RETURN OF ORANMIYAN CHIEF PREIST: THE GAMBITS OF HIS CYNICAL UPBEATS

AN OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR SANWO-OLU FROM THE STATE OF OSUN

By Hakeeb Toyosi

Your Excellency,

There should be no basis to doubt that you must by now be aware of the return of Oranmiyan Chief Priest to Alimosho in your Lagos. this refers to arrival of the Interior Minister, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola in Alimosho, ostensibly to play a role in the coming Governorship Elections on Saturday. What is clearly in doubt is whether you would be apt to discern the gambits in the cynical upbeats of his mission to play a role in the election for your second term of office. I mean whether you would want to connect the dots of history to chart out your own faults, even if they came by innocence of your liberal conscience, in the failure of Alimosho to deliver victory vote for Asiwaju Tinubu at the time he direly needed it.

When you opened your arms to embrace Alhaji Abdullahi Enilolobo, a scion of Oranmiyan ideology and political Turk of Ogbeni Aregbe, in spite of the public knowledge of their anti-Tinubu postures, he (Enilolobo) merely saw himself in a political relation with a “bearded fool” and “political neophyte” privileged to ascend the high seat of Lagos State governorship power. That is the impression we got from him anytime the ambience of his godfather coalesces us to share in gathering of gist and banters here in Osun. Would any member of the public ever thought you once kept beards? I personally got to know that through the purported phrase of the ‘bearded fool’. Whether he meant it so or not, this past Presidential Election should suffice for the right answer you may wish to hold. Except you would want to claim you have a dissenting view to Tinubu’s, the probability that Enilolobo had a pact with the Labour Party to sabotage the APC victory in the presidential election weighs heavily against him from the clues of antecedences. It is therefore curious to now see the Oranmiyan Chief Priest – Aregbe- coming out of his hallow chamber all the way from Osun to Lagos for a mission to cleanse the rots his political godson had entrenched, when indeed Osun ought to be his foremost country home where his elderly and leadership political wisdom should be dispensed.

Before dwelling into the subject matter, let me quickly clear it that my purported doubt is without any prejudice to the sharp instinct and unquestionable Intelligent Quotient (IQ) you have deployed in the governance of your state. It is rather borne out of your obvious liberal Emotional Quotient (EQ), which the discerning public may have seen being exploited by some crude politicians to self-advantage in their pretenses to offering you symbiotic political relations. it might therefore be pertinent to raise this poser: why would anyone feel at ease to pretend he loves you so much with vows to ensure your electoral victory and yet be so audacious to flaunt it in your face how much he despises Asiwaju Tinubu to extreme disdain. Two possibilities must be at play for these opposing stands to align in agreement: either you choose to accept them outright with full awareness of the consequences as seen in the presidential election or the person is playing it deceptively to your innocence. And where the latter turns out to be case afterall, it would be unforgiveable to make yourself a victim of the antics a second time.

Even if Aregbe might be pretending to return to Alimosho with the noble intention to push a cause for your victory in the coming election, the discernible gambits in it should begin with his lack of a single electoral vote to lead the campaign. I say this without prejudice to the feasibility that he may have effected the transfer of his voting right back to Lagos. But until that is clarified, he would only be furthering his offences against the party by denying it his single motivational vote in Osun while pretending to help the cause in Lagos. Of course, it is an open knowledge that he had committed this offence already in Osun in the presidential election when he refused to vote. I would have wished to refer you to the relevant part of our constitution on this, but the cogency to do that here is not so significant.

Nevertheless, your Excellency; how else should the nexus to this, as the second gambit, be better expressed with evidence than to expose the depth of rots he had left behind here in Osun he is fleeing. He was around during the Presidential and National Assembly elections. It is already a public knowledge that we lost not only the presidential election, we also lost the two senatorial seats and all the House of Reps seats we hitherto controlled in majority. Granted that he had an ax to grind with the party’s Presidential Candidate as excuse to hold back whatever electoral winning strategy he may claim to have in stock for the presidential election, what excuse would he want to give for the loss of his own Senatorial seat and his Ilesha Federal Constituency seat, not to talk of others. As such, it should not be expected that he could come to Lagos to give what he does not have. Conclusively on this gambit, therefore, my take is that he has fled Osun on the pretense to work for APC because there is a ‘bearded fool’ in charge.

