By Sola Ebiseni

MY  father of blessed memory, Pa Shadrack Ebido Ebiseni, taught me early in life, the virtue of loyalty in politics and indeed any human relationship. He was the Baale of our village in the riverine area of Ado-Odo now in Ogun State where I was born.

Though not a politician seeking office, I grew up to know my father as a member of the Awolowo party or what the villagers would relate to as Egbe Olope (party of the palm tree). 

I was cognitive enough in 1966, the year of my enrolment in primary school, to know that our house was the akodi (sanctuary) for those even of the opposition party who were marked for attacks for being demo, a corruption of the Akintola’s National Democratic Party for betraying Awolowo in the wetie inflammable uprising.

To my father, Awolowo could do no wrong, so much that he forced me to go to Secondary Modern School in 1972 against the advice of my teachers that I was brilliant enough for direct entry into college. To him that would  be against Awolowo’s education policy by which a child must attend secondary modern school for three years before going to college. I spent  a year though. Loyalty, he would say, is total.

 Obafemi Awolowo gave the House of Oduduwa an edge in all ramifications of the Nigerian public life, particularly education as weapon  to resist domination even as we seek not to dominate any other group. Yet, even Baba ‘Layinka himself could not but taste of  the internecine and fratricidal war within the group, our recurring  Achilles’ heel such that cost Oduduwa sons the rulership of Ilorin.

The on-going war in the Lagos political family is an ill-wind  that will blow no one any good; not the godfather, his errant lieutenants, the larger opposition and, if care be not taken, Nigerian democracy and even polity. It is a metaphor for the level of political degeneracy engulfing the whole nation.

Those who know will readily agree that several beneficiaries today were not necessarily there at the genesis or at best at the  inconsequential periphery, but life’s fortune is not like a sprint which distance is determinable by strength; time and chance, says the preacher, happen to them all. Yet, those whose palm kernels were cracked for them by benevolent spirits, should learn, like Chinua  Achebe cautioned, to be humble.

You would be correct to say that the godfather himself was a product of this benevolent spirit, but those who now claim to have sacrificed for his emergence might not be saying the truth. As a result of long military interregnum in the body politics, the real opposition were the ethnic nationality groups (only the Afenifere was vocal then), several civil society groups, including notably the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC; Nigerian Bar Association, NBA; ASUU, National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, and the unions in the campuses. Gani Fawehinmi, Beko Ransome-Kuti were leading several other groups, the most prominent was the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, CDHR.  

President Ibrahim Babangida’s transition programme was treated with utmost distrust as he was said to have a hidden agenda, a label coined by Alao Aka-Basorun, maverick and suave President of the NBA, whose chambers at Ebute Metta provided the secretariat of rebellion against military dictatorship.

That was where I cut my teeth as a legal practitioner with Femi Falana leading our generation and the veritable post-campus political tabernacle for many student leaders across the country too numerous to mention here.

Our leaders insisted that Babangida’s programme was not trustworthy and only a few among those of us who risked participation won elections. I contested and was elected in 1990 as Chairman of the now defunct Ilaje/Ese Odo Local Government in Ondo State on the platform of the Social Democratic Party.

It was that process that produced Bola Ahmed Tinubu as a Senator in 1993 with  Dr. Iyorcha Ayu as Senate President, succeeded by Ameh Ebute.  As a participant, being an SDP local government chairman, I  was at the Jos Convention which produced MKO Abiola. Bola Ahmed Tinubu was of the Shehu Yar’Adua faction led by Dapo Sarumi’s Primose Group in Lagos State.

So much has been said about the national struggle to reclaim the presidential mandate given Chief MKO Abiola by over 14 million Nigerians during the presidential election of June 12, 1993, the annulment of it by the military rulers and the roles played by several groups or individuals either in support of or against the annulment. What no one could deny was the roles played by the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, which was principally anchored by the Afenifere.

ALSO READ: Afenifere, YCE kick as Beninese govt extends Igboho’s detention

It was overwhelming and confounding that the administration of General Abdusallami Abubakar, in realisation that the transition programme was a ruse without reckoning with Afenifere. The government was forced to register the Alliance For Democracy, AD, midwifed by the Afenifere, in spite of its not meeting the criteria provided by the military decree.

