ENILOLOBO AND THE SOLDIERS: THE HIDDEN TRUTH OF SUSPECTED CRIMINALITY FOR MATYREDOM

WHY SOLDIERS INVADED ENILOLOBO’S HOME, BEAT HON TOPE TO STUPOUR

Story by Ololade Barakat and Toyo C. Ngem

To ref the origin of this publication, there should be no need for Civics Weekly to feign ignorance of the raging story in endless shindig of how Alhaji Abdullahi Enilolobo, a chieftain of the Alimosho All Progressives Congress (APC), appears to have become an election hero following a purported search of his home by soldiers of the Nigerian Army on the polling day of this past Presidential Election. For clarity, Enilolobo is the surrogate of embattled factional leader of Alimosho APC, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, Minister of Interior and former governor of Osun State, whose current intrigues allegedly include a mission to return to Alimosho to wrestle power with the former Deputy Governor of Lagos, Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire (OFR). It is nevertheless to meet the eyes for this magazine to clarify that this publication is not a direct rejoinder to those stories that never hid their conscious hagiography to create a martyrdom from what some observers have argued to be the soldiers’ impulsive reaction to a suspected criminal situation received in signal of a distressed call from the electorates.

Beyond the cause to break the long silence of truth about the whole issues in purpose of responsible media services in allegiance to innocent public, this is not, for emphasis, a response to any run of the mill scripts said to be on parade as media publications. Civics Weekly has a standard benchmark for joining issues – as to hold for the concise definition of a rejoinder – with any entity, corporate or individual, and will never accept any sponsored rejoinder not grounded on facts and evidence as a necessary cause for matters arising from any published story. Accordingly, what this publication intends to give for fact is a revelation of the suspected Enilolobo’s breach of the law that sparked the soldiers to action. Suffice to say it is a report of investigations that were raised from serious questions bordering on many curiousities begging for clarity.

As the investigation revealed, there were two distinct events of soldiers actions that happened at different places within the geographical bounds of Egbe-Idimu within a time space of 24hours interval. While the two had connections with Enilolobo camp, they had no connecting bearings in cause of incidence. Both were incensed by different factors, contrary to the impressions given by the hagiographers in town that both were a sequence of a single event. And as gathered further, if there could be any invasion of Enilolobo’s House by soldiers for any search as the reports claimed, it must be a consequence of the first incident which occurred early in the morning of February 25 at polling unit of Goods Homes Estate facade. This is where Alhaji Enilolobo votes in line with his early years of politics’ residence that now becomes the residence of his mother – implicitly his second home after his Arida’s palladium.

From preliminary tips first gathered, this magazine was able to locate some electorate witnesses to an incident of arrest of a car owner by a team of soldiers at the polling unit “at about 1942Hours” – 7.42am – as a security man who craved anonymity so put it. It was gathered that the voters gathering early for elections “found a strange car” parked around the vicinity. “As residents of this estate, we should know when a strange thing occurs. We do not use to find any car parked around here when we wake up early in the morning. The second thing that made the car strange was that, being election day when movement of vehicles had been restricted, how did the car get there?” a witness queried.

Thus, according to sources, these were the worrisome reasons why some of the voters called the attention of soldiers to this. But their angst proved not to be a misplaced distraught after all as may be understood from an explanation of another witness given thus: “Let me say one thing, the estates around here are dominated by igbo residents. So, as you said, the tension in the Labour Party supporters might have caused the invitation of soldiers instead of calling attention of the Police to it. But either way, I think their fears were justified at the end of the day. The soldiers came all of a sudden and began to shout: ‘where is the owner of this car? Who is the owner of this car?’ Then a man appeared and claimed to be the owner. He was ordered to open the car for a search. May be something incriminating was found in the car; personally I didn’t see what they must have found in the car, but what I can say for sure is that the man was eventually arrested and taken away by the soldiers.

Another witness, a resident of Iroko estate who claimed to know Enilolobo in person, said the arrest was made in the presence of Enilolobo. He said: “I know Enilolobo very well. I live in Iroko Estate. Enilolobo had come to the Polling Unit at the time of arrest. But what could be curious about this was that he arrived at the time the soldiers were conducting the search. And given his demeanour and look at the time, one might want to think he had acquaintance with the arrested man”, he said. Asked if he could confirm whether any incriminating objects were found in the car to warrant the arrest? He said: “I think the worst the soldiers would have done, if there was nothing found in the car, would be to ask the man to take away his car from there. And from what I heard, they said some ammunitions were found in the car”.

