“All great truths start as blasphemies”- George Bernard Shaw
“Our lives improve only when we take chances- and the first and most important risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves says Walter Anderson.
Falsehood may have it’s hour, but it has no future—— Francois D. Presence
Carlyle can’t be wrong when he said, “No lie can live forever”. For all of us, we must draw lessons from the word of Martin Luther King Jr. where he said thus: “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. Not a few will agree with this writer that Tinubu wallowed in the “darkness of destructive selfishness” as his personal fiefdom built in the dying days of his administration has started crumbling before his very eyes.
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Many politicians of Tinubu’s hue in my beloved country Nigeria are faced with ethical dilemma as many of them do not seem to care about things that are beneficial to the society at large. Nigerian politicians want to win election by all means; ranging from forging their credentials to assassinating their opponents without minding the impact of their bizarre action on the polity. This group seems to forget the admonition of the two holy books, both the Bible and the Quran which instruct: “Thou shall not kill.
There is no gainsaying the fact that if we care about moving forward or making progress, our country, Nigeria is long overdue for ethical politics and peaceful path to true democracy. Nigeria is the only country I know where politicians will shamelessly and irresponsibly declared that there is no moral in politics or politics is a dirty game.
This writer submits that politics is not a dirty game, but it is only people of dirty minds that make it dirty. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary, values are the beliefs about what is right and wrong and what is important in life: moral values.
A person’s values are what he stands for and believes in. A person who embraces ethical values cannot revel in the business of subverting the democratic right of members of any party where he founds himself and the general electoral process.
It is public knowledge that Tinubu has become so powerful and heedless, blinded by selfish interest, swept aimlessly on the creed of greed, hurriedly toeing a path that leads to only one place: INFAMY. Not a few will agree with this writer that no empire last forever.
Tinubu has sufficiently proved to be the strutting god of the hour who is disdainful of democratic fair play, deride equity and mock justice! Is it not a comic assault on invincible truth and a desperate attempt to stand it (the truth) on its head and gratuitous insult to the collective psyche of party members and the electorate when he (Tinubu) wrote to accused the National Chairman of the APC, Chief Odigie Oyegun of committing the vices he personifies:
(i). destructive politics of bringing the worst material out of their hideout and imposing them on an unwilling people
(j) aversion for level playing field for contestants and
(k) trampling on the right of party members to aspire for any office of their choice.
Tinubu’s call for APC National Chairman’s resignation so that he can have the opportunity of planting a stooge that will be pandering to his whim and caprices should be taken with a pinch of salt.
It is high time all democrats, lovers of justice, equity, fair play and those who do not want APC to go into political oblivion sooner than we think to join hands together to call Tinubu’s bluff and clip his political wings so that he did not imperil our democracy and the country itself.
It is an indisputable fact that Tinubu’s brand of politics has brought nothing but pains to the longsuffering hapless citizens of some states where it has the opportunity of ruling over especially, Osun, Oyo and lagos where his godsons control the levers of power. Now is the time for the public, the average Nigerian citizen, to stand up and protest the rampant corruption of imposition that is destroying everything that made our country great.
In one of his characteristically insightful pieces titled what is to be done, the late Professor Claude Ake submitted that; “Although it manifests itself as a crisis of the economy, the various maladies that have brought Nigeria to the very brink of collapse have their root causes in the structure of the Nigerian state, the character of the country’s politics and the sheer moral bankruptcy of its ruling elite.
The solution to the country’s protracted crises of poverty, instability and underdevelopment thus lies largely in the political realm and not in the supposedly a-political IMF/World Bank economic technocrats to whom the former ruling party PDP hand over the country’s destiny to for almost 16 years. We must draw public attention to some of the key manifestations of our dysfunctional politic al system. We as Nigerians are responsible for the character of our leaders.
If our leaders are ignorant, unethical, reckless and corrupt, it is because we tolerate these negative attributes, but if they are intelligent, ethical, brave and pure, it is because we demand these high qualities from them.
We are all living witnesses to the way the great people of Edo in collaboration with their Comrade governor, the apostle of one man, one vote, Adams Oshiomole, liberated themselves from the vice-grip of the godfather of Edo politics, Chief Tony Anenih and sent him into political oblivion. The unprintable atrocities of godfathers, especially former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Tinubu against our hard earned democracy cannot be forgiven by any party or individual. It has always being in their character to undermine and subvert the democratic right of the people.
One major characteristic of Nigerian politics and governance, one that call for critical interrogation and action is the typically and indubitably authoritarian mentality of the godfather and public office holder. These authoritarian minded-political rulers have subverted everything including their own political parties and other institutions of the state. One of the commonest complaints of our underperforming liberal democratic system is the patent absence of internal democracy in the operations of the political parties, which makes it impossible for the best material to emerge.
It is not in the character of our so called godfathers to entrust power in more competent and charismatic subordinates. They always promote the dregs of the society whom they believe lack ambition, vision, and ultimately the grit to challenge them. Popularity and fame are veritable sources of irritation to such leaders. Our so called political parties are usually dominated by a strong man or a small clique of strong men who are mostly political enetrepreneurs often wrongly labeled as godfathers. The foregoing explains why they (political parties) operate more like joint venture companies established for the sole purpose of capturing the state in order to share our common patrimony.
The foregoing also explains why all policies, programmes and activities of a godfather centred around retaining and expanding power, which they do through subversion of democratic right of party members and the general electoral process. In the end democracy comes to mean nothing to the vast majority of the people, and leaders who corner power and the resources of the public live increasingly further and further away from citizens.
