Nigeria: Osun West Bye-election: Lest We Forget!
10 July 2017By Abiodun Komolafe
All over the world, accepting and coping with the death of a loved one is
usually a daunting task. Little wonder C.S. Lewis refers to it as “an
amputation.” Those in doubt of this sympathetic state of mind should rather
ask yours sincerely how he felt seeing his ‘old man’ on a hospital bed as a
result of age-related ailments recently. Having said that, strange
developments from Osun West Senatorial District are sufficient enough to
compel objective observers to inquire when cheap blackmail took over as a
spice of influence on which political actors would always want to ride to
power.
Quickly, let me concede that Isiaka Adeleke’s political dynasty left the
ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) the very day the late politician chose
siding with unpatriotic and reactionary extrationists as a full-time job. Some
renegades from the ruling party only used the unfortunate tragedy that befell
the Adelekes to give teeth to it. That Ademola Adeleke allowed himself to be
used as a willing tool is an issue for another day!
Goodbye, politics of confussionism and pestilential extortionism! By the way,
Ademola and his comrades in deceit on this infamous road should blame their
handlers for embracing perverse logic, instead of pointing accusing fingers in
the wrong direction for their political misfortune. But what did Isiaka forget
in the Senate that his younger brother is so much in a hurry to go back for?
For the record, while the politically powerful Nehru-Gandhi family has shown
that concession was not a bad venture as some may think, the incommodious
confusion of political party action with family matters by some particularly
petty politicians, in my view, runs against the grain of human values. For
example, Indira Gandhi didn’t enter the Indian National Congress party
leadership contest until two years after her father’s death and we are yet to
read it anywhere that Rajiv, his son, was involved in any ‘Deception
Campaigns’ before he was appointed as Prime Minister on October 31, 1984,
following his mother’s assassination earlier in the day.
But would the chameleon in Adeleke have lost anything by not defecting from
APC, all in the interest of the party that once served as a house of refuge
for his late brother? In any case, can an aspirant who ran away from party
primaries be considered as a serious contestant in any election whatsoever?
Again, this is where those who always refer to progressive politics as a cult
seem to be missing it. For all I care, progressivism is about loyalty and
ability to do something better. This loyalty is not measured; it is total! For
instance, those who insist that Mudashiru Hussain ought to have been
disqualified on account of his native home have forgotten that competence,
skill and open communication, not candidates’ geographical locations, are the
hallmarks of progressive choice. Beyond dignifying the renegades with any form
of relevance, how soon have those now falling ‘a corps perdu’ to remove the
peck from their neighbour’s eye forgotten that Adeleke as Senator and Adejare
Bello as Speaker of the-then Osun State House of Assembly once drank from the
same cup of birthplace?
Let’s face the loud truth! Were Nigeria’s political leadership positions by
inheritance, I am sure the leadership of the Yoruba nation would have, on a
platter of concession, been handed over to Obafemi Awolowo, Adekunle Ajasin
and Abraham Adesanya’s children after their death. In like manner, at least
one of MKO Abiola’s offspring would have occupied Aso Rock as Nigeria’s
president. After all, it is believed that their father and breadwinner was
killed in government custody! Painfully, Awo’s cap disappointed his children
when political offices came to play while the Adesanyas would always remain
grateful to former President Olusegun Obasanjo for ignoring Abraham’s advice.
Not even Abubakar Audu’s son had that singular honour of succeeding his father
who was only minutes away from history before the destined Moses in him came
to pass.
That American author, George William Curtis once wrote: “A man’s country is
not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but … a principle
and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.” Those with the erroneous
impression that APC doesn’t have a chance in Osun West or that Governor Rauf
Aregbesola has lost a considerable chunk of his winning streaks had better
look elsewhere for their attempts at rewriting history. For God’s sake, how
can a man who has never defeated the governor and his party in any election in
the Senatorial District be credited with helping Aregbesola to win the 2014
governorship election? Was Adeleke not the current holder of that office in
2011 when Hussain defeated him by 44,881 votes to clinch the seat? In the 2014
Osun governorship election, APC defeated PDP by 37,537 votes in the zone. This
feat was repeated in the 2015 General Elections with 53,713 votes. Even in the
House of Assembly election held that year, APC garnered 109,783 votes while
PDP struggled to poll 51,540 votes.
To the best of my knowledge, the Adeleke-PDP quandary is indicative of the
unfortunate political abracadabra that has for long been the undoing of
Nigeria. How do I mean? If, indeed, Ademola is such a political sell-out, the
betrayers who prefer personal benefits to communal togetherness made him so.
By the same token, blame an unpredictable political Nigeria in which her
inhabitants have found themselves if PDP is such a cult of unrepentant
turncoats. For the almost eight years that the party held sway in Osun, the
‘nest of killers’ was so obsessed with frivolities and flagrant outrageousness
that dear state became a cataclysmic turf for incompetence, uncharitableness
and backwardness.
It is therefore a statement of fact that PDP or ‘Nurudeen’ Ademola ‘Jackson’
Adeleke’s wish that they can win elections again in the State of Osun no
longer exists; not even in Nigeria!
*Komolafe writes in from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State (ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk)
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