Opinion
The exit of Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, by Bolanle Bolawole
The exit of Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Odunayo Akeredolu
By Bolanle Bolawole
[email protected] 0705 263 1058
My phone rang, rousing me up from sleep, and the words rang out: “Bola, has that boy called you?” I hesitated! Who is the person speaking? And who is “that boy”. To ask “who is speaking” will be discourteous. The masculine voice on the line sounded familiar and did not hesitate to call my name – and he did so with confidence and authority. The voice, too, was that of an elderly person. So, I asked: “What boy, Sir?” “Your governor, Arakunrin Akeredolu”
By