The acceptance of the AD in the South West was so overwhelming that its ticket was a sure guarantee for any office in any of the states in the South West. Tinubu secured the ticket of the AD for the governorship of Lagos State by benevolent spirit, through the exclusive instrumentality of leaders of the Afenifere and not by the support of any of his present lieutenants.

The controversy that trailed it almost tore the Afenifere leadership  apart as Funso Williams would no doubt have won a full primary. Just as it happened between Mrs. Mobolaji Osomo and her rival, Chief Adebayo Adefarati who had the ticket of the party to become the governor of Ondo State, the leadership of the Afenifere seemed resolved not to allow the principal participants in the Abacha administration fly its flag in any of the  South West states.

In a nutshell, it was after Tinubu’s emergence and during his tenure as Governor of Lagos State that he recruited virtually all his lieutenants from all over the country and all walks of life to be part of the governance of the state and where they not only cut their own teeth in politics and governance but empowered in capacity for further political exploits in Lagos and many became champions in their own states of origin.

From AD to AC, ACN and APC, Tinubu continues to navigate the Nigerian political terrain like a colossus and accomplished the impossible in the process. All and every segment of the political process, not excluding the election tribunals, particularly in Osun where no election has ever been won by his group except in controversial circumstances.

 The way he seized Ogun and Oyo by the jugular was confounding as he rebranded Ajimobi and Amosun from their ANPP to the respective Government Houses at Agodi and Oke Mosan. He realised the historical fact that it was the Ibadan Ajeles posted to Ekiti by the Ibadan warlords that provoked Fabunmi Oke-Mesi resistance that birthed the 16-year Kiriji war; so he changed strategies and sent their own sons to them and pronto he got Ekiti as part of his political harem, producing governors, senators and ministers. 

I remember the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi insisted that Adams Oshiomhole, by the status he had acquired as President of the NLC, should rather contest as President of Nigeria than governor of Edo State. NLC has Labour Party but Oshiomole was wise enough to reach out to Tinubu’s ACN which launched him to the Government House in Benin and later projected him as the National Chairman of APC which Asiwaju was the chief matron.

 It took another maverick politician, Olusegun Mimiko, to pull Labour Party from its embryonic membrane into the incubator that made it produce Iroko as the first two-term governor of Ondo State. By the way, Tinubu has not found the right formula for Ondo.

Here is not the place to unravel it. After three unsuccessful attempts which increasingly localised him in the North West and North East, President Muhammadu Buhari was already so frustrated that he dubbed those he felt were responsible for his failure as baboons and monkeys who should be hunted and hacked. The Midas touch of Asiwaju made the difference and the rest is now history.

The position of governors in the Nigerian federal political equation is such that they call the shots in their respective states and once they pull together as a cult, they have the party in their armpit. Only Tinubu has been able to rein in the governors within his fold now.

The position of governor is so intoxicating that once anyone ever attempted it, win or lose, he demands that he be addressed as ‘His Excellency’. In some cases, before you know it, they begin to square up with their benefactors. No matter the position attained in the political firmament, except for the President and the Vice President, it is very tempting to still want to be governor.

The relationship between Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and his successor has not been well managed by the Asiwaju and both of them too. Unfortunately, the Tinubu camp is such that below him as Leader, no one else has a voice respected enough to call everyone to order.

Those who made Asiwaju to commit the political blunder of denying Akinwunmi Ambode his second term should have been careful that treating Oyetola in that manner was not going to work because Osun is not Lagos. However, carrying placards and calling Aregbe names in Alimosho is not the solution. It is in dialogue and mutual respect.

As it is in Osun so it is in Kano. That is war of the governor and the minister but in actual fact, the present and former governor. Thank God, the new Otoge song in Kwara is not against the Saraki dynasty, it is the minister and the governor. How many can we count. One last word for Asiwaju on his presidential ambition: you have paid your dues and deserve whatever you seek in the Nigerian political market. But life is not all about it.

The great Awo did not become president, yet he remained greatest in life and afterlife. Do your own assessment, including the pressures on all aspects of your life. Those chanting “On Your Mandate, we shall Stand” are not doing so for your sake but what is in it for them.

Vanguard News Nigeria