Buhari and Tinubu
By Festus Adedayo
Professor of Linguistics and President, Academy of Letters, Francis Egbokhare of the College of Ibadan, on an Ibadan, Oyo State, radio programme the place we each appeared yesterday, made a profound evaluation of the continued political chess-gaming within the All Progressives Celebration (APC). Solely final week, on the Nationwide Govt Council (NEC) assembly of the get together, President Muhammadu Buhari had dissolved the get together’s Nationwide Working Committee, (NWC) appointing the Yobe State governor, Mai-Mala Buni,as Caretaker Chairman. Different chain reactions which apparently signaled an enormous conflagration within the get together, got here in tow. This was harking back to comparable disaster which led to the implosion that turned manifest within the Peoples Democratic Celebration (PDP) on the twilight of Goodluck Jonathan’s keep in workplace.
Egbokhare had likened the competition within the APC to 1 between the lion, cobra and hyena. This analogy caught my curiosity. One of many tv channels that catch my curiosity essentially the most is the animal channels. There are such a lot of points that may get becoming and ample resolutions if we watch the mannerisms, physique languages, searching methodologies and associational characters of our cousins within the pre-historic time – the animals. The lion is undoubtedly the king of the forest. Its look alone is frightening, solely second to the hippopotamus’. Zoologists inform us of the superior energy of the lion, the humongous power Windfall packed into its jaws and claws. It is rather alert for intruders, is sluggish to pounce on its prey and when it does, tears them into unrecognizable items in a jiffy.
Francis Egbokhare, Professor of Linguistics and President, Academy of Letters
The lion shares so many traits with the stressed hyena. Their jaws usually are not dissimilar, regardless that the lion’s is stronger. Their relationship, zoologists name commensalism. That is that, when lion goes attempting to find preys, the hyenas collect to look at the king tear the prey. When the king gobbles what it might, it leaves the painstakingly ready hyenas to scavenge the let-over. Although they each represent a string within the ecosystem chain and share comparable geographic vary, the 2 animals are very defensive and conscious of their territorial areas of operations and exhibit extraordinarily aggressive tendencies towards each other. On events after they veered into their territories, lions shred hyenas into items and likewise vice versa, particularly when a lone lion unguardedly strays into the hyena enclave. Feminine lions particularly, on account of their weaker disposition than their male counterpart, pose straightforward prey to the extra aggressive hyenas and their cubs and are topic of straightforward intimidation for these stressed wild cats.
Lions eat warthog earlier than hyenas attempt to take over. Uploaded on YouTube by: Kruger Sightings, Aug 7, 2018
Cobra on the opposite aspect, although dissimilar to the cat household above, can also be identified to be probably the most venomous snakes ever. Whereas its personal searching methodology differs from the wild cat’s, it first stings its prey to dying with its very lethal venom, incapacitates it and when it had been demobilized, the cobra wraps itself around the animal after which begins to swallow it little by little. In duels within the forest, venomous cobra species have been identified to kill even a male lion. A Nationwide Geographic channel video that went viral not too way back depicted how a venomous cobra spat into the eyes of a lion cub, blinding it.
So how does the Egbokhare analogy apply to the APC soiled inner energy wrestle, delivered to the fore primarily by its erstwhile chairman, Adams Oshiomhole’s punitive and despotic try to repeat Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s profitable mannequin of eliminating a godson in Lagos, for cloning in his native state, Edo? By the best way, these politicians who try and shut analytical forays into what they contemplate inner get together issues, will need to have by now identified that analysts and Nigerians as a complete received’t succumb to such barren escapism. It is because, what they name inner issues have an effect on the generality of Nigerians, set the polity on edge and have very definitive impacts on our social, financial and nationwide lives. It will likely be suicidal to permit politicians escape with the impunities they name household issues which in actual sense are pressing issues of nationwide considerations.
Now, in accordance with Egbokhare, the outdated Motion Congress of Nigeria (ACN) rump that coalesced into the APC and headed by Tinubu, who’s by the way named the Lion of Bourdillon, is the lion on this analogy. The CPC, headed by Buhari, which had been happening barren forays into presidential contests earlier than 2015 however which clinched it solely when it shared the prey with the ACN, is the hyena and the cobra is the Bukola Saraki’s New-PDP which had the likes of Rotimi Amaechi, the Transportation Minister, as its venomous commissars.
