WILL SANWO-OLU MUSTER THE WILL TO CONFRONT AREGBE MOLES IN LAGOS APC?

VICTORY IN PATCHES OF THE CRACK PART 2?

By Razaq Adedeji Jimoh

As matters arising from the first part of this piece, two issues were raised but put in abeyance. The first was put in this simple sentence that with victory in the governorship election, “Governor Sanwo-Olu did not fall per se. But with the earlier presidential election, he stumbled big time on a big stone!” with a prima facie established against him as partly the cause of election victory that was denied Tinubu. The second was the seemingly serial influence of Igbo bloc votes always coming in detrimental threat to the progressive ideology of Lagos at every election cycle in the recent past. By implicit concept from the heart of this writer, the former is about the direct faults of the state leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) – as the real cause; while the latter is the generally perceived cause for the loss of February 25 Presidential Election in the state. Analysis of these two, as the desirable introspection required to rebuild the party, is the core goal of this passage.

Further to these matters arising is an imperative clarification I need to make on an alleged “distortion of facts” from a part of the public response to the first part. This writer would like to emphatically assert, with a commanding height of grandstanding too, that there was never any act of distortion of facts, either by error of omission or commission, in that passage. With complete modesty to say it, this writer’s views and perceptions always stand on a well-researched background to preclude insinuations in the eventual inferences for public consumption, given the understanding that good journalism thrives on the function of public opinion modelling to uphold their civic powers. This is supposed to be the defining difference between the Orthodox Media and the New Media. But it must yet be acknowledged here without any reason for prejudices that a number of the former in the contemporary time now thrives in deliberate merchandise of falsehoods. A wholesome discussion of this may be necessary on another day. Suffice to sum it up that no fact was distorted in the preceding serial passage to this.

Back to the subjects of this passage; in a personal introspection with forensic evaluation of the real reason(s) Lagos lost he presidential election, I seemed to be convinced that the fundamental fault lies with party but resides with the leadership. The Lagos APC appeared to have indulged a lot of party members in indiscipline enduringly into the 2023 elections. But before taking this direction, I will first go on the public wagon of Igbo ethnic factor, which to me appears too ephemeral compared to the fundamental flaw of party indiscipline. Personally, I think the blame of Igbo bloc votes for the loss of presidential election may as well be a mirage of ocean on the road to desirable solution to averting recurrence in the future. I will therefore return to the Enilolobo’s ‘hypothesis' of “History and Fundamental Facts” to explain this.

Taking his notion scientifically from his analysis of this topic, Enilolobo deemed it that the Lagos progressives’ electoral victory will continue apace into the negative at inverse correlation with the increasing influx of the Igbo settlements. In other words, he meant that the declining electoral victory of the progressives will continue as the number of Igbo settlement increases and it will soon get to a time they will start losing the elections. And going by the history of elections in the recent past decade to this 2023 election, it is not sure whether any keen observers of Nigerian politics would be right to fault this claim. Nevertheless, what must be disputed about it is that the influence of Igbo settlement on elections in Lagos is a historical matter predating this democracy.

The case of T.O.S Benson against Madunagwu Moronu contest for the NCNC tickets for Lagos East Parliamentary seat in the 1964 Federal election is well informing about this - a matter of primary election for that matter. Likewise were the many electoral exploits of the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe in attempts to overlord the political supremacy of the Igbo on the Yoruba’s geographical territory. The one of evergreen significance was his contest of election against Chief Obafemi Awolowo for the post of Premier in the pre-independent 1952 Western Region election. The influence of Igbo dominance in the Lagos province of NCNC party gave him (Zik) a robust edge over Awolowo before the Ibadan People’s Party thwarted his lead to give victory back to the Yoruba indigene contesting on the platform of Action Group by two seats in the Western parliament. It must also be emphasized that the Igbo pushed Lagos NCNC victory with violence against the AG.

In this democracy, the Lagos Igbo settlers realized their potential to effectively influence the electoral victory in Lagos in 2011 when they coincidentally shared the same emotions with the Yoruba to give Goodluck Jonathan a resounding victory that cost the Lagos Progressives' loss of the presidential election - of course not for the first time though. The same sentiment was cascaded into the governorship election of Raji Fashola’s second term bid, which gifted him over a million votes, unprecedented in same time frame. But it mus be acknowledged that hitherto, the Igbo had strived to influence the electoral victory of Lagos governorship elections in favour of the ruling government at the Centre - the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)- because it had been conceived as the platform to push the silent but insiduously progressing Igbo revisionism into an ideology in the state. This was on account of dominance of PDP in the Eastern Geopolitical zone.

