By Razaq Adedeji Jimoh
AS the Interior Minister, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbeshola, tries to wriggle out of the chain in which he had entrapped himself with unbecoming roles seemingly treacherous in the loss of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the July 16, 2022 governorship election in the Osun state, he is rather coming to equity far more with soiled hands in evidence of defensive statement that at best sound soothing but lacking in substances. This is the only worthy conclusion to draw from the recent publication of his right of reply put out by his spokesman, Sola Fasure.
Sometimes when politicians are given the liberty of space for their right to reply, especially in the exact page of the columnist source of the original piece, it is not known whether their media aides or spokespersons often appreciate the essence of this good will. Quite in specific terms, the right of reply is meant for the good ethics of media opportunity for them to make essential clarifications where such has become imperative. But more often, many of them go out of this boundary to disparaging the essayist/columnist, in many cases, for expressing the obvious in a better idea of perspective evaluation of the open pieces of evidence as available in the case of Aregbe’s issues as the subject of discuss here. And where the latter becomes the arising matter, it is not out of naivety that the columnist goes ahead to publish their story in spite of any inherent deficiencies. It is to expose their naked dancing over the market.
In his right of reply published on the Idowu Akinlotan page – The Palladium – of
The Nation on Sunday, August 14 and entitled
Re: Osun, APC and Unobtrusive Aregbesola, Fasure accused Akinlotan of “inciting the APC leadership against the Minister (Aregbe) by blaming him for the loss of the state to PDP and worst still, for anti-party activities”, even though as he asserted it, “Aregbesola was not a candidate in the election (and) he did not even vote”.
First, to be sure of the fact that Fasure wrote with clear ignorance of the depth of the issues he was putting up for his boss’ defences, he had rather scored an own goal of Self indictment of his boss to vindicate Akinlotan’s view. This speaks to the emphasized clause in his statement of the opening remark above that “Aregbe did not even vote”. It clarifies his (Aregbe’s) refusal to “participate” in crucial “party activities”, which runs fowl of the party’s constitution.
Article 9 (2) (iii) of the constitution which partly lists obligations of the party members says “members shall participate in the activities of the party such as election campaigns, rallies, fund raising, functions, meetings, etc”.
But this part is not the centerpiece of this essay because Fasure raised far-reaching defences of Aregbe’s misconduct which appeared rather not far-fetched for evidence of his reply as, in his words “looking ordinary, if not stupid” before the public opinion that Akinlotan seems to subject his missive to.
In the context where he deployed the phrase “looking ordinary” to qualify Akinlotan’s original story, he harped on the age long axiom that “every politics is local” to argue that the veteran columnist lacked the good grasp of the (Osun) issues” he was dabbling into. But a sense of the evolution of the planet Earth to date would suffice that the current age of information technology has made every corridor of the globe a local community. That is why Fasure could himself claim ample ‘authority of knowledge’ on American politics with analysis of why Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, and Al Gore would at one time lose elections in their bidding for the seat of American President.
In the main rhetoric, not substance, he had rightly tried to locate the factors that culminated to the defeat “in the Pre-2018 election situation of the APC, when, incidentally, Aregbe was in actual fact in charge as the incumbent and substantive Governor. What he however put wrongly about this was his deliberate effort to blame it all on Governor Oyetola by painting him as the fall guy of Aregbe’s pain of unsuccessful bid to install his own successor.
Fasure said: “The seeds of the factors that culminated in the defeat of the Governor were sown before his election in 2018”. Sown by who and what were the factors? He did not say!
The time in reference was the primary election of the party that pitched the interest of Governor Rauf Aregbesola ‘derisively’ against his Chief of staff (Gboyega Oyetola’s) bid to succeed his boss. The victory of Oyetola at 2018 poll, which automatically turned the table of the state’s leadership of the party on him became the ego of survival and existential value Ogbeni Aregbe would begin to strive for assertion. This is a common Knowledge of Nigerian politics, which Fasure fell short of revealing as the prime one among the factors referred. Rather he went ahead to blame it all on Governor Oyetola for refusing to subordinate his leadership authority to the whims of Aregbe’s ego at the following congress of the party.
He said: “But instead for him (oyetola to uproot them (seeds of the unexplained factors) after his inauguration, he began to nurture and water them until they bore him the fruit of his routing”. He explained this further that “Governor Oyetola wrongly believed that then Governor Aregbesola did not want him in 2018 and upon his inauguration, he began a systemic war of payback…”.