Another source, a member of the APC who spoke to this magazine on condition of anonymity confirmed that Enilolobo’s house was “ransacked” by soldiers, but denied knowledge of reason for that. He said: “yes we heard that some soldiers went to search his house, but we were not told what offence he committed. And whether it was connected with any arrest of somebody during elections, I cannot say because I was not aware of such arrest”.

The video on parade for evidence of the soldiers ransacking Enilolobo’s house is at best a motion picture of an aerial view of his Arida residential gate and façade with sound overlay of voices under tension and distraught. If this is nevertheless taken as undoubtable fact, the question that remains to ask is what could have been the cause for it? Any discernible mind would rightly want to conclude by inference of coincidence that the early morning arrest at the Good Homes Polling Unit could be one – perhaps further to a consequential information gathered from the arrested man. “Aje ke loru ana, omo ku lowuro ojo keji… (to literally translate that the witch cried yesterday night and the child died the following morning…). This is to say that the arrest of the man should remain the only plausible reason for the ransacking, where Enilolobo’s hagiographers have refused to offer any alternative reason for invasion of the soldiers, “Barrister Fatomi, a Lagos based lawyer said.

Glaringly, however, the second and the real soldiers’ physical assaults on members of the APC, which occurred at Government Technical college, Ikotun, the LGA Collation Centre for Alimosho, happened on Sunday, being the second day of election. As such, it did not have any bearing to the search of Enilolobo’s house that occurred the previous day, even though two of the victims – Hon Tope Ogunjimi and Alani – were his ranking aides. The third victim, simply identified as Afeez, was said to be member of the opposition camp – Asiwaju Solidarity Movement (ASM).

As Civics Weekly will always argue it, an incident of such state security agents’ action must have a reason, however implausible it might sound after all. Thus as was revealed, the victims of soldiers’ assaults got the treatment for being “suspected intruding APC thugs” trying to cause mayhem at the election collation centre. As this magazine's correspondent reported from her eye witness account, the soldiers, acting on a distressed call from some exuberant Labour Party members, had thought those found not wearing INEC identity tag to justify their presence at such a place with highly tensed atmosphere were possibly party thugs hanging around. According to her, a LP member that may be held as the agent provocateur had brought out his camera phone and started a video recording of the collation centre environment. As may be right to so protest, some people that believed they had been captured in his camera approached him to query the basis of his action. A fracas soon ensued and the ‘camera man’ got a mob beating of his life. Some other LP members, who were mostly Igbo around, rushed to invite the military.

On arrival of the soldiers, everyone around that realized they had no business being there fled in different directions – iyawo’le, bale’le and other ‘big man’ party chieftains scaling over high perimeter fences in record breaking hurdle-like race their conscious breach of INEC rules/guidelines could take them far to escape. But Hon Tope, Alani, Afeez and Taiwo Lasisi had been condoned off by the soldiers. Lasisi, the authentic LGA collation officer for APC, who had his tag on was left off the hook and excused by the now fuming soldiers.

Upon failure of the remaining people to give proper account of their presence there, the soldiers descended on them, beating them black and blue. Hon Tope fainted in the process, but the character of soldiers in such beastly mood of duty calls spared him no respite of empathy. He was yet laid flat down on his back to face the sun, the position they so held him until arrival of medics to take over. Alani and Afeez were also signed off to the Police to return the case to civic matter. As Civics Weekly gathered, it took the intervention of the APC Vice Chairman, Lagos West Senatorial District, Chief Sunday Aboyade, who called the attention of state leadership to the incident before the two that were yet conscious of their environment were discharged from Police custody.

ALIMOSHO APC CHIEFTAINS IN ASM FORMALLY REACT

From further analysis gathered by this magazine for clarity on the ugly incident at the Collation Centre, some APC leaders spoken to described it as “unwarranted self-havoc” the Aregbe camp attracted to itself out of “needless self-entitlement” to the party powers. This observation would appear to be well corroborated in many of the media reports allegedly “sponsored” to make a hero of Enilolobo out of it. As a given instance, attention of this magazine was pointed to a part of publication in African Narrators in which the excerpt reads: “To make things worst(sic), the agent used to replaced(sic) the experience(sic) agents as planned by the mainstream (Aregbe camp)… destroyed all the election plans… that has(sic) been helping Alimosho to make electoral success since time immemorial and against all odds courtesy of the Alimosho G18 head(sic) by Abdullahi Enilolobo”.

