PERSON OF THE YEAR 2025: BISI YUSUF, A MYSTERY OF PROJECTILE POWER

From the Editor's Desk

His smile is so generous and in quantum for the right affection desirable for a leader’s open mind and embracing arms – especially in politics and for politics. It is his trademark to confront you at every encounter. Even in anger, it swallows the sight of rage in his face. That is the natural gift of Hon Prince Adebisi Abdulrahman Yusuf that has never been explored for the harvest of political goodness endowed in him for over two decade past. But the leniency of nature would later come to work with desirable political upset that came with 2025 Local Government Elections and triumphantly exposed this beauty in him.

In his legelege frame is an embodiment of tactical savvy in politics, adequately compensating for the deficiency of huge body to see in man with grip of authority. Yes, it is the nature’s way of balancing the equity in making power to dwell in such modest frame to hide its pack of density. Hence we see that in Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for a simile.

Like in random select ion and mixing of genetic codes in a growing foetus, nature, more often, has a way of matching objects in their right order of affinity. “I chose Bisi because my spirit works with him”, so President Tinubu declared to the body of Alimosho elders and leaders on a homage visit to him the past Sallah day. That perhaps makes the more reason for their blend of chemistry for Asiwaju to facilitate the Bisi’s “Mystery of Projectile Power” that put him at the centre of the 2025 squall to hit the Lagos Progressives’ Clan.

Agreeably, the issue fits well into the Civics Weekly theme to guide the choice of its Person of the Year 2025. The title given to the five-man panel of jury to work with in their search for this exemplary personage is: Looking into the Mystery lurking in a Cyclone: A Metaphor for Exploring the Beauty of Change in Episodic Political Upset.

Incidentally, the issue they settled for in deciding their choice out of the many controversial events of national scale in the year was to be all about the birth of new order in the politics of Lagos State. It was all the best that their choice truly had its deafening pitch of overwhelming shindig to be felt outside the enclave of ‘Politicians’ Caves’ (R. A. Jimoh).

Though the origin presaged the year 2025, it was nevertheless all the more good that the reality would come to peak in January of the year. It therefore, makes the choice of Bisi as Person of the Year cleared of all to be foggy about its niceties. Granted that it was all about politics – pure politics; it makes the issue to be something of a life matter. It holds so if it makes the axiom that politics is about life and the existentialism of man. It also matters that the issue picked its origin from the ambience of the hegemonic rudiments in the Progressives Clan, coming in manner expressive

of God in anger – a general belief man is to hold for any ecological tragedy to befall human society. It was indeed the anger of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to descend on the Progressives Cave of Lagos over the evolution of a “Deep State” coming to upset his established status quo with the January 13 impeachment saga in the Lagos State House of Assembly. He described it as a “Coup” that should not see the light of acceptance for a trial. His anger invoked the political cyclone to hit the cave as the upset of his wish rather than the consequences of the Deep State to endure. What is a ‘Deep State’? To answer this may not fall into the realm of this purpose of unveiling ‘The Person’.

The mystery to be found lurking in that squall was the sudden projection of Prince Bisi Yusuf as a de jure person of substance in the new realm of systemic politics of the State. The beauty to be found for the metaphor is, for one, the reinvention of impactful grassroots governance across the State, even though a wide gap between transparency and efficiency of governance yet remains in quite a number of the LGs and LCDAs.

But the coming of Bisi Yusuf did not happen by accident. It came as a due time of opportunity to meet his enduring struggle for a needful change in his Alimosho corridor. When he stared down at his local peer in the Federal Constituency in context for the Apex Leadership, ignoring the intimidating awes of GAC, he did not mean it to be a tea party nor any aim to disrupt the system. His acts depicted a cause to establish the reality on ground: that leadership is all about availability of the team-lead to the people. He would later be vindicated about this when it was reaffirmed assertively by the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) while setting another record straight at the aforesaid homage visit. “Bisi is the one that lives with people in Alimosho, you and I leave in Abuja”, Asiwaju said again.

When again, in cause of his struggle, he picked at the state leadership of the party with pugilism, it was not about a talk in the language of political brigandage. It was about the language of liberation for his people of Alimosho. There is more to this in analysis than this mention in passage.

Sure, and generally, there had been something piggy about the Lagos politics, and especially in Alimosho – the so called Tinubu Country. But not until Asiwaju’s spirit was provoked to action by an immanent neo-Yoruba Civil War – in the dimension of a dangerous political disunity – gradually creeping up to the Lagos progressives clan. It was all the best a Godly intervention that the Induna would be jolted to rising to the occasion with that political squall.

Little would anybody not grounded in the wisdom of reading Lagos politics be at breast of the fact that the Speaker Obasa’s impeachment was all about this ‘civil war’ rumbling in the Progressives Cave. And just an iota of leaders would have been gifted with sight to see what Asiwaju saw with the whole scenario. The clan of Lagos progressives manifestly dominated by a rainbow of Yoruba tribes was not to be divided on the altar of needless intra-tribe chauvinism “of Omo’lu” to give the lurking Igbo irredentism a schism to fill seamlessly; especially not to be in this time of approaching 2027 General Elections. Therefore, to nip it in the bud made another beauty of the mystery to lurk in that 2025 political cyclone as largely personified by Bisi Yusuf.

Questions have been asked: ‘why Bisi Yusuf’? And questions have also been yet asked: ‘why not Bisi Yusuf?’ if it was for the political prosperity of Alimosho. Either way, the answer everywhere had been a reference to his ‘miserly’. False or truth as it was or could be, the eventual reality only threw open a paradox – of multiple dimension indeed. A paradox of followers living in the image of a people in William Taubman’s mind: “I could have freed a thousand slaves” if only they could realize that they are living in a bondage of slavery. That remains the fate of a large number of the ruling party members in Alimosho and across the State living on contentment with the deceptive crumps from the table of their local leaders.

Then there is the paradox of the establishment in whose bondage these followers are ensnared. Knowing all this came with the path to the solution for one to see in the Asiwaju’s cyclone. It is either to enlighten the people’s mind to their current reality or to stump off the fibrous roots of the slave masters. In His mercies anyway, the latter was to become the God’s will with The Bisi Yusuf’s Mystery of Trajectory Power by which a new order has evolved, at least in Alimosho.

This is why Bisi Yusuf makes the Civics Weekly Person of the Year 2025. Thus the question to answer by a prospective Spotlight edition on him: Who is Honourable Prince Adebisi Abdulrahman Yusuf? Keep a date with this magazine.