However, the full understanding of the distorted fact Fasure is trying to paint above could be clear when one takes his reference to the intervention of the party’s National Reconciliation Committee, led by Senator Abdullahi Adamu, and reconcile it with what Adamu eventually proclaimed to be his findings as the cause of divisional rifts within the party across states of the Federation.
Fasure said: “The alienated members of the party formed a caucus named The Osun Progressives (TOP) in April last year. On May 14, they went to Ogbeni Aregbesola to offer him the chairmanship of the Board of Trustees, which he accepted… Still pursuing his exclusive political agenda, Governor Oyetola rejected all calls and entreaties for reconciliation. The party’s reconciliation committee came to the state after the party’s primary election was held and listened to both sides, but the governor rejected the demand of TOP for inclusion. The committee left in frustration”.
“So the veiled attempt to incite the party’s leadership is futile because they know the local situation that led to the loss. This is much acknowledged by the party chairman in his reaction to the result”.
What should be clear from this position is that Fasure either believed Osun is a hide-bound cave community system that is opaque to the probing entrapment of the Information Technology radar for global reading or he simply chose to be a specie of the wild colony that has decided to write the history of hunting in perspective of animals, to borrow a view of Chinua Achebe.
To many observers of the event that unfolded towards the Osun election, the political parties’ activities were open book and readable quite clearly. Fasure did the reveal what the Aregbe’s TOP stood to achieve when he said Oyetola “rejected the demand of TOP” as if the Governor was bound to be naive in falling to any blackmail to accept every unreasonable demand. But while, perhaps, for lack of time and space, he did not disclose the TOP’s demand that Oyetola group rejected, the conclusion of the Adamu-led reconciliation committee he referred should suffice for why they might be unreasonable ones.
Soon after becoming the National Chairman of the party, Abdullahi Adamu, put the blame of crises rocking the parties across states of the Federation summarily on ego tripping of the immediate past governors refusing to accept the new governors as the party leader in their respective states. No one may have the temerity to query his authority on this. He knew better because as the Chairman of the National Reconciliation Committee Fasure referred. Adamu had the privilege of insight to the possible causes, having “listened to both sides” as Fasure confirmed for the case of Osun in discuss.
Soon after he became the substantive Party Chairman and interesting enough to be at his first meeting of the party’s 11th National Executive Committee body, which made it to look more like a delivery of the report of his reconciliation committee, Adamu said: “I was the chairman of the national reconciliation committee and came out of the assignment fully conversant with the problems. The battle rarely is a battle for supremacy between serving state governors and their predecessors in office, it is a crisis fuelled by ego, so ego is the enemy.
“The serving and past governors are powerful men, each of them are leaders in their own right in their states, but when two elephants fight, the grass suffers. Similarly, when two powerful politicians fight, the party suffers, because the speech and actions of these powerful men will bring a filthy and odious stench to our party.
“Although the party`s former governors were recognised as powerful in their own way, incumbent governors remained the party`s leaders in their respective states. Therefore, the former governors must recognise this fact and respect the party’s structures in the states.
Sequel to that and as his first formal response to the loss of Osun election, Adamu did give a hint that the party leadership was oblivious of everything that went wrong, which may not have precluded the open declaration of Aregbe to ensure his party’s defeat. “We must ask ourselves what is right and what is wrong and what needs to be corrected”, he said while fielding questions on July 19.
For evidence of Adamu’s claims, his Committee’s conclusion on the Lagos State was a verdict of “No Crisis” because, as he put it for the premise, Governor Sanwo-Olu was “in charge (as de facto party leader) and doing justice to reconcile all factions”. In Alimosho, to substantiate Adamu’s claim, the factions identified were the BATCO-Mandate, a renegade of Aregbe’s political structure in Lagos; and the Veterans / Liberation Movement group. In sharing political and party offices among these groups, Sanwo-Olu yet deferred to the old status of the BATCO-Mandate to offer it 55% to the other faction’s 45%.
Sanwo-Olu happened to be one to do this because, as this magazine gathered, Asiwaju Tinubu, referred Senator Adeola, who was seeking to help the BATCO-Mandate reverse an initial 70:30 respective percentage sharing initially on ground, to Sanwo-Olu as the State party leader. Interestingly, Sanwo-Olu was said to have taken another comprehensive look at the structural weight of both factions and further slashed down the BATCO-Mandate's
to the 55%.
Fasure had only succeeded in becoming a drummer for Ogbeni Aregbesola to dance naked in the market, thus revealing all the innards of his unfortunate political misadventures in Osun. Let those who feel they know how beat drums realise that twice as much of them are those who know how to dance to the beat.
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