consequential factors of the duo’s disconnect with the APC. It yet matters that the vengeance Osun electorate brought over from their 2018 failure to assert their authority of ‘king maker’ appears more tenable for this. The fact of this is well discernible in a Tatalo Alamu’s observation when he said: “After (his) two terms, the poor people of Osun State, appeared to have (been) tired of what was perceived as Aregbesola’s failings and excesses and seemed bent once again on exacting their pound of flesh on his party candidate”, which they finally succeeded with after four years.

In spite of all this, it is also right to say that Aregbe’s prayer might have been answered beyond the possible ephemeral reasons all commentators have adduced to the APC loss. But tales have been given about many who had sought God’s blessings in prayer to buy a car, only die through the car accident soon afterwards. This presupposes that there is much yet to unravel about the election as well as the general electoral characteristics of Osun voters, judging from the history of elections there. But this is out of the scope here.

With reference to Aregbe’s prayer being answered, it may be a reflection of the unseen hands at work. If OYetola had won, it could have become a shield of Aregbe’s walk through the abyss. But now that his wish came to past, it remains to see how he, along with his cohorts, “will not be a stranger to the commonwealth the rival Adeleke will be creating in Osun State… Now the PDP will be in the office for the next four years. It is sure they will not recognize him the way he yearns”, as Akinlotan observed. For the Adelekes and Osun electorate, it may be the conventional God’s mysteries unfolding. Osun people have thoughtfully gotten their wish as prayed too. What remains to be seen is whether their aspiration of economic emancipation from the ensnaring Aregbe’s bungled experimental socialist policy will match the value of their electoral choice. But many analysts doubt a feasibility of robust governance underscored by economic growth and improved human development indices under Adeleke’s administration.

In his words while speaking on a post Osun election TVC programme, Nelson Ekujimi said the people would have to live with their choice for the next for years. Akinlotan believes that the state had chosen a “dancer and bohemian” to lead them into a crucial period when all states of the federation are about to enter a trying time in their finances. Thus he concluded: “Freedom, like nobility, imposes obligations; if Osun has not learnt the rudiments of fasting, now is the time to take crash lessons. But from the way they cavalierly discharged their voting responsibility, there is no proof that they are capable of reflection required to save themselves and generations unborn from hardship and embarrassment”.

For the Adeleke family, it may be a message of time the state is about to disengage with the past glory of a political dynasty as we found with the demystification of the Saraki in Kwara State. It must first be understood that even with the Jackson Adeleke, Osun State would seem to remain in the grip of the progressives despite his government being a facilitation of the conservative PDP. This conclusion is to the extent that their father, Raji Ayoola Adeleke’s membership of the Awolowo’s Action Group and the subsequent Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) in the first and second republics respectively should suffice to say he was a core Awoist and a progressive to the core. That the trade unionist turned politician would become a senator should be enough to tell how much of Awolowo’s confidence he had as a trusted ally.

It is not likely this pride of progressives’ lineage of the family will not be corrupted thenceforth with the new found alliance with a strange ideological group. Where the sceptical are proven right about the dancer’s lack of capacity to meet up with the high expectations of the Osun people, which in reality requires financial wizardry and committed prudence at government spending, a time for disaffection of the people with Adeleke family may be in the offing. Therefore, in so far it is a common belief that every earthly action is to the consent of “God’s Will, Allah’s Way”, it is only a matter of time that we shall know why God answered Aregbe’s prayer.