As a party leader observed from this, “apart from incoherence and illogical flow of this narration”, the ball to kick with this reference is the point of purported “arrogated self-entitlement” that earned Hon Tope and Alani the soldiers assault. It makes a beggar belief, as another leader observed, to describe the likes of Hon Shola Popoola and Hon Taiwo Lasisi, aka ‘Apon’, as “inexperienced” in such duty if those writers truly knew their pedigree. As it was made clear, the two were the party’s LGA Collation Officers for Alimosho Constituencies 01 and 02 respectively in the last presidential election. He said: “What must first be understood is that over 80% of the ASM members today were old guards of the old dictatorial order called “One Alimosho” with a fabled ‘G18’ Leaders as a voiceless noise of an emperor called Enilolobo”. This, as explained, means those being tagged as inexperienced today were, in actual fact, the machineries of the electoral victory since 1998.

Giving an example in Hon Lasisi to this magazine, he said: “Apon (Lasisi) is a two-term councilor with his last term as Leader of the House. He had been party agent for polling units since 1999 up to the 2007 elections. In fact, he was the recognised ‘special’ party agent imbued with a communication gadget for Agodo area when Tinubu first attempted to introduce technology into polling process in 2007. The system allowed then governor Tinubu to talk directly with those special agents so identified from the Action Congress (AC) Situation Room during the election. He (Apon) later graduated to Ward Collation Officer in 2011 and 2015 general elections. He paired as LGA Collation Officer in 2019 elections and now appointed the sole LGA Collation Officer for this 2013 elections. The next poser to raise from this is to ask: where has all this experience of Apon gone to?”

Asked how does this connect with the beating of the Enilolobo boys? He said: “Don’t forget, not Enilolobo boys only were the victims. A member of ASM was also a victim. The innocent boy was just invited to help in getting foods for those on duty before he fell into it. As for Tope and Alani, I can tell you that their presence there was not for a liberal or any noble cause.

“They were caught unawares that INEC would not be using two collation officers per party. Besides, they thought they could always go away with their power obsession conducts that always gave them the pride of being the people in power. So they were at Ikotun to perfect how they could change the collation officers’ names to themselves. But the soldiers’ assaults turned out to be their backlash for the evil plan. And I think I should add that the Asiwaju Tinubu’s spirit they plotted against also visited them for vengeance.

"As you can intelligently reason from all the different versions of stories with which they accused Her Excellency of “election sabotage”, they already confessed to how they had initially loaded all the party agents’ list at all levels with only BATCO-Mandate members. This is simply explicable by their term of “experienced” people they arrogated to be their exclusive divination. So, When ASM discovered this at the last hours, just by the slight will of God, it was reported at the state. The state leadership investigated it and requested ASM to present its own list for harmonisation. Part of the results was the emergence of experienced hands in the like of Hon Lasisi as the LGA Collation Officer.

“But because Hon Tope thought he was closer to the Alimosho INEC official, they nursed the believe that they could use that influence to get the tag. Unfortunately for them, INEC had changed tactics by laminating direct from the Abuja Headquarters all the authentic collation and party agents' tag with their detailed identity embossed in bar code. Thus at first, they withheld Apon’s tag, while Tope continued with the trial of their luck for him and Alani to replace Shola and Lasisi. They later realised it was not possible. It dawned on them so when the INEC officials affirmed to them that there was little or nothing to be done to achieve their desire”

As the source explained further, all this happened while awaiting the collated results from the Ward to start arriving. He added: “Then Apon had worn his tag while Tope and Alani were still roaming around the enclosure, perhaps hanging to faith in miracle for their wish. But Tinubu’s spirit soon came with its usual mystic force of assuaging his enemy with wrecking blitzkrieg. That, to me was what we saw in their beating by the soldiers. Or would you think it was a mere coincidence that the President-elect would later come to Lagos to confront Enilolobo that he knew all about his complots against his victory? “Go and check from history of this democracy, no one that ever plotted against Tinubu had survived a dire consequence as the backlash. So, my advice for them is to go and retrace their steps if they still wish to belong to Asiwaju Tinubu’s progressives, not Aregbesola’s progressives’ renegades because there is no place for that in Lagos anymore”.