With ACN now in control of Ogun and Oyo states, we have finally come to the end of a sordid phase in our checkered history in Southwest Nigeria, which PDP ex-governors and their armies of occupation had ravaged with impunity for eight years.
With ACN now in control of Ogun and Oyo states, we have finally come to the end of a sordid phase in our checkered history in Southwest Nigeria, which PDP ex-governors and their armies of occupation had ravaged with impunity for eight years.
While Lagos State experienced rapid growth during the just concluded first term of Governor Fashola, arrantly arrogant and paranoid politicians force-fed our people with excessive poverty, suffering, and insecurity until their last hours in power in the other parts of Yorubaland. There are valuable lessons to be learnt from the rise and fall of these prodigal sons.
Leaders who are interested in transforming their societies understand the need to try all within their purview to protect human lives and property and enhance human dignity. They are determined to seek lasting solutions to knotty problems such as poverty, disease, and underdevelopment.
They possess caring hearts, charisma, and communication skills necessary to empower ordinary people to do extraordinary things. They evince humility, courage, unquenchable thirst for learning, clear visions, competence, intelligence, as well as an uncanny ability to understand and handle complex situations. They base their actions on time-tested ideals and values, which they try to inculcate in their followers, inspiring them to pursue excellence in the interest of society. They create slogans as clarion calls to patriotic duty, not self adulation. They understand that while power is transient, its toxic aftertaste lingers long after the subsiding of the fulsome praises of hypocrites and the loud drumbeats of sycophants and hangers-on. They know they are fallible, so they listen to friends and foes alike; and surround themselves with bright and honest people, not sycophants. They know that when a man is divested of power, those that wined and dined with him might be the first to whine about his reeking mouth and barbarous manners. They know that they cannot buy people’s loyalty in perpetuity. They are fully aware that the people, who worship them are constantly looking for something to eat, and will seek out patrons with banquet tables overflowing with delectable victuals, not those experiencing the loneliness and misery that often accompany the loss of power.
It is trite to say that failure of leadership and the concomitant negative attitudes it evokes has contributed immeasurably to Nigeria’s underdevelopment. When a country is beset by a succession of corrupt, hedonistic, and laissez-faire rulers, it is almost impossible for it to experience any real development.
Unfortunately, most of those who have schemed, shot their ways into power, or have imposed themselves on the people in Nigeria are laissez-faire rulers. These are unrepentant hedonists who have their eyes glued to the main chance, and would stop at nothing to get to the top of the looting chain, where they can enjoy reckless lives sans accountability and responsibility. They are driven primarily by greed and hubris and do not brook opposition. Somehow, they convince themselves of their invincibility. These people actively exploit the perks, pomp, and pageantry of power to the fullest extent possible, giving out just enough to maintain the loyalty of the few people that they need to effectuate their many nefarious schemes. They are mealy-mouthed people who would promise large developmental projects, but never actually deliver on any of them because they care only about their own mouths.
Talking specifically about Yorubaland, the governors widely believed to have been imposed on the people by ex President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003 and 2007 were unserious about giving their people the dividends of democracy as to make one’s heart bleed. The concept of servant leadership was alien to them. So arrogant were these men that they did not even bother to conceal their excesses in power in spite of the fact that a majority of their people were wallowing in poverty. We saw their palatial mansions whose sizes were only matched by their titanic but porous egos. We saw their gold laden necks, superbly embroidered flowing gowns and signature caps, coruscating fingers, and glittery shoes. We even saw a grown man with bleached skin and dark knuckles. We saw their swaggers and imperial arrogance. We saw them gobbling away at dinner tables and treasury chambers, with their plates and giant bags piled up to the brim and their glasses overfilled with wine. We saw the cavalcades of exotic cars, the bevy of belles, and the brood of brutes armed cap-a-pie that graced their entourages. We saw the strutting of their bedecked wives; the capacious wardrobes of their voluptuous mistresses; and the global escapades of their spoilt children.