This contributed largely to the sharp decrease in the victory marging between Bola Tinubu of AD and the late Funsho Williams of PDP in the 2003 elections, compared to the 1999 general election results. To be sure, it was Alimosho's vote returns that saved the day for Tinubu at the time, making the elated and grateful Governor to promise the Local Government that he would compensate them with enough Cabinet representation to serve their largeness. As Enilolobo rightly observed, therefore, Alimosho achieved this feat partly because of the low density of Igbo settlement in the area at the time. The evidence of this could be found in the Agodo area of Egbe-Idimu, where concentration of the Igbo is large and remains the angle of onslaught against any anticipated victory by the progressives in Alimosho at every election cycle. The question to ask now is this: What happens to the Tinubu's promise to Alimosho today? The answer lies in how Aregbesola, through Enilolobo, had deliberately impoverished Alimosho thus far. This is a story for another edition. Sorry for the brief digression again.

And back to the course, it is thus to say that the variable Enilolobo appeared to disregard in his historical fundamental fact analysis was the disenchantment of the party members that had set in earnestly from his leadership at incipient. This was borne far more out of “arrogance” as many hold it against him. His reason to ignore this factor should be obvious: it would be a self-indictment to consider it in addendum to the cause of declining electoral fortune. As early as the time of 2012 local government elections, the backlash of his politics of exclusion has begun to manifest. With his sleigh of the hand’s power to suspend suspected leaders and elders with enough sense of political sagacity to pose a threat to his nascent leadership, the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) had lost many experienced politicians to the opposition. Otunba Busari Ayinde (aka Jawe’s) exit to PDP to contest the chairmanship of Agbado/Okeodo was an empirical evidence. Jawe won the election, but the judiciary’s technicality denied him the fruits of his labour.

The Alimosho’s shame of the declining electoral victory started thence, but it was nudged on with the state’s leadership failure to forensically probe what was amiss. One would understand the handicapped plight of the state in the face of Enilolobo’s power as a mere proximal holding for his godfather, Aregbe. It only came too late that the state leadership would come to term with the Yoruba proverb that says aja ko ni roro titi k’o s’ojule meji – literally to say no dog would be furious too well to guard two houses. This was the lots of Aregbe’s illusion of feasibility to be an enigmatic leader of Alimosho in Lagos while yet holding forth as governor of Osun State. But now that the veil - of juju, as some deem it - blindfolding the state to the true situation in Alimosho seems to flip off with Aregbe’s anti-Tinubu postures, it is an ideal possibility that Enilolobo could as well resort to the scheming the Yoruba would aptly describe as Oyinbo ni ki ohun to lo ohun a su s’aga – the act of desperation to destroy the precious thing you hold rather than relinquishing its possession to another person. In other words, his proponent of History and Fundamental Facts could have been a parable of calculated prescience molded with preemption for the electoral loses to manifest as he predicted.

Two things may have possibly galvanized him into this. In part, and given his confessed deep resentment for the party; it could have been a deliberate plot to blame the loss on incompetence of the opposition faction in election matters. The second is impunity of indiscipline with which he led his faction sustainably into the election. Matters arising from the polling day nevertheless made the empirical evidence that Enilolobo deserves his comeuppance for these two gambits pushed at that great cost to the party.

For the first, this writer reliably gathered that immediately after the election, Enilolobo aptly had an audience with the Governor to "sell his voodoo of blame shift". He reportedly alleged that the opposition faction were inexperienced people in matters of election, who found themselves as polling agents and managers at higher hierarchies of election collation. He further alleged that the faction used its connections to change the experienced agents his faction had listed to the INEC. Of course, he had stumped Governor Sanwo-Olu with this until, according to sources, the truth divinely landed right instantly. It was revealed to the Governor from unsuspected quarters that Alimosho did not receive any money to conduct the election. It also came out that the N125million election money released to Enilolobo by the State was not disbursed for the election as so meant. And when he was confronted with this, according to undisputable insider source very close to Enilolobo, he was said to have first denied ever collecting any money. But when confronted with further proof of evidence, he said the money was for the contract proposal he once submitted to the Governor. But then, he had been caught pant down! Thence, he began to dance naked as more beats of his drum of plotted sabotage began to sound out.

If the Governor and the party leadership cannot doubt it that the President-elect, Asiwaju Tinubu, truly has a web of “Intelligence Report” sources across the sphere of Lagos State, it is doubtful the Governor would want to question Asiwaju’s findings that Enilolobo had a pact with the Labour Party for Alimosho to lose the Presidential election. “On the election day”, a source closed to Freedom House quoted Asiwaju as so confronting Enilolobo, “your boss (referring to Aregbe) claimed to have gone for Umra (lesser Hajj) while there sitting at home without going out to vote for me. And here you were also caught making oath with Labour Party for me to lose Lagos. What have I done wrong to you people?". He was quoted to have lamented with a tone of unexpected betrayal. The circumstantial verity of Asiwaju’s claim against Enilolobo may as well be found in the fact that while all leaders in the opposition camp won their polling units, could it be any coincidence of irony that those of Enilolobo side lost their own as shown in the following tables of election results for just few samples?

It is not doubtful that the state leadership are oblivious of this. What remains a great concern is whether it will yet lose the wit to enforce the scriptural rote that, “elese kan ko nilo lai ji’ya” – that no sinner shall go unpunished. The cause to uphold this also takes us to the issue of indiscipline that had become rife in the party as so demonstrated by the Enilolobo’s sub leadership cadre too.