So what’s the position of this trio of lion, hyena and cobra within the Nigerian political ecosystem that makes their relationship tick? The Tinubu ACN was already controlling a sizeable chunk of the venison of the South West forest, with prospect of apprehending another meaty conquests in a bigger Nigerian forest, particularly within the South East. The Buhari CPC hyena, unable to efficiently hunt its personal venison, allowed the lion have a good time its searching prowess however requested it to share the chunky meat. The lion then uncritically let go of the venison mid-way however unbeknown to it, it had been stampeded by the hyena to depart the gourmand course of midstream, thus forfeiting very chunky meats hidden within the crevices of the bony-looking remnants, to the stressed hyena. Whereas the cobra has no position to play on this feasting course of, it nevertheless has a key position to play within the forest which all of them inhabit. Besides in uncommon instances, the cobra, lion and hyena go about their particular searching expeditions with out interfacing. Every of them has their nature-endowed skills and capabilities that rank them champions of their particular person turfs. Take as an illustration the quantity of toxic neurotoxin resident within the mouth of a king cobra which it will probably emit in a single chunk, mentioned to be sufficient to kill 20 human beings or one elephant.
Whereas the APC govt dissembler, Victor Giadom, held sway, till the dissolution of the NWC by Buhari final week, he was mentioned to be a powerful ambassador of the Cobra household, an Amaechi ally. After the Lion’s mane, Oshiomhole was unprecedentedly stung by the cobra, Bukola Saraki, one other robust New-PDP cobra household, laughed cynically on the lethal venom the cobra spat on the consultant of the Lion of Bourdillon. Dino Melaye, an childish member of that household, even cynically mocked the autumn of the lion in a video he circulated.
Egbokhare made it identified that rather a lot occurs within the covens of political actors than are volunteered by their legmen in public discourses. Of a fact too, many a instances, our analyses miss the purpose once we attempt to psychoanalyze the unorthodox political maneuverings of Nigerian politicians. Nevertheless, Nigerians looking for clarification into the sacking of Oshiomhole by the Attraction Court docket, the drama enacted about 48 hours to the dissolution of the APC NWC, the judicial appearing chairman recognition ding-dongs and the final word dissolution of the NWC had been at a loss on what to affix as happenings within the get together. Whereas loyalists of Tinubu declare he hasn’t misplaced out within the get together, manifest in his cousin, the Osun State governor, Gboyega Oyetola, being appointed as a member of the Caretaker Committee and a few others near him nonetheless there, the reality is that the Lion of Bourdillon has been fatally wounded by the lethal pellets of gunfire the cabal attempting to neutralize his maintain on the APC fired final week. You can’t declare that having a Man Friday like Oshiomhole, who gladly carried Tinubu’s poo-pan about, was synonymous along with his cousin being appointed into the NWC, whose maintain on the NWC can be at greatest tepid. To assert that this isn’t a political castration of a person who was erecting constructing blocks of 2023 in each political motion undertaken by the flippant Oshiomhole would sound very awkward.
Festus Adedayo
Just like the lion on this analogy, at the same time as I forewarned in an earlier piece entitled A o m’erin j’oba at Tinubu’s colloquium, Tinubu the lion could have been defrauded by extra calculative, extra subtle political chess-gamers who although didn’t have his political brawns however possessed extra stratagems geared toward colonizing the venison he hunted for dinner. The stressed and wily CPC hyenas merely stampeded him out of the chunk of his South West management meat. However, just like the Egbokhare lion, the Lion of Bourdillon has remained silent on this equation since his Man Friday was flung off the dais. I bear in mind the story of the self-acclaimed prophet who was devoured within the College of Ibadan zoo some many years in the past. Stories claimed that when the person leapt into the lion’s den, the animals first scampered off in seeming fright on the very uncommon intrusion. Instantly they apprehended the equation nevertheless, the lions went for windfall’s entire meat despatched to them and tore the divine venison into shreds.
Buhari, proper, and Tinubu
So, is the Lion of Bourdillon additionally finding out the equation? Is it fazed by the Buhari hyenas’ impudence and insolence of arresting its meat by stealth final week? Will the King of the Forest merely forfeit its blithely stolen meat and hunt for one more chunky one within the forest or will it battle again? The place on this scampering by the lion, hyena and cobra is the curiosity of the forest, the individuals of Nigeria? Or, is the clan of analysts seeing a mere tempest when actually there’s calm? Or, put extra succinctly, are we mistaken to suppose that there’s a dissonance within the gourmand quest of the lion, hyena and the cobra?
