By Eddy Odivwri
With the drum beats of politics already echoing loud in the horizon, renowned wrestlers are already kitting up and prancing, just as aspiring wrestlers are gathering their kits to test their skills in the market square. That was probably what happened last weekend in Osun State when the All Progressives Congress (APC) held its governorship primaries to select who will be the party’s candidate at the governorship election on July 16, 2022.
A mini wrestler who was merely dressed in the kits of a giant few years ago suddenly wanted to prove that he not only wore the kits of a giant, but that he was indeed a giant. That was what Mr Rauf Aregbesola, the sitting minister of Interior succeeded in doing. He practically, in the words of Chinua Achebe, wanted to challenge his Chi to a wrestling match, after eating a bowl of fufu.
So what happened was that the wrestling match actually took place but Aregbesola who thought he was actually a giant and the star of the show, got into the ring but before long not only got undressed, but sent packing with bruised nostrils and bleeding lips. He was challenging his chi to a fight. As somebody succinctly put it, “you don’t attempt to drown your trainer in the stream”.
Although the visible contenders were Alhaji Moshood Adeoti and Adegbooyega Oyetola, they were mere puns in the chess board, representing Rauf Aregbesola and their overall grandmaster, Mr Bola Ahmed Tinubu; respectively. The former was an apprentice in the workshop established and run by the latter. But as they say, he had grown wings and thought he could over-run his master. He got trounced at the market square.
A week or so before the Open Primaries, Rauf Aregbesola, who prefixes his name with Ogbeni (simply meaning Mr) had burst open his bottled-up anger when he said sundry denigrating things about Bola Tinubu, calling him names with scathing imports. It was clear that whatever that held them together had long fallen apart and the centre was no longer holding and may never hold again.
Days before the election, Aregbesola was reported to have entered Osun State (from Abuja), like a mafia, with “federal might” with men in his convoy firing guns indiscriminately, to herald the arrival of “the new strongman”. But he forgot that even “area boys” have masters. Till date, they did not deny the reports about the shooting.
The story is that Aregbesola, a former governor of the state wanted to become the godfather of the state and not Tinubu, extending his political lordship all the way from Lagos down to Osun. The story was told of how at the end of Aregbesoila’s governorship, he wanted to “install” somebody different from who Tinubu had in mind. The minister had to be persuaded to allow Oyetola become the governor. Already. the signs of disloyalty was already showing. Reluctantly, Aregbesola conceded. But was said to have been peeved by the “upturn” of his policies and programmes by he Oyetola administration. What were the said policies: that all schools in the state would wear a single type of uniform, that Osun should have an airport, that the distribution of Opon imo tablets be continued in the state etc. Oyetola was not quite home with the policies and he changed them. Aregbesola was not happy with it and swore to give Oyetola the Ambode treatment. He forgot that he held only the shorter end of a very long knife. He could hardly cut with it.
Not only was Oyetola backed by Tinubu, whom sources say is a blood relation, Oyetola indeed had the power of incumbency. Aregbesola, having been a disciple of Tinubu for years, must be greatly naïve not to know how the Tinubu political machine operates. He was, like Lady Macbeth, drunken with raw ambition, and so ignored the fine dialectics of warfare strategy. He simply walked into the warfront, poorly kitted, and the staccato of the first volley wrecked his arsenal.
It is on record that two days after Aregbesola vituperated on his master, the House of Representatives, headed by another Tinubu apostle, if not a devotee, Femi Gbajabiamila, the Speaker, given all the bulwark support by the likes of James Faleke, a fanatical Tibubu fan , began a curious probe into the budget of the Correctional Services (Prisons)…. How very often, the service has been over run by gunmen and brazen criminals…. It was meant to send the signal to Aregbesola that not only do people who live in glass houses not throw stones, he must be clear in his choice of war targets. As the plan would go, Aregbesola has been harangued and the House of Representatives may not progress further on that probe path.
By Sunday, a day after the results of the primaries had been announced, a swathe of hitherto supporters of Aregbesola, in the Alimosho area of Lagos organised a mock funeral for him, carrying a coffin with his name boldly inscribed on it, with banners, placards and posters “mourning his death”. In their belief, the scoreline ( Oyetola:222169, Adeoti:12,921 and Lasun :460) was a remarkable death sentence for Aregbesola’s political career. But is resurrection impossible?
It was adjudged as an act of utmost bad faith on the part of Aregbesola to have settled down to bite the fingers that fed him. Until Tinubu became Governor of Lagos State, nobody knew an Aregbesola. But because he was a good talker and controlled a pack of supporters in Alimosho local Government area, one thing led to the other and he was named Commissioner for Works. Now he wants to challenge his Chi.
As the then Editorial Page Editor of this paper, I know how many anti-Aregbesola articles I received and either toned down the attacks or altogether saved him from the embarrassments thereof, including being described as “a mere rewire posing as an Engineer”.
As the commissioner for Works in Lagos State, Aregbesola was practically the “CBN governor” of the state. That ministry was the platform by which many things were done in the state. Yes, many things. He was in charge of the contractors, many of whom were mere party men and women who had to be settled. It was Aregbesola’s forte to handle that. That privilege further raised the niche of his importance, so much that he assumed, years later, that the butterfly can now be counted among birds.
His faction of the party in Osun State, the Osun Progressives, have vowed to challenge the outcome of the primaries in court. They allege that many of their members were disenfranchised, even as they complained that Governor Oyetola, as a contestant in the race, ought to have recused himself from the national Caretaker committee of the party before the contest, insisting that being a member of the Caretaker committee conferred on him some undue advantage in the contest. Considerable as the argument may be, does Aregbesola not know the way of the game? Is he hurting now because he is at the receiving end? As the campaign manager of Tinubu, those days, how many such breaches did he supervise and preside over, with the swiftness of a glide? What goes around, comes around.
All said, Tinubu remains Aregbesola’s political mentor. A mentee should ever remain loyal and submissive to his mentor, even in politics. Yes, Tinubu may be overbearing in his quest to have a fisty control of the political firmament under his control, yet, a market square brawl can hardly be the solution.
Originally published at Thisday