By Razaq Adedeji Jimoh
SO unfortunate that he would be misunderstood in his leadership craft. But to God's grace and praises, he appears to have been vindicated after all.This writer would not doubt it: that many in the politicians cave of Alimosho progressives have seen what he sees. That the Alimosho APC now stands on a tripod factional structure comprising The Mandate Movement (TMM) now fronting its electioneering campaign on the thrust of Grassroots Movement for Tinubu 2027 (GMT); the evergreen Justice Forum (JF); and of course the age-long camp of Enilolobo now renewed as "
Datiemo" faction. However, what is unarguable is that only a very minuscule of the party faithful would know it was once a prescience of Chief Sunday Babatunde Aboyade's leadership craft at incipient that the solution to Alimosho crisis would be a three-faction establishment. It is also undoubtful if the White House Patron would see it as a vignette of the change he attempted at his emergence as the State Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Lagos West Senatorial District formally in March 14, 2022 thereabout.
To put the story succinctly, it should begin with clarity of the difference between the 'craft' and 'crafty' in context of their respective semantics.
Craft is not crafty. Craft is about skill -- a language of expertise in one's trade. Crafty is about wily -- the act of being cunning. When Tony Anenih got the sobriquet of "Mr. fix it" for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the early years of this democracy, he was being literally appreciated as the party's 'craftiest' -- most cunningly -- political strategist. Ditto at same incipient when President Obasanjo railroaded the Southwest governors of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) into an agreement that would eventually sweep them out of power, he literally demonstrated his ingenuity at being crafty. It took the craft of political sagacity in then Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Lagos State to beat the crafty President to his game.
Implicit that while being craft is about being skillful at a job or trade, to be crafty is to exhibit cleverness at "getting what you want through indirect or dishonest" means (ALD). However, while being crafty may appear disapproving in this light and in the ordinary sense of moral rectitude, caution must be made in seeing it in the light of sin in politics. Therein, it makes a good arsenal in the act of struggle for power. As the Yoruba would say, "
Ara ija ni eyin wa" -- meaning: to bite is part of fighting to subdue your opponent.
However, when it comes to talking leadership in politics, loyalty must be seen as a two way flow -- from followers to the leader as much as the leader must as well be transparent to the followers. Implicit that leadership craft is an underpinning and fundamental crux of the thrust in the relationship. A leader is not expected to relate with the followers in a crafty way. Such was the frank and openness of then young Bola Tinubu as Governorship Candidate of AD in 1999 when he forewarned Alhaji Olatunji Hamzat and other elders of the Justice Forum that he would not be willing to accommodate any of them in the rank of Second Republic politicians as members of his Cabinet if he won the governorship race. Nevertheless, a leader is yet expected to be the bomb at being crafty to lead his faction/group to victory at the polls. That was the ingenuity the late Chief Ganiu Daudu, then Lagos AD Chairman, brought to fore in attempt to switch the primary election victory of Asiwaju in favour of Engr Funsho William's in 1998. Again, it took the unfolding Tinubu's intuitive craft to visit the home of the Afenifere chieftain -- Daudu -- at the decisive hours to put the plot in dilemma and eventually thwarted it. To draw the first conclusion in this corridor of applied comparative evaluation of the difference between craft and crafty in politics, it would be suggestive in lesson that craft would always return victory over crafty when it is strategically deployed at appropriate timing.
Reasonably, therefore, craft in political leadership is vertically a relational top-bottom flow of common interest in which the leadership would have to demonstrate the skill at mobilising forward his followers to the election wars. The crafty side of it is the horizontal relational flow strength it would need to engage the opponent in defence of the collective interest of his camp at the wars.
It goes to show that the political savvy of a leader would not be complete if the craft and crafty are not made to cohabit in embodiment of his leadership. While this being so imperative, not a few leaders have been found to innocently suffer persecutions on account of this ambiguous necessity.
Aboyade's leadership came with craft to change Alimosho from the path of crafty past, which had proved to be ill wind that did not blow anyone good in the party's rank and file so far. As Tunji Ojo, Minister of Interior, once observed about President Tinubu, leadership is never a title nor an office of comfort. It is a call to responsibility. It is a burden to carry by those courageous enough to chart a course of change for the people, however inconvenient cost it might be to the people when it becomes necessary. To this extent for this writer's view, the measure of a leadership's competence and strength is not one to be evaluated with the parameters of the comfort of his time, but his capacity to wade through the adversity of its era to calm. Ironically, doing this necessity of change often bring the backlash of people's resentment for the leader courageous enough to chart the course. As one axiomatic expression goes, if you want to earn enemies in substantial quantity for yourself, try to make a change from the old order. Aboyade got his own share of this for daring to make the change in the perspective of his conviction as to be seen in due course.
There should be no doubt, and never should it be deemed a gainsaying that Aboyade inherited a storm of factional disunity disembowelling the party at the time he took Oath of Office in 2022. Over four years after, as meant this day, the ailing Federal Constituency is now showing prognosis of positive healing process. It shows by the relative harmony symbolic of a successful surgery in resetting its systemic visceral to order. While Aboyade may not be given a pass mark in wholesome sole credibility for the breakthrough, it should not be deemed a case of his claque's disposition that he owns the credit as the man at the centre upon whom the state leadership officially looks up to in sailing the course. It also matters that the healing is coming on the Crest of a three-faction evolution he appeared to mull at incipient.
It is only unfortunate that whatever means he could have taken in roles of attempt to create the third faction then in line with his conviction, he appeared to be highly misunderstood by many for which he has suffered the backlash. It should nevertheless be understandable that he has to get it as the price a courageous leader should have to inevitably pay in the line of duty.
