Oriire and the courage to reject compromise, by Rotimi Fasan

After 56 harrowing days, the 44 abductees in the Oriire community of Ogbomoso LGA are now out of the forest. These are schoolchildren and their teachers. Two of the teachers had been killed after the abduction while another was killed on their school ground. A commercial bike rider was also killed as the abduction unfolded. But now, these traumatised Nigerians are being reunited with their families. Their rescue is a demonstration of what can happen when a people come together to reject evil. The state is gingered to act and results are achieved. This is what the terrorist sympathisers and rehabilitators up north, the Arewa Consultative Forum and the Northern Elders Forum, not to leave out those who shed bucketfuls of crocodile tears and seized the occasion of the abduction to play politics while pretending to be calling for the rescue of the kidnap victims.

Most of them have gone silent, mourning in their closets; now it’s been confirmed that the abductees have been rescued. They are demanding CCTV footage and other proof that the abductees were at any time victims of a mass abduction. Such wickedness from supposed sympathisers! As if anyone cares what they think. And all seems well that has ended well. But… yes, a storm seems to be gathering again. In his statewide broadcast following the rescue of the kidnap victims, Oyo State governor SeyiMakinde struck most of the right notes. But something else stood out like a sore thumb in that broadcast. That was the governor’s call for an independent probe of the ‘circumstances’ that surrounded the abduction of the children and their teachers.

Governor SeyiMakinde spoke as someone who was convinced there was more to the incident than met the eye. This much was clear from his call for the intervention of the United Nations and civil society groups in unravelling the story behind the abduction. This was an ineffectual call that underlines the governor’s own weakness in addition to showing his lack of confidence in the role of the federal government in the operation that led to the rescue of the victims. Makinde’s call for an independent probe flies in the face of the governor’s initial expression of gratitude to the president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was the first to thank the governor in his own statement after the abductees were rescued. He expressed his gratitude for the governor’s effort and the fact that he cooperated with the federal government throughout the abduction saga.

This mutual show of respect happened despite clear indications that both Ibadan and Abuja had operated independently of each other in the first few weeks after the abduction took place. Each side went to or sent their delegation to Ogbomoso separately and there was no indication that they met at any point. The governor, contrary to the practice in other places where such abductions had happened, never visited the president to formally report the incident. Nor did Abuja show it was aware of or cared a jot about anything SeyiMakinde or his government was doing to bring the abducted children and their teachers home. This was not how things ought to have been even if each did their bit. It was a power play that placed the state in the weaker position. It was also an embarrassing situation considering the state’s dependence on Abuja, with its lack of capacity to deploy the right kind of force required to confront the monsters in the forest.

The bad blood between Abuja and Ibadan, and by extension between the governor and the president, preceded the Ansaru-led abduction. It goes back to the apparently unprovoked attack the governor launched against the president when he criticised his governance style, specifically his push for state police and support of the APC in Oyo in the 2027 election. All of this culminated in the governor vowing not to support the re-election of the president. The pushback from Abuja was what led to the revelation, through Ayo Fayose, a former governor of EkitiState, thatMakinde had sat on a N50 billion lifeline President Tinubu had given the state for the reconstruction of houses damaged in the Bodija explosion of January 2024.

Attempts by the governor to see President Bola Tinubu to smooth things out thereafter were allegedly rebuffed, setting off the cold war that has persisted between them. This was where things stood when the Oriire abductions took place. Until Peter Obi decided to insert himself into the narrative by saying he had been told during a visit to SeyiMakinde that President Bola Tinubu had not spoken to the governor since the abduction occurred, nobody heard anything in public concerning that from SeyiMakinde. When only days after this visit the abductees were rescued and both the governor and the president expressed gratitude to each other, it was taken that the animosity between them had thawed. But as I have had cause to remark here a few months ago, SeyiMakinde has a predilection for putting his foot in his mouth, which he has done again with this call for an international probe of the events that surrounded the Oriire abduction.

He seems to be reigniting the hostility between himself and the president. That he would use the occasion of the rescue of the abductees to make this call speaks to his naivety as a politician. This was not the first time he would be speaking along this line. He had earlier tried to draw a connection between the abduction and his declaration to be president. According to this claim, the abduction took place a day or days after he declared his intention to contest the 2027 presidential election. The insinuation being made with this claim is that the ruling APC government or, in fact, President Bola Tinubu felt or feels threatened by Makinde’s ambition.

While the president can do with all the support he can get for the 2027 election, including that of SeyiMakinde, had he not thrown his hat into the ring, it would take a severe form of political hallucination or delusion of grandeur for the governor or his supporters to think he poses any threat to Tinubu, much less a serious threat. Seyi Makinde is being unnecessarily provocative, perhaps to lay the groundwork for staging any investigation of his time in office, post-2027, as a witch-hunt. The governor seems to be inflating his worth as a politician by peddling old wives’ tales of political intrigues or stoking existing conspiracy theories that have dogged the abduction of the Oriire kidnap victims. He does not need this and he would do well to refrain from starting a battle he may not be able to finish given the limited time he has left in office.

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