As I wrote the final phrases of this piece, Tinubu’s belated response, presidency’s Tinubu friendship-baiting riposte via its virulent and combative publicist, Garba Shehu, and Oshiomhole’s chewing-the-humble-pie response had been revealed. They had been at greatest syndicated acknowledgement and blind makes an attempt to keep away from an apparent sinking boat with the tendency to comb all of them away. Whereas Shehu attributed snide feedback on Buhari’s unilateral abatement of Tinubu’s Oshiomhole NWC’s roller-coaster journey to the handiworks of “political vulturism” – no matter that meant – he couldn’t clarify why Buhari needed to pull the rug off the ft of “his good friend” like the top of a coup-plotting junta. My studying of Tinubu’s useless epistle, dwelling majorly on cants and sophism, was a person who had entered a one-chance bus, one thing within the mould of what Ibadan individuals would name Suara Sobo truck and is praying onerous to his chi to let him alight in peace. Whereas in a single breath, he blamed Oshiomhole for “his fence-mending makes an attempt (that) had been maybe too little too late.,” in one other, he thanked him for the choices he took. The place was Tinubu when “the litigious” members of the get together had been getting unpleasant? If he hadn’t acted like a headmaster cross along with his errant pupil when Godwin Obaseki and different APC governors got here to him to prevail on his hireling to cease the drift into anarchy within the get together, the “fusillades of lawsuits” most likely wouldn’t come. The Oshiomhole who now ate the common-or-garden pie, in live performance along with his clique, had threatened to take Buhari and the Caretaker Committee to courtroom instantly it was constituted.
The response of this self-same Oshiomhole group when Buhari gave assist to Giadom, and I might snicker whether it is mentioned that Tinubu wasn’t within the know of it, in a statementsigned by its Hilliard Eta and Waziri Bulama, was that Buhari might need been “supplied incorrect recommendation or blackmailed” into supporting Giadom, an euphemism for the face of the choice not being in possession of a thoughts of its personal. So when these latter platitudes got here from the accuser and the accused, you’ll agree that it was what, in authorized jargons, is named a consensus advert idem on issues of particular person survival and private security.
In all, you can not impeach the analogy of the lion, hyena and cobra within the APC. When the battle reaches its full maturation, it should little question tingle Nigerians’ ears and the lion which had entered the Suara Sobo truck will confess that it had all alongside been a captive of its ambition.
Ajimobi: Final supper with a Sanmonri, constituted into authority
Abiola Ajimobi
In contrast to my wont, phrases failed me repeatedly this morning. Ever think about billows of smoke failing to sprout out of the blacksmith’s forge? Or the canary instantly failing to spit its melodious rhythm? However that has been my abiding forte within the final one hour or so. Writing, cancelling, rewriting, erasing, rewording and cancelling outright had been my back-and-forth lot as I attempted to pen an elegy to Abiola Ajimobi, a person who, for 4 years, was my boss. I had needed to substitute “is” for “was” whereas diffidently refusing to append “late” as prefix to the identify of a person I ate dinner with about seven weeks in the past. Just like Ayinla Omowura, Yoruba Apala musician’s question of the lifeless physique of Yusuff Olatunji, one other Sakara music nice, Ibo ni’ku ba e to fi ri e pa? (why or how did you let down your guard and permit Loss of life pierce you with its cowardly dagger?) I can’t however ask Ajimobi how and when he consented to the effeminate aggression of dying? Because the soil opens its irreverent mouth and swallows Ajimobi in the present day, I ask, why would Constituted Authority consent to that present of would possibly by Loss of life?
Abiola-Ajimobi
Proper from the gate of his home on the Oluyole Property space of Ibadan, you had a whiff that you simply had been within the dwelling of a typical Nigerian sanmonri (elite) and their regular dread of dying. Or, within the phrases of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s corrupted English-written Souza boy, an elite afraiding to die. The gateman pretended to be blind to any acquaintance with anybody, besides you completely washed your arms within the trough of water positioned by the gate. He then apologized profusely after you had acquiesced to the desires of the proprietor of the home, pleading that he didn’t need to lose his job. Visitors’ faces donned in masks which a number of months earlier would have appeared outlandish, the gateman however appeared us up like a virologist appears to be like via the microscope for a hidden virus, simply to make certain we had not flouted the Supreme Regulation of the house.