For a quick ref in case study for this, a source confirmed that Hon Suleimon Jelili, the Executive Chairman of Alimosho LGA, “had long been identified by the President-Elect as one politically unscrupulous entity” the party could continue to tolerate at its own peril. According to the source, Asiwaju Tinubu did not mince words in telling this to Jelili’s face on the eve of his parting ways with the Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Aregbe. It was an event in which Asiwaju had summoned all the party leaders in Alimosho to his Bourdillone home to confront Aregbe with his disappointing acts of betrayal and implicitly declared to him that he (Aregbe) would no longer be in charge of Alimosho. In the course of that, Asiwaju accused Jelili of pushing affront to the State Assembly: “You are trying to create a republic within a republic”, he told him.

It is coming out here now, as this writer gathered, that as “so unruly and undisciplined Jelili could be”, and perhaps complementarily for the extreme disdain he holds for Asiwaju, “he was openly insulting some of the Yoruba electorate that came out to vote on the presidential election day. Therefore, the question to ask is: to which leader Jelili could be holding his allegiance of loyalty? Yoruba says ko si bi ase ma p’ori awo ti a ko ni p’ori ikoko ti a fi se – thus saying that he could not be so politically undisciplined without the prompting of his local leaders. This is to dismiss his unruly conducts as inconsequential in this discuss because he could only be pandering to his leaders. As the discernible one should know, you don’t cut a tree branch in the hope of permanently felling a tree. You go deeper to remove its stump.

It is good that Sanwo-Olu had realised that he was in bed with strange bedfellow, but it is unfortunate it came too late. Whether as the party leader he would be willing to pull the will to wield the big stick is a different ball game. Tinubu held the Ganiu Daudu-led Lagos Afenifere leadership in high esteem as Sanwo-Olu does to Enilolobo today. Such was the befitting home he gave Pa Ayo Adebanjo as disclosed by Chief Bisi Akande in his book – My Participations - which I have personally held to be a political ‘book of revelation’ in 2021. Afenifere would only reciprocate his gesture with extreme disdain for him. But, like a sting bite of a viper, Tinubu struck at the due time not too late to assert his party leadership right at the approach of 2003 election and the Afenifere was thence permanently castrated.

Doing this, Tinubu did not strive to drive away the Afenifere leaders out of the party. He simply neutralized their monopoly of the party’s power by creating and alternative party structure to establish an intra-party democracy. This was what Tinubu tried to do to in Alimosho by witling down the 100% monopoly of party power that Enilolobo is now lamenting to have lost as if it's his royal inheritance. For those who do not know, it must be noted that Senator Adeola Solomon, then as GAC member, strived and beseeched Asiwaju to reverse the sharing formula hitherto at 30% for recognition of the rebellious opposition faction. He was unsuccessful, as Asiwaju insisted and referred him to the Governor. The unsatisfied Enilolobo would get to the Governor only to find that the sharing formula had been raised to 45%. His depression started thence with the implementation after the last Local Government Elections.

Those who know this fact would be surprised to hear of the Governor’s patching of Enilolobo’s consequential disenchantment in this regard. No one may need to blame Sanwo-Olu. He simply displayed his empathic emotions for him perhaps more after being caught with the habit of “duplicitous persuasion” ways of Enilolobo, always gleefully backed up with his chest-beating false swearing mantra – “Citin Alquran”! Ibura lori iro! The discernible would always cite Sanwo-Olu’s management of the ENDSARS’s crisis to justify his high Emotional Coefficient that equally caughth him in Enilolobo's deceptive trap.

It must be for this EQ that he held Enilolobo as a blighter out of the latter's leadership challenge. And in absolute trust, he got so enthralled with him such that he could not see him as a potential blight to his own (Sanwo-Olu’s) existentialism. It is only good that he gave Enilolobo a long rope to hang himself. This writer once gathered that after the President-elect confronted Enilolobo with the allegation of election sabotage, he (Enilolobo) went about accusing Joke Orelope as one telling lies against him. The Source said when this got to the hearing of Governor, he dismissed it as baseless, saying “we have our evidence” against Enilolobo. This is to conclude that the Governor as party leader in the state also know the truth already.

The inference one can only deduce from this is that Enilolobo could be deemed to have sunk down after Snawo-olu discovered he was in a strange relationship with a man he gave opportunity to redeem his image of innocence against all odds. Looking back now, as some pundits had observed, Sanwo-Olu may have been forced to regret investment of his trusts in him.

Now that the election has come and gone, would the party leadership be willing to rise up and enforce the desirable discipline in the rank and file of the party membership? This was the directive goal of Adams Oshiomhole in his era of the APC National Chairman. The forces enjoying the bliss of anti-party conducts rose against him in a coordinated form Tinubu was forced to describe as epidemic “Covid-23 Virus”. Will Lagos State be willing to take up this as pacesetting in this new era? We can only wait for time to answer this question.