For Dele, Christmas day is coming fifteen days earlier on December 10th. His present ordeal represents a climax of the crucial role he has played in the political firmament of Nigeria. He will be rapturously celebrated on that day.
The first time I encountered him was as the lawyer who perfected the title of a land I bought twenty five years ago. I never knew he was far bigger than that occupation.
The first notion I have of him as a public intellectual was a message I received from him while I was at the University of Oxford in 2020.
He wanted my permission to use a column (I had written on the passage of the erstwhile chief of staff to President Mohammadu Buhari in his book) “Don’t die in their war”. I, of course, had no reservations whatsoever in granting his request.
When I returned to Nigeria and heard him speak on the cable TV network, I realised we have another giant in our vocation of public intellectualism. I sought him out and we became brothers. I subsequently recruited him for the role of spokesperson, Peter Obi presidential campaign.
The uniqueness of Dele does not merely lie in his intellectual flair. He shoots from the hips and takes no prisoners.
Chief Afe Babalola is my uncle from my mother’s side. In the thick of the violation of the Yoruba territories by rogue fulani militia, I got President Olusegun Obasanjo and Professor Wole Soyinka to sponsor a Yoruba political summit.
In our search for a credible Yoruba man of sufficient stature, we easily resolved on Chief Babalola as the convener.
Of all his outstanding attributes, the one I admired most is his unwavering commitment to constitutional reforms with the specific objective of the restoration of federalism.
Hardly a month passes without Babalola advocating for this Nigerian life saver (true federalism) in his regular public interventions.
He is one of Nigeria’s biggest role model in the legal profession, education, community development leader and as an investor.
As my father’s pupil in the senior standard school in the forties. He did so well in an English language test that my dad scored him eleven over ten.
Babalola once told me a tragic experience he would never forget (a first hand experience of how destitute Nigerians had become).
About ten illiterate petty traders came to seek his financial support in Ado-Ekiti. He asked them how much they needed to start off. They said ten thousand naira per person. He said he rushed to the restroom to cry. Ten thousand naira!!!
Dele constantly briefs me on his difficulties with Babalola. When we recently had a ceremony in honour of Professor Jide Osuntokun, we had lined up Chief Babalola as special guest of honour.
Dele expressed reluctance to attend, drawing my attention to the attack he was certain to receive from the legal luminary and potentially two others who were going to play significant roles.
The first inkling I heard of his plight was from Chief Ayo Adebanjo whom he was getting set to visit when the storm troopers struck and bundled him into their vehicle en route to Ado-Ekiti.
Predictably, the backlash came thick and fast and in torrents. It is a public relations disaster for my Uncle (Babalola), the Nigerian police force and the judiciary. Given our contemporary experience with these dysfunctional institutions, this is not the company Babalola should be in active connivance. This is not the resplendent image we have of him.
To the contrary, this is Dele’s finest hour as the nation rose as one to canonise him as the embodiment of resistance to all that is wrong with Nigeria in this season.
ASUE, COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON
“That day will forever be etched in our history as one of our darkest moments, marked by the brazen theft of our mandate and the shameful subversion of the will of the people”- Asue Ighodalo
At a ceremony I attended a week ago, a side discussion ensued and centred on the recent Edo state governorship election and the experience of a mutual friend, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP governorship candidate, Asue Ighodalo.
I have not seen Asue for a while. But for the participation of Olumide Akpata, governorship candidate of the Labour Party, LP, I would have volunteered to join his political campaign. For Nigeran politics to stand a chance of development these are the kind of enlightened people, with unimpeachable pedigree, we would have to recruit into the political system
Human beings are a creation of hope and so despite myself, I prayed that his venture would be the exception to the rule of political depravity that has ceased Nigeria’s jugular. So I cannot claim to be surprised at his predictable fate.
A mutual friend observed that Asue was not looking his robust and vibrant self, the last time he saw him. I suggested that this is attributable to the ‘culture shock’ experience he encountered at the election.
Asue is relatively new to the culture of defiant gangsterism that passes for politics in Nigeria.
It is difficult to estimate just how brazen and blatant the culture has become unless you are a direct witness.The standard playbook goes like this.