In my state, which was under the iron grips of Otunba Gbenga Daniel and his henchmen for eight years, government was in full retreat from people’s lives for the most part of his second term. Apart from the oases of macabre joie de vivre created for a lucky few who could find the platforms to sing paeans to stroke the governor’s ego or to placate him, the entire state was a desert of violence, backwardness, and hopelessness. The House of Assembly was under lock and key for months, and rancorous and saber-rattling politicians of the then ruling party and their minions enveloped the land in violence and terror. Public schools, especially those in the rural areas, were dilapidated and desolate. School fees were raised beyond the reach of the poor. The state universities and polytechnics were crisis-ridden. Government hospitals, including the teaching hospital, were embattled, and the streets were overrun with garbage. Anyone who had any piece of land anywhere in the state was at the mercy of the governor and his rapacious Director General of the Lands Ministry, a man about whom tomes should be written on how not to be a public official. If it was possible to sell the sky, the duo would have.
OGD’s actions during his second term in office confounded analysts, especially since he was brought up in a Christian home, attended reputable Christian schools, studied engineering at a prestigious university, and had built a successful business before assuming power. It was shocking to many to read from one of his former confidants and spokesmen, who had escaped death by whiskers, of his blood curdling appetite to kill and maim, and his relationships with college cultists, agberos, area boys, OPC, and killer squads. It was even also shocking to see him in street fights, in-flight fights, and to have heard him sing abusive songs in public. He even threatened to depose the Alake of Egbaland, who complained about the sorry state of roads in Abeokuta, and repeatedly disrespected his godfather Chief Obasanjo. Further, he orchestrated the humiliation of Professor Wole Soyinka, an international literary icon, who had attempted to bring normalcy back to the state. He also utterly disrespected a clergyman in a church for preaching a sermon about tolerance that he found unpalatable. We were even regaled with sagas of his attempts to impose loyalty on his associates through bizarre rituals. Further, we saw the haste with which he drew his political daggers and the sad fate of those who fell prey to his ire. We saw his hapless victims who were jolted by the sting of his zingers and the hits and near misses of his ferocious hounds on rampage. The man’s reputation for violence was so bad that whenever a prominent person was murdered in cold blood, like late Dipo Dina, he automatically became the first suspect. It did not help at all that a confidential email from Chief Tola Adeniyi, one of his advisers, desperately cautioning him against the precipitous use of violence to settle a score with an opponent, was leaked. Hear a news reporter quoting Governor Ibikunle Amosun, who was OGD’s main rival in the Ogun power war:
“69 of my core supporters were killed… and dozens of others were gravely injured in various locations by “hirelings.” “These thugs freely used guns and machetes (sic) to attack and kill some of my supporters including the Amosun 5, a group of young supporters of mine who were defenceless (sicmurdered and their bodies cut to pieces and thrown into a fish pond.”
While some of us asked OGD tough questions about some of his policies and were frank with him at every opportunity, professional praise singers kept on deceiving him, even after he had been humiliated at the polls. Some of these people even boasted that they would die for him! He was bombarded with panegyrics from lowly and mighty sycophants, even from men who were potentates and wealthy people in their own rights, but were fearful of losing their thrones, positions, or perks. We read about his illusions, hagiographies, outright lies, and adulatory pieces passed off as real journalism in his newspaper and other compromised newspapers. We saw the ubiquitous billboards on which were emblazoned his messianic qualities; and read pamphlets that proclaimed his virtues and good deeds, but muted his monstrous traits and arrant acts of corruption, violence, and vengeance. Unlike the call to duty slogan, “Eko o ni ba je o” of Governor Fashola, “Dare to be Daniel in Lion’s Den” became the favorite slogan of shameless sycophants, who devised various stratagems to distract the governor’s attention while they milked the state dry. To his very last day in power, the man derisively called “the emperor” was highly inebriated by the antics of these praise singers and sycophants, refusing to acknowledge his overwhelming failures; and continually flaunting the miasma of rot, morass, and mediocrity that is his legacy as clear evidence of excellence and progress.
