Dialogue With Nigeria AKIN OSUNTOKUN
First, let me rejoice with the Orire local government school abductees for living up to the full meaning of Orire-which means good fortune. As the Yoruba would say, E kú Oríre (I salute you on your good fortune). May good fortune continue to guide your path. Ogbomoso has tended to play a significant role in Yoruba history. In Yoruba antiquity, the name of the city itself was derived from the circumstances of the valiant rescue of metropolitan Oyo from the siege of a seemingly invincible terrorist called Elemosho. Not until it ripens, does the fruit of fate drop and so it became for a local hunter called Soun.
This hunter had physically engaged with an intruder who had sneaked into his abode (under the cover of darkness) while he was away. The intruder turned out to be a loan shark to whom Soun was indebted. Before the hunter recognised him as such, he had overpowered and killed the Oshomalo (the Ijesha vocational money lenders). The penalty for the wrong he had committed was capital punishment. In a plea bargain with the ultimate judicial authority of the realm, the Aláàfin of Oyo, Soun offered to take on the dreaded Elemosho. He was obliged. In the epic struggle between the two, the hunter prevailed and decapitated the terrorist.
In gratitude, the supreme monarch granted him clemency and named the local community of Soun’s origin, after the hunter’s ’s exploit-Ogbori Elemosho (He who decapitated the Elemosho subsequently abbreviated to Ogbomoso) and enthroned him as the coronet king. In pre-colonial Yoruba history, Ogbomoso equally played a central role in the defence of the Yoruba Northern frontier against the insurgency of the forefathers of the latter day terrorists who perpetrated the mass abduction of the Orire school children and their tutors. This martial reputation was reflected in the fact that three Ogbomoso warlords namely Toyeje, Ojo Aburumaku and Ladoke Akintola went on to clinch the meritorious title of the Are Ona Kánkánfo (Commander-in-Chief of the Oyo empire army). No other Yoruba community measured up to this achievement.
The militarily triumphant way and manner the Orire kidnap victims were rescued was evocative of this chivalrous history. Bragged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, “I am profoundly happy that our security forces successfully rescued the abducted pupils and teachers from Orire, Ogbomoso in Oyo State today after a military, police and intelligence-driven operation that neutralized some of the terrorists that perpetrated the evil act and the arrest of eight of them”.
Fayose’s conspiracy theory
Serving as proxy for President Tinubu, former Ekiti state governor, Ayo Fayose, was the first to inject conspiracy theory into the saga. He garbled “Let me branch to Oyo State, before you get to the President in the hierarchy of leadership and governance, there is local government, there is state, state has security votes and there are people that are supposed to be working… “In Oyo State, I strongly believe though I might be wrong but this sometimes might be orchestrated. The governor of Oyo State had his nomination and that of his candidates in the face of this abduction,”.
“He did not take any action, no steps were taken, it was after those nominations that he went to the families to visit them.”“I sometimes believe that the abduction at Oyo School was orchestrated by the Oyo State Government to blackmail President Tinubu,”.
The Tinubu/Makinde cold war
It was an open secret that Makinde reached an accord concordia with Tinubu in the 2023 elections in which the former backed the then presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC to win the presidential election in Oyo state. He didn’t do so out of the goodness of his earth. In the spirit of quid pro quo, it was in the anticipation that the president would return the favour in his own hour of need. The anticipated reciprocity was that Tinubu would tacitly back the desire of the Oyo governor to produce his successor. This is the utmost desire of any outgoing governor, never mind that the fulfilment of this desire has seldom worked together for the good of such outgoing governors.
Since the commencement of the home run to the 2027 general elections, there has been no evidence that the president was going to meet his end of the political bargain. Not being privy to the health of the general relationship between the two protagonists, I hesitate to accuse the president of bad faith. Nonetheless,there can be no better explanation for the extant estrangement between the two other than the president’s failure to keep his own side of the bargain.
On contemporary Ibadan politics, I had another occasion to remark “If one were to map the theatrical cast of recent Ibadan politics, Dr. Omololu Olunloyo (of blessed memory) once supplied a neat script. He characterised the triumvirate that for a time steered the city — himself, the late Azeez Arisekola Alao and Lamidi Adedibu — as the pendulum upon which the city swung. The division of labour, in his laconic summary, was brain (Olunloyo), brawn (Adedibu) and kudi (Arisekola). As with all theatrical casts, these players had their entrances and exits. They have played their parts and exited the stage. It is not clear who and who now correspond to these roles save the notion that Governor Seyi Makinde has dominated contemporary Ibadan politics and appears answerable to no one. Not quite.
Enters Ladoja
As a political heavyweight in Ibadan politics in his heyday, Ladoja must have been instrumental to the emergence of Makinde as Governor of Oyo State. With his eyes set on becoming the Olubadan of Ibadan, he could not afford not to pay serious attention and be in the good books of whoever occupies the seat of Oyo state governor. It is in the nature of realpolitik however, that once he secured the Olubadan throne, there would have been less need for him to kowtow and pander to the Olubadan appointing authority namely the governor. This narrative is evocative of the Yoruba political playbook of Awolowo vs Akintola supremacy politics as ‘a ti foje bolosa lowo, ó ku baba eni tí ó bo (once an aspirant secures the throne, it becomes an uphill battle for any godfather to undo the deed). More so, (in this instance), with the ascendance of Ladoja’s political ally and good friend (Tinubu) to the presidential throne.
With this empowerment and with the political stars aligned in his favour, anyone in Ladoja’s position was apt to think that, why not go the whole hog and close the deal with the sponsorship of his protege, Senator Sarafadeen Alli, for the governorship of Oyo state. Thus left high and dry, what does the governor make of the bad card dealt him? One consideration is that political acumen sometimes consists of cutting your losses and live to find another day. So far, he has taken the decision to take the battle directly to Tinubu with the appropriate but ultimately futile gesture of manoeuvring himself to become the Presidential candidate of the APM. The other is his unbelievable recourse to dealing in the abject conspiracy theory of somehow insinuating Tinubu’s collusion in the Orire kidnapping incident. To achieve what?
And if there is anything worse than this conception, it is the manner in which it was presented “calling on the appropriate international human rights and accountability mechanisms, including those within the United Nations system, to closely examine the facts surrounding this abduction and the circumstances of its resolution… “The circumstances surrounding this incident are sufficiently grave and unusual to warrant independent scrutiny”
Pray, how are the circumstances any different and more grave than countless precedents which were even more spectacular?. He almost sounded unhappy at the resolution and outcome of the whole ordeal