For the third gambit, it is only unfortunate that as intelligent one may presume the former governor of Osun State to be, the best he could offer for your deception with his cynical electoral upbeats is to spare efforts at rejigging politically spent forces in Alimosho, many of whose children exhibited dissonance with their parents’ political interest to work for the Labour Party.

As we heard of his itinerary of entry back into the Local Government, he reportedly visited some old folks in the line of his political leadership he bequeathed to Enilolobo. Reliable reports also revealed that he met one of them in pathetic condition and offered to take, and in deed took, him to hospital. The wise ones will surely read the gambit in it clearly: that he had not done anything extraordinary with this. He is only redeeming his image already battered by the long spell of his Enilolobo’s chicaneries – a mere ‘foganiser’ he blindly entrusted with naked power fit for the intelligent people; all for the reason to control the levers of Lagos power in proxy from Osun. I strongly believe Alhaji Babs Kareem, among whom the Oranmiyan Priest so visited, will never be deceived by the antics if ever he recalls how he turned the cows meant for his Baale Chieftaincy Coronation to the feasts of his birthday event when Enilolobo and Jelili Suleimon wielded the powers they had become obsessed with. To add insult to the injury, Aregbe only gave a wide mouth laughter when he was debriefed of the power show by his stogie. I choose to give all this so that the Oranmiyan Priest would not see a ‘bearded fool’ to take over from where his godson stopped.

This speaks to our cause to reason this out together: why is Aregbe relocating his political activism back to Alimosho only when Enilolobo appears to be losing his political relevance? You may wish to note this as the fourth gambit at play in the upbeats. He is only moving in to fill the vacuum the imminent exit of Enilolobo will soon create in a short while. It is just unfortunate, but appreciable enough, that for the first time in years, Aregbe could muster the courage to uphold the truth that Enilolobo indeed committed atrocities of electoral heist with attempt to ‘steal’ election money and signed pact with the opposition party to sabotage APC victory as we so heard here in Osun. While it may be difficult to disconnect this Enilolobo’s wrongdoing from the cause of Oranmiyan cult on course, it should yet be notable that Aregbe would distant himself from him upon his return to Lagos. We heard that he dumped him for Gani Quadri (aka Obama) as his lieutenant in the coordination of his resettlement and itineraries.

From this development, therefore, the worst of his gambits, as the fifth, is the new rivalry he would surely be creating in Alimosho with the former deputy governor, Prince Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire. To those gifted with spiritual mind, the purpose for a potential Enilolobo exit from the equation of Alimosho politics is a divine cause we have all seen in the serial mysteries that propelled the eventual fulfillment of Asiwaju’s “life time ambition” against all odds in which the Oranmiyan cult played a significant role. If God had chosen this path to restore peace in Alimosho, it would not be your lots to undo His works. The only way you can align with God’s interest in this regard is to let the Oranmiyan Chief Preist know the truth – that there is no longer any ‘bearded fool’ to deceive in Lagos again. If Lagos, Alimosho in particular, could achieve the feats reached in the presidential election in spite of the hindrances and sabotage of the Oranmiyan cult, there could be no worthy roles to see Aregbe play to make a difference in the coming governorship election. Rather, your victory will only be sweeter as you heed the signs of God to do the needful.

You are assiduously working to correct the past errors as they have been so identified. There will be funds to run the elections. The Yoruba shall be rising to the occasion of Igbo threat to their territorial existentialism in Lagos. The naira swap palaver will abate before the March 18 date. The Lagos civil servants across board have forgiven whatever your shortcomings were in the last elections because you have done the needful. Above all this, it is noteworthy that the Igbo had actually displayed their maximum capacity to influence the outcome of elections in Lagos State by the results of presidential election. Accordingly, the jinx of their perpetual threat is deemed broken already.

Given all this, therefore, what should we think to be evaluable for significance in any idea the Oranmiyan Priest may want to add to make any difference on Saturday except a gambit to continue the tricking of the Lagos ‘bearded fool’ from where his godson stopped. But I know for sure that there is no ‘bearded fool’ in Lagos. I only know of a compassionate Governor, whose liberal Emotional Quotient is only being abused by ungrateful souls. As such, the godfather deserves no quarters of trial when the godson had shown the cult's depth of destructive capacity. Let God complete His works through Joke Orelope's leadership He has so annointed for these general elections.

Thanks for your attention so far.