Yet in spite of the proclamations on billboards; the rented crowds at send-off rallies; the congratulatory messages on pages of newspapers; and the hypocritical farewell services, like the other former PDP governors in the Southwest, OGD did not give people the dividends of democracy for which they so much craved. The good he did in his first term in office, he totally destroyed during his second, making enemies instead of progress. The evidence of his failures and excesses are too glaring that even Kokoro the blind bard could have seen them. The putrid smell of the dung with which he besmeared the seat of power in the Gateway State is so pungent that not even the most odoriferous of Arabian perfumes can mask it. The sins he committed against humanity while in power are so grave than not even building a basilica can ever atone for them.
Clearly, life was unbearable for the majority of our people in Ogun State during OGD’s second term. In towns and cities with dilapidated buildings that wore accretions of dust and rust of generations, roads were un-tarred and ungraded. Civil servants have cried, artisans have cursed, and market women have groaned. In villages frozen in time all over the state, incredible signs of poverty and underdevelopment were congealed in crumbling mud walls, rusty rooftops, and grimy wooden windows. Most of the young people were gone, leaving scrawny children and petered-out farmers wallowing in languor and squalor.
Also, on the streets of the major towns with derelict infrastructure were a few baubles of modernity, like the new banks dotting blighted neighborhoods, and the late model cars on dirty, dusty, muddy, or badly macadamized roads. We could also see the sprinkles of stinking wealth amidst the ocean of penury and the dots of splendor on a grey canvas of massive underdevelopment, like the palatial mansions, hotels, and stores concentrated in one part of town that were built mainly by ex or serving government officials and their fronts in Abeokuta, the state capital. There were also fancy restaurants in unplanned neighborhoods with dried water taps, open gutters, and mountains of garbage; the ‘skyscraper’ with multi level parking garages hurriedly built behind another mainly unoccupied ‘skyscraper’ in a town with so much undeveloped land; the new secretariat complex built not far from the new shiny edifice for traditional rulers; the cargo airport; and the grossly underutilized stadia and international markets. All these were trumpeted by the governor and his praise singers as great achievements and incontrovertible signs of progress. His critics, however, saw these as white elephant projects designed as conduits to siphon money, unlike the expansion of Abeokuta-Sagamu road and the new Olumo Rock, both of which he completed during his first term in office. At the end of the season of pillaging and profligacy, ‘the emperor’ reported that he was leaving a debt of over N49.23 Billion for the incoming administration. Thank God that his plan to float a N100 Billion Naira bond fell through.
While OGD was boasting that he would never run away and lambasting Generals Olurin’s and Obasanjo’s forefathers, even the most naive people knew he would flee before the end of his tenure. That was exactly what he did less than forty eight hours to the expiration of his immunity from prosecution, but not before he reportedly wrote millions in dud checks to his aides as their May 2011 salaries and parting gifts. What a very creative way to reward dutiful aides! What a way to create more enemies!
George Santayana once said: “… and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We do not need Santayana to remind us of the importance of history. Our elders often say “Amukun eru e wo, o ni oke ni e wo e ko wo ile.” (the source of the crookedness of the load on the head of the bandy-legged man is in his crooked legs). Learning and appropriately applying valuable lessons of history should help us as we search for effective ways to address the myriad of problems beleaguering our needlessly impoverished and defenseless people today. By no means must we hide or gloss over the iniquities of our past or conceal the heinous acts of our historical figures. Bringing these people to brimful, posthumous censure will hopefully show the modern liege lords who think that they are next to God that neither exile nor death can save them from the people’s scrutiny and chastisement. Thanks to the Internet, assessments of their tenure in power will be easily accessible and inerasable. One can only hope that those in power in Yorubaland today will learn from the mistakes of the past.