Through the pains of reform policies he courageously took, President Tinubu is suffering the backlash of the full subsidy removal he deployed as the means to achieving his set goals in making a new Nigeria. Today, the flow of cash into coffers of the state and local governments in triple of the erstwhile total is an end that justifies that means. It is only reasonable to appreciate any blindness of partisan cornea opacity to this great achievement that has put the country on the path of growing prosperity.
Therefore, it is all the same good that the said evolving harmony has come to justify Aboyade's prescient means to achieve it after all. That ultimately is a proof of his leadership courage when he mooted the idea. Thus, he could be counted in membership of the global club of successful leaders in the corridor of his 'Tinubu's country'.
It goes that there came a time Aboyade felt a "Third Force" had become imperative to neutralise the potency of the two feuding establishment's factional leaderships of Joke Orelope and Enilolobo in rivalry, which was obstructing the path to harmony as their mutual disaffection continued to disrupt all peace initiative. He was rather misunderstood to be working in context of perfidy against the leadership of the two camps. Followers of both were respectively claiming a pound of gratitude from him for one favour or the other done to him. One believed it projected him to the new height he had just attained. The other believed it saved him from shame of rejection by his originating camp on his inauguration day. Accordingly, mulling of third faction was deemed to be a course of betrayal by both camps.
DOWN MEMORY LANE: THE PHOTO NARATION OF ABOYADE'S DECISION TO GO AHEAD WITH HIS CONVICTION
But what does Alimosho have today? By deliberate design or divine mystery, the harmony today has come by that his prescient look at the necessity for a tripod factional structure, which intuitively gave birth to the still birthed Alimosho Unity Forum (AUF).
It was not for congenital ailment of jaundice that AUF would have to die at neonate infancy. It was already getting sufficient blood and saline fluid supply from all and sundry for its survival. Not with Bisi Yusuf and Aramide Oduntan's buy-in to the idea with N500,000 apiece for the take-off grants that put it on sure-footed ground to stand. AUF nevertheless died because of Aboyade's difference to another side of definition of craft he would have to invoke to pitch his tent with Her Excellency, Proncess Adedejoke Orelope-Adefulire, camp when it became necessary to change tactics. This did not come out of any cowardice or naivety. It came out of necessity for him to work in line with the directives of his State Working Committee (SWC) of his party.
This takes us to the third part of the definitions of craft. It could appear disapproving though. It refers to "a skill at making people believe what you want them to believe". But that as well tells the mind of strategic skill at deploying craft and diplomacy to win what cannot be gained by force. Call that a creative ingenuity at entrenching peace in time of systemic disharmony and you will be right.
It may not occur to many that there also came a time when the state leadership of the APC in the voice of the State Party Chairman that anyone promoting and projecting caucus above party was not a member of APC. This was a position revealed by Pastor Cornelius Ojelabi at an APC stakeholders' engagement for Badagry Division in September 8, 2022 -- just a few days over four years today. Civics Weekky published the story with a direct caption thus: "Ojelabi: Any Group Claiming to be Member of Batco-Mandate, Justice Forum is not a Part of Lagos APC.
In the publication, the story read: "Ojelabi, according to our reporter who witnessed the event, had taken time to analyse the problems of the party from one local government to another. On getting to the case of Alimosho, he was said to have warned the warring factions to “ please give peace a chance”. This was when he also warned that no party member beholding to any banned party caucuses would be spared. What however made many in attendance believed that the chairman’s warning against caucuses could have been directed at a group in Alimosho was not only because he raised the issue while discussing the Local Government, but more because he recalled the microphone from the MC to make the clarification soon after he thought he had finished talking about it".
This became the more reason Aboyade had to beat a retreat from going ahead with his idea, especially when persuasions for the necessity appeared to be taking a cause for "force" to make it a reality. Thus, eventually, aligning with Joke Orelope camp became the utmost alternative idea, which this essayist had once described as "Single-line Leadership". Her Excellency was ultimately the qualified camp because of her pedigree and ultimately the mainstream personality as yet in public service appointment at the Federal. This writer knows all because he was involved.
This was the later craft he had to deploy to sacrifice his idea for the pursuit of zero-faction APC in Alimosho. He began to push it with the mantra of "Supremacy of the Party" above factional caucuses. Hence, he withdrew recognition of every camp operating on the inimical holding of caucus over the party. Such was the like of Hon Taiwo Lasisi, aka Apon, then ASM LGA Chairman, always ready to ride roughshod over Comerade Oladunjoye Ewuoso, aka Singapore, who was the APC LGA Secretary. Making all effort to correct this abnormality, he would yet be misunderstood in some quarters.
To close this missive at this junction, the inference to draw is about the gift of craft as a part of desirable qualities in political leadership. As to see in Bola Tinubu, Aboyade entered the mainstream of APC leadership with it. At first, he was successfully beaten to it by the crafty means he was sidelined in the knowing of the flow of 2023 election monies. And when in 2025 local government elections he beat them to their crafty intrigues, they began to bat for his blood. In almost all cases, as already given with Tinubu's experiences, craft will always suppress crafty in politics.
CONGRATULATIONS on your breakthrough, Oga. As Yoruba would say: "Ina ile ni eran oko wa ya gbehin" -- speaking in meaning to your prescient three-faction solution mulled in 2022 now making your vindication in leadership craft. Next is the celebration of "
Harmony Gathering for Asiwaju" in Alimosho corridor.
put in view with the coming maiden Annual Lecture and Award Day of the Civics Weekly magazine.
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