Then we walked into Ajimobi’s modest compound the place you discover sanmonri mixing with afinju (aesthetic) in equal mix. Mrs. Ajimobi sat with a few her aides a number of meters away, squeezing her face to establish the three gents masqueraded from recognition by their COVID-19-imposed masks. “Oh, it’s AG!” she instantly mentioned, upon figuring out Adebayo Mutalubi Ojo, her husband’s Lawyer Normal in his first time period as governor. After which me; and one other good friend of ours, Yisau Ganiyu, on the go to.
We then sat within the Ajimobis’ well-laid out front room. Splendid in aesthetics, actually product of somebody who had an eye fixed for magnificence, Ajimobi himself walked in. With brisk gaits like that of a 21-year outdated, he would somewhat you shot him than gag him from lending his opinion on a problem. “Have you learnt that scientists have revealed that even these masks you wore can do you some hurt?” he started as we exchanged pleasantries. We then went into debates on the effectiveness of the face masks. As we sat, he requested that we social-distanced by spreading on every of the elegant couches that embellished his front room. His two different company being Muslims, because it was the month of the Islamic Ramadan quick, he sidestepped them and supplied me assorted fruits. He mentioned he by no means counted the times of the fasting already expended however when informed that the day marked the tenth, he merely nodded.
Although we couldn’t actually discern any premonition that Ajimobi’s departure was close to, he confirmed uncommon reconciliatory perspective this present day, like somebody in a rush to make amends, lest time caught up with him. As an example, Ajimobi accepted overtures by Ibadan elders to reconcile with a senior authorized practitioner whom he concretely laid his infractions towards. He spent most a part of that night receiving telephone calls in that regard. He quoted a psychoanalytical examine which captured the thoughts construction of serial and impulsive liars.
Then got here the time to interrupt the day’s quick. Earlier than we left that part of the home that additionally doubled as his workplace, I handed him two autographed copies of the e book I had simply written. You taught us that nothing else however excellence suffices, I wrote. Ajimobi discovered it very enchanting and expressed how excited he was that we had been doing him proud out of workplace.
He implored us to hitch him on the breaking of quick desk, which, with the good thing about hindsight now, was a duplicate of the biblical final supper. Madam had had the desk embellished with every kind of meals. That night time, as if he knew that it was the final time he and I might be seeing, he appeared too happy to please my buddies and me. Was a wrap of amala sufficient for me? he requested about twice. There have been extra chunks of meat within the bowl, he once more prompted, only for us to have our fill. He defined why, for him, he didn’t worth swallow as delicacies, at the same time as he ate very small portion of rice.
The 7pm curfew was gone, I mentioned, reminding him of the necessity for me to take my go away. Ajimobi walked us to our automobiles, at the same time as we chatted like college boys. He wore that flowing caftan which I had identified him with for years. His spouse made it for him, he informed us. As we obtained to the skin of the gate, he requested considered one of his safety aides why he hadn’t gone dwelling. He informed him his home was far and as soon as he didn’t go away on time, he couldn’t once more for that day. There after which, Ajimobi granted him the grace to at all times go away early in order that he might be along with his household.
As I leapt into my automobile, Ajimobi waved us bye. Instinctively, I checked out him strolling away. He appeared to be in a rush to depart, at the same time as he walked into the darkness.
I first met Ajimobi a number of months after he left the Nationwide Oil as Managing Director, in 2003. He had expressed the will to enter politics. His good friend and broadcasting large, Yanju Adegbite, had requested I interviewed him on this similar Oluyole home of his, for the Tribune. I noticed within the good-looking man a really confident, educated man with fascinating psychological depth. I used to be nevertheless afraid for him that in a society that was conscious of private hoisting of self psychological price, he can be a straightforward prey for profiling as smug. No query hit him unexpectedly. He had responses. Adegbite tells anybody that I rejected Ajimobi’s conventional handshake that afternoon.
Destiny was to deliver us collectively once more round 2009. He had constituted a technique staff preparatory to the 2011 election contest and somebody had sourced me out. We sweated to situate his candidature and when he received and opposition towards my nomination as his media aide mounted, Ajimobi fought via his choice for me, virtually combating Late Alhaji Lam Adesina, the get together chief.
For 4 years with Ajimobi in authorities, I labored beneath an intensely demanding boss. I virtually threw within the towel within the first two years as I couldn’t cope along with his wonderful strides. A nocturnal being of the Nigerian political class’ hue, he slept most instances within the very early hours of the day, holding conferences and deciding governmental insurance policies. For me, that was a Capital No. Whereas he gave me free hand to handle his media portfolio, he couldn’t stand up to mediocrity or shallowness. You needed to make energy level shows to him on the way you hoped to plot his media administration graph.