How did Otunba Gbenga Daniel and his ilk that used power to plunder the states and punish the people emerge? The story has been repeated countless times. The Yoruba people rebuffed Chief Obasanjo’s attempt to return to power in 1999. He still won, thanks to his powerful friends in the North. In 2003, the wily general beguiled the leaders of Afenifere and Alliance for Democracy (AD) that held political power in the Southwest into supporting his presidential bid, promising not to sweep them away from power. They believed him. However, the general used his federal might to rig them out of power, and expressly became the dominant force in Southwest politics. It was clear from the outset that the men he installed in 2003 and 2007: former Governors Gbenga Daniel, Gbenga Oni, Ayo Fayose, Rasheed Ladoja, Olusegun Agagu, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, and Adebayo Alao-Akala owed their allegiance to Chief Obasanjo. They knew they derived their power not from people’s votes, but from the machinations of Ebora of Owu, a quintessential transactional leader, who saw himself as the Messiah. Preferring to be feared than to being revered and loved, the ebora rewarded loyalty handsomely and punished disloyalty severely, giving and taking power at will. Chiefs Rasheed Ladoja and Ayo Fayose found out this the hard way.
With the Southwest under his control, Chief Obasanjo insisted that Yoruba people must abandon the politics of opposition and join him in the mainstream of Nigerian politics. That was a patriotic move. Sadly, the arrowheads of his southwest agenda were Chief Bode George and Chief Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu, the “Garrison Commander” or “strongman of Ibadan politics.” Interestingly, Chief Obasanjo once gleefully declared Chief Adedibu of the “Amala School of politics” as his role model. The general’s marching order to his men in the game of politics was “do or die!”
The only man who did not fall for Chief Obasanjo’s deception in 2003 and survived his onslaught was Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was then the governor of Lagos State. Even though Chief Obasanjo starved him of funds, Tinubu finished his second term in 2007 and paved the way for the emergence of the dynamic Governor Fashola, who has taught Nigerians to be hopeful again. Asiwaju Tinubu is a man of very many contradictions. If this man were a character in a novel, he would be a round one. To many, he is an enigmatic hero-villain, who is very difficult to pigeonhole for he has mastered the art of simultaneously farting in people’s mouths and pouring salt in them! Having accumulated so much questionable wealth, abhorrers of corruption in any form find it hard to glorify him. However, having successfully bankrolled the emancipation of the southwest and Edo state from PDP impostors, abhorrers of oppression find it even harder to dislike him. It was Asiwaju Tinubu’s political ingenuity, hard work, and doggedness that restored the hope now being celebrated in the Southwest and some other parts of Nigeria today.
We have to go deeper into history to understand the challenges we face today. To realize his political agenda in the Southwest, the “Leprechaun of Owu” unwittingly prospected the nooks and corners of Yorubaland for the reincarnations of some pre-colonial monstrosities whose deeds, as recorded by Rev. Samuel Johnson in the History of the Yorubas, were so pernicious that Yorubaland could never have found peace under them, not to talk of achieving the building of the foundation of a modern state. Let me warn that Rev. Johnson’s seminal work has been much criticized by modern historians for his crude data collection methods as well as his bias towards Christianity and the British.
To talk about the origins of political power in Yorubaland, it is appropriate to start with the history of Oyo empire. Since the history of a people is largely a record of the deeds of the dominant personages, it is apposite to examine the times and lives of some of Oyo kings, princes, and Yoruba warriors. According to Johnson, Alaafin Odarawu destroyed the neighboring town of Ojo-Segi because he had been slighted by the wife of the town’s chief before he ascended the throne. Alaafin Karan, an unmitigated tyrant whose name became synonymous with cruelty, was eventually killed by his people. Alaafin Jayin killed his son who had an affair with one of his wives. Alaafin Osinyago “ is an equally worthless man … an avaricious man who by exactions, massacre, and confiscations amassed wealth which he did not live long to enjoy.” Alaafin Ojigi, the warlike king, expanded the boundaries of Oyo kingdom all the way to the Ibariba country, but had to be killed because his son was oppressive. Alaafin Gberu poisoned a rare tree and had to die. Alaafin Amuniwaiye died inflagrante delicto, permanently glued to the ‘you know what’ of Ololo, the wife of his cuckolded medicine man Olukoyisi. Alaafin Onisile was so skillful at catching and enslaving people that he was nicknamed “Gbagida” or “the man with the clanging chains.”