The caucus of the status quo candidate (invariably the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC) will prevail on the INEC to declare victory for the candidate no matter the contrary outcome. Shoot first before asking questions.
Knowing fully well its a futile gesture, the practice of Nigerian democracy would now invite the victim to follow the mockery of seeking justice at the temple of a state captured compromised judiciary.
There the fate of the INEC declared losers will be sealed with the imprimatur of the Nigerian judiciary. And all righteousness would have been fulfilled having gone through all the constitutionally required procedure.
Then the outcome will be rationalised by such idle speculations and gossip that the election couldn’t have gone any other way, because Asue’s principal, Governor Godwin Obaseki has offended the divine king of Benin.
To the question, why would a man of Asue’s pedigree make frivolous allegations on the election, referencing it as “one of our darkest moments, marked by the brazen theft of our mandate and the shameful subversion of the will of the people”.
If we are agreed that Atedo Peterside is a credible third party, then he could not be reasonably expected to associate himself with a bogus claim of that magnitude. Yet here is:
“Ever since the election in Osun, where INEC came out with credible result sheets on IREV, it is as if something has changed right from the presidential election, they went rogue. I hope that I will be held accountable,”said Peterside
For personal and Party records purposes. I will not dissuade Ighodalo from going to court. Whatever the veracity of the claims, the Nigerian Supreme court is guaranteed to come down on the side of the party with the biggest machete. It has become a vicious cycle.
In the belief of our host, we might as well abandon the field to the APC and withdraw from participation in further elections altogether, if the role designed for our participation is lending legitimacy to the premeditated charade.
As noted by the American based Council on Foreign Relations, CFR, “The problems for champions of democracy run deep. The very meaning of the term has been called into question for too many populations who have experienced plenty of elections, but little in the way of real political choice or accountability.. when democracy is understood as a label applied to governments that simply stage elections, or a fig leaf that conceals corruption and repression, it is easy to devalue democracy”.
The perspective of President Olusegun Obasanjo is “Let me go back to the beginning where we got it wrong—the western liberal democracy, that is what the Europeans have. When you look at the western liberal democracy, it is a product of their history, a product of their culture, a product of their way of life”
“I have looked into most African languages, western democracy has what they call loyal opposition. What is opposition in African languages? Enemy. Western democracies called oppositions “loyal” because the oppositions are loyal to the monarchy. That’s where their loyal democracy began. They used to have monarchies”.
He believes that the notion of liberal democracy is alien to Africa and it is not consistent with the spirit of African communalism hence its contextual failure in the continent.
What I think the former President meant to articulate as the bane of post colonial African states is the absence of autochthony, (in which regard, it is the totality of the colonial transition that has failed) of which the bastardisation of democracy is an epiphenomenon.
The concept of autochthony is the Greek word translated ‘as springing from the land. It usually means the assertion of not just the concept of autonomy, but also the concept that the constitution derives from their own native traditions’.
Peter Ekeh illustrates “Take the Japanese, the Taiwanese, The Indian and the Chinese. They have evolve with their culture and tradition intact. They evolved, wearing their own clothes, speaking their own language, teaching every subject up to university level, on their own language, keeping their values, their gods, their own religion…
“They have all come out better for it. Their economy, education, health, orientation, better than that of the Blackman and in some cases, better than the whiteman’s”.
The biggest political challenge Tinubu confronted was the Buhari legacy of divisive and primitive nepotism bordering on apartheid rule. If this is the case, why does he want to travel the same road?. To become a Yoruba hero the way his predecessor remains the Hausa-Fulani folk hero?
That would be a wrong lesson to learn from the precedence of the Afenifere choice of Olu Falae over the late Chief Ajibola Ige as the AD candidate in the 1999 presidential election.
Professor Bolaji Akinyemi deems it ironic, that Afenifere college of electors, actually predicated the choice on the logic that Ige was the personification of Yoruba irredentist politics which may be a disability in the context of national elections.
Coincidentally the President was a member of that college and I have not seen a divergence from this position by Yoruba intelligentsia.
Credit: Akin Osuntokun