The primary bout I needed to battle was how one can strip him of his fancies of necklace, agbada and an unsparing tongue. Agbada and necklace signposted elitism and as such, dis-advertisement for management of an agrarian, civil service state like Oyo. His besotting inseparability along with his spouse additionally boomeranged in a patriarchal state as Oyo the place the perceived considered a girl co-handling the wheels of state sounded absurd. So, all kinds of damaging euphemistic clichés had been manufactured to denigrate him as a sissy. I devised my very own approach of managing this typecast. They nevertheless appeared to get at him. One night time at his home, going via a doc with Toye Arulogun, Gbolagade Busari and me and I stepped apart to obtain my spouse’s name, he had jokingly requested if that was not me abandoning a governor on seat and answering my spouse’s name. “And but they’d say Ajimobi is simply too besotting to his spouse!” All of us reeled with laughter.
My first problem within the administration of Ajimobi – the necklace – was eliminated by Dotun Oyelade in a chunk he did for the Tribune a few week into the administration. A seemingly innocuous final assertion within the piece – a ‘by the best way’ assertion, demanded whether or not the 18-karat gold necklace he seen on Ajimobi’s neck was procured from Dubai. That weekend, necklace leapt out of Ajimobi’s neck and I by no means noticed it ever since. The opposite two, after I psychoanalyzed him, I allow them to be, looking for as an alternative to dig my approach spherical them. In my psychoanalysis, I discovered that the agbada and unsparing tongue that obtained Ajimobi a horde of enemies, had been projections of a childhood defend that Ajimobi deployed to defend his austere stature from bullies whereas rising up. “Should you say I over-talk, I’ve been doing that for over sixty years of my life, so don’t anticipate that I’d change in a single day,” he as soon as mentioned. What many individuals didn’t know was that Ajimobi deplored his tongue as a mamba does when it faces assaults. Deep inside him, he couldn’t damage a fly and would recoil when confronted with a superior adversary. He might additionally barely stand by and watch a person undergo.
Apart unleashing an infrastructural revolution unknown to Oyo State in his years in workplace, hundreds individually benefited from him and his authorities. I watched him transit from a really frugal spender pre-office to a really beneficiant man whereas out and in of workplace.
Ajimobi revered mind. Doubling as his speech-writer in his first 4 years in workplace, passing these scripts via his line-by-line scrutiny turned a significant on a regular basis problem. Someday, preparatory to a state broadcast, the Chief of Employees, Dr. Adeolu Akande and me, had our doctoral levels completely defoliated when he painted our draft speeches along with his conventional purple biro. I saved a few of these red-pen dirty drafts. We confronted similar problem whereas co-writing his first inaugural speech in Might, 2011. At precisely 3a.m on Might 29, 2015, I left this similar Oluyole home of his, after the final draft of his inaugural speech handed his eye-of-the-needle closing evaluation. We had been doing back-and-forth of corrections from about 10pm, Might 28, after I introduced the primary draft.
Ajimobi had his foibles like each different human being. He was however an awesome man who needed to re-situate Oyo State as a contemporary, clear state devoid of its acquired renown as capital of political brigandage and filth. There have been equivocations and complexities on this bid of his. He have to be regretting whereas he was caught in these machines of the Lagos hospital that he didn’t make Oyo a well being tourism vacation spot as he did for highway infrastructure. He made impacts within the lives of so many individuals and it will have been good if he overcame the lethal COVID-19 ailment to behold the horde of people that raised prayers for his restoration. Sometime, all of us – those that excoriated him and those that lauded him – would come to the convergence that he meant effectively for Oyo State. Proper now, you can not decipher from the combo: a horde of sympathizers attempting to outdo each other in shedding crocodile tears on the departure of a person who they solely yesterday demonized and those that genuinely really feel his absence. Yoruba, of their tempered anger on the third group – those that could also be exhibiting sycophancy at Ajimobi’s departure – say, eeyan o sunwon laaye; ijo a ba ku laa d’ere. Translated, they marvel why a person who awhile in the past was a recipient of aspersions would, at dying, flip into an exquisite carved effigy.
Relaxation effectively, boss.
Dr. Festus Adedayo, journalist , lawyer and social critic writes from Ibadan
Supply: www.thenewsnigeria.com.ng