So greedy were Oyo princes at that time that Aole, who later rose to become the Alaafin, once battered his own friend for merchandise at Apomu Market, where, as Rev. Johnson records, “raiding and man-stealing were rife at those times.” By the time Aole had ascended to the throne of Oyo,
“Cruelty, usurpation, and treachery were rife, especially in the capital; and the provinces were groaning under the yoke of oppression. Confiscation and slavery for the slightest offence became matters of daily occurrence, and the tyranny, exactions, and lawlessness of the Princes and other members of the royal family, were simply insupportable. Oaths were no more taken in the name of the gods, who were now considered too lenient and indifferent; but rather in the name of the King who was more dreaded. "
The general outlook of pre-colonial Yoruba history would have even been more appalling but for the relatively peaceful and prosperous reign of Alaafin Abiodun, who conquered the iniquitous Prime Minister Basorun Gaha and dismantled the fiefdoms that his heinous scions had created. As progressive as Abiodun was in that era of pervasive darkness, he too was not without his own excesses. For instance, he attacked Ijaye over a perceived slight that he suffered long before he ascended to the throne, and was eventually poisoned by Adesina, his own son, who could not wait for his turn to be king.
Oyo later had to contend with the menace of Ojo Agunbanbaru, Basorun Gaha’ son, who had narrowly escaped into the Ibariba country when Abiodun had attempted to extirpate his family, returning later to avenge his father’ death, killing about 100 Oyo chiefs.
A number of rulers ascended the Oyo throne after Ojo Agunbanbaru’s revolt was repulsed, but peace eluded the land. Things were never the same in Yorubaland after this, not even with the moving of the capital from the plains to the fastness of the forest region. As the peoples hitherto under the firm grips of Oyo kings broke away, and Ibadan and Ijaye became the dominant military powers in Yorubaland, there ensued a long period of desperate struggles for supremacy and survival that brought everything to a standstill.
A new breed of valiant but brutal men emerged in Yorubaland in the 19th century, who actively partook in ravaging Yorubaland, and in capturing and trafficking of Yoruba people as slaves. Some of these men were Kurumi of Ijaye; Oluyole, Ogunmola, Orowusi, Latosisa, Fijabi, and Ajayi Ogboriefon, all of Ibadan. Sodeke, Ogunbona, Sokenu, and Somoye of Egbaland. Agunloye and Ogedemgbe of Ijesaland and Ogunsigun and Kuku of Ijebuland. Johnson reported most of these warriors to be vicious and vainglorious men, who created a permanent state of war in Yorubaland and carted thousands of Yoruba people into slavery, mainly for personal gain. The most significant wars in the 19th Century Yoruba wars, were the pesky Karara and Aliyu of Ilorin. The inability of these warriors to stop their internecine wars paved the way for the British subjugation of Yorubaland. In fact, some parts of Yorubaland, like the Ilaros, willingly invited the British to take over their land rather than allow it to be overrun by other Yoruba warriors. I will let you decide whether, in spite of the passage of time, Western education, modernity, and democracy, there has been any significant improvement in the attitudes of those who have assumed power in Yorubaland since the stormy 19th century.
The ravages of British colonial rule and their resultant debilitating effects on our development are well recorded in history. Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s contributions to the modernization of Yorubaland and the liberation of his people from ignorance and disease through free education, free medical services, integrated rural development, and full and gainful employment for all are in history books. The execrable failure of leadership in all the defunct Nigerian republics and the resultant military interregnums are also well documented. The invaluable contributions and ultimate sacrifice of Chief MKO Abiola are entrenched in people’s minds and emblazoned in history books. The deceptions of Babangida; and the rise, reprehensible reign, and rampage of Sani Abacha cannot be forgotten easily. These men are no longer in power, but the land and the people have remained.
Now that the men imposed on the Southwest have been beaten by the courts and the people, these are times that call for cautious optimism, thorough planning, and preemptive action, not supine triumphalism. To think that Prince Oyinlola will just sit idle and wait for his turn to be King of Okukuland or that Chief Alao-Akala will wait until President Jonathan appoints him as the Minister of Police Affairs is wishful thinking. OGD also cannot survive in exile for too long. Baba Obasanjo is not just going to be content playing ayo at his hilltop mansion and be rendered irrelevant in politics. The beaten men will try to regroup to retake power, even if through their proxies.