Since the inception of this democratic dispensation in 1999 our democracy was distinguished by the struggle to build power around a leader, not around institutions of state that should improve economic welfare of citizens, fight corruption and institutionalizes credible elections. There after the cult of the leader grew. The concerns are about powerful leaders handpicking successors and ensuring that the electoral process endorses them. Instead of owing his allegiance to the people, the allegiance of the handpicked successor will be to the godfather.
The foregoing explains the reckless insensitivity of one of Tinubu’s protégé, Rauf Aregbesola, to the cruel conditions of the ordinary people of Osun state in the last 6 years of his maladministration. Leadership ought to be about service, comfort and happiness for the greatest number.
Today in Osun state there is nothing practically on ground to suggest seriousness in the in the bid to make life meaningful for the hapless people. How can Aregbesola lay claim to be a student of Awo’s political school, but refuses to adopt his progressive ideals? Since 2010, Rauf Aregbesola has used the instrumentality of government to oppress the poor! He has sufficiently demonstrated to be a faithful, loyal and obedient student of Tinubu’s school of politics where respect for rules, fairness, equity, neutrality and democratic rights of party members is not in its political lexicon.
There is no gainsaying that the aforementioned is a sine qua non for the advancement and cohesion of the current ruling party at the centre, APC less it goes the way of the PDP, God forbids! We are collectively doomed as a nation if Buhari led APC government at the cenre fails. Tinubu and his god son, Rauf who has ruled Osun with an iron-fisted hand in the last six years have sufficiently demonstrated that they seek power for self-aggrandizement at the expense of the people. The foregoing explains the untold suffering the people have being undergoing under Aregbesola in the last 6 years of the locust.
We the people have always sat back lamely and often praise notorious godfathers imposing on us their surrogate political godsons for their own selfish aggrandizement, but whenever politicians with altruistic motive attempts in any way to reorder our affairs, in a chorus, we all yell and scream. Tinubu’s desperate but failed attempt to influence the election of NASS leadership was for no other reason than to subvert PMB led APC government if the latter failed to do his bidding.
It is laughable when hired goons of Tinubu and Rauf masquerading as activist, treacherous elders and concerned members of the public tried, albeit unsuccessfully to whip up ethnic sentiments that the attempt to checkmate Tinubu or clip his political wing is a fight against the Yoruba race who are the worst victims of their political indiscretion?
A look at Obasanjo’s and Rauf Aregbesola’s eight-year and six –year disastrous tenure respectively at the centre and in Osun state will convince anyone beyond any shred of doubt that it is in our own enlightened collective self-interest to pitch our political tent with those trying to clip the political wing of Tinubu and his remaining faithful godsons in order to save ourselves from the evil he represents.
There is no gainsaying the fact that all our socio-political and economic woes today was caused by Obasanjo who single-handedly imposed Yar’Adua/Jonathan ticket on his party, PDP and went ahead to rigged the duo into power in the general election. Our peculiar problem in Osun was caused by Tinubu who imposed Rauf Aregbesola on us.
The mills of God grinds slowly, but with exactness grind all injustices and man’s cruelty to one another in due course. “Any leader who takes political decisions on selfish interest got destroyed at the end”. The foregoing explains why an elder stateman, one of those who imposed Tinubu as the gvernorship candidate of AD in Lagos state in 1999, but who he (Tinubu) later betrayed, Senator Mojisoluwa Akinfenwa said, “Tinubu is the architect of his own misfortunes”. We have the good and discerning people of Ondo to commend for their penchant for rejecting any candidate sponsored by god fathers, especially Obasanjo and Tinubu, probably because they have the gift of clairvoyance.
It is on record that Obasanjo deployed the power of incumbency to subvert the democratic will of the people of Ondo in 2007 by rigging into power Agagu at the expense of the then popular candidate, the outgoing governor, Olusegun Mimiko., who regain his stolen mandate through the court. Tinubu, probably out of ignorance of the pedigree of Rotimi Akeredolu as a man who cannot be tele-guided in 2012, tried to impose him on the people, but was flatly rejected by the highly discerning people of Ondo.
Tinubu strangely in 2016, pitch his political tent with Segun Abaraham in preference to Rotimi Akeredolu and the choice of his political godson, Rauf Aregbesola, who himself has become a god father in his own right, Sola Oke. Tinubu again, after his anointed candidate Segun Abaraham lost their party, APC’s primary election to Akeredolu shifted his support to the preferred candidate of his god son, Sola Oke and directed him to defect to another party, AD.
The question agitating the minds of perceptive and neutral observers of Tinubu’s nefarious political activities is: What does Tinubu really want? Many will agree with this writer that the simple answer to the foregoing is: (1). Self, (2). Self and (3). Self!
The holy book says; “My people perish for lack of knowledge”. There is no gainsaying that he people of Ondo and other South-West states have learnt sufficient lessons from what is happening to the long-suffering hapless citizens of Osun under Tinubu’s godson, Rauf Aregbesola led APC government in the last 6 years of the locust.
The foregoing explains why they should not think hesitate to pitch their political tent with a man of proven integrity, outstanding record of achievements as the former President of the Nigeria Bar Association, Rotimi Akeredolu, (SAN).
We make bold to say he is the only aspirant the long suffering people of Ondo will have no cause to regret giving him their mandate because his candidacy is not being promoted by any godfather, unlike Sola Oke, Jegede and Segun Abraham.
Akeredolu, popularly known as Aketi will not disappoint you. He has being tried and tested as the president of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), and more importantly he has a second address, a very successful and thriving legal practice.
Olayiwola is the National Coordinator, Yoruba Youth for Better Nigeria (YYFBA)