Also, it is impolitic for people to be complacent since history has repeatedly taught us that hardly are wars of liberation won than the liberators would don the togas of the oppressors they have just displaced, and a new set of liberators would emerge again to fight the new oppressors. We must ask all present governors in the Southwest pointed questions about how they plan to keep their promises to the electorates so that the next four years will not be wasted like the past twelve years were in most parts of the Southwest. They must show clear road maps to the amelioration of the suffering of our people. They must formulate clear goals and measurable objectives in the enrichment of the lives of our people towards community empowerment, infrastructural development, health care, education, gainful employment, housing, science, technology, agriculture, industrialization, Yoruba language and culture, rule of law, and democratization that will enable us to judge whether they deserve to continue in power or not.
Since we cannot afford to waste the next four years, we must devise effective means of impeaching or recalling errant politicians in between elections. Pressure groups have to come together to define the minimum they will accept from these new leaders and monitor their progress closely.
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Governors Fashola, Oshiomhole, Mimiko, Fayemi, and Aregbesola have demonstrated what focused leadership can achieve within a short period of time. These leaders must be supported, but kept on their toes so that they can continue to do well. We must not accept anything less than what Governor Fashola did in his first term in office, from any of the other governors in the Southwest, relative to their available resources. In his second term, Governor Fashola must show further stellar achievements that will be worthy of emulation by the other governors.
Oduduwa ti gbe wa na, o ku ki a gbe ara wa.
New York, New York
We have Swept Away the Prodigal Sons!
Olatunde Olusesi
With our bionic brooms,
We’ve swept away our tormentors.
We’ve gelded the hedonistic power mongers
Bound to graft ‘n violence.
We’ve cut the rope
With which the gladiators pinioned our hope,
And bound the extremities of our progress.
They appeased us with a pittance from their plunder,
But their schemes of succession we put asunder.
We’ve conked out the clanging chains
They strung to tether our brains
To the poles of forgiveness ‘n forgetfulness.
We’ve busted their bludgeons,
And broken loose from their dungeons.
Our will and votes have trumped the antics of cavalier curmudgeons,
Who, like locusts, ravaged the land at will,
And garlanded us with penury, privation, ‘n frustration.
We’ve shocked ‘n awed the witty Wizard of Owu,
Till he laughs no more.
We’ve jiggled the initials of the tin GOD,
The villain is now a fugitive DOG.
Yes, on the wings of the Queen’s eagle
In the darkness of the night,
The naked emperor fled,
Sans his famous struts, swagger, ‘n gaudy cane,
To meet his massive loot
On the other side of the Atlantic?
As we turn a new page,
Their insults ‘n assaults let’s assuage.
Roll out the dundun drum,
Batter the bata drum,
Drench the land with rum,
Propitiate the patient and resilient ile ogere afokoyeri.
Sound the kakaki,
Shake the sekere ‘n agogo,
Set the land agog,
Lift your toes ‘n feet high in a victory dance.
Let the obayeje ‘n ojelu remain in perpetual trance.
For their evil machinations were thrown askance.
Lamurudu says let the new leaders lead with conscience, intelligence, munificence, ‘n diligence.
Oduduwa says let the followers follow with vigilance.
As Obaluwaye says, "as you follow, like eagles, you must stay awake."
To watch over the national, state, ‘n local cake.
Orunmila says followers must burden their brains, brawn ‘n broom,
To clean off the dung of gloom ‘n doom
The loopy locusts have left in their wake.
And if the new behave like the old,
Olodumare says sweep them away
Into the depths of Ogun, Osun, Ogunpa, oyan, Osa, ‘n Okun,
And all the cavernous rivers in between.
Never again in our beleaguered land
Must we the people brook
The excesses of clownish crooks
Whether they laugh, grin, growl, or bark.
New York, New York.
May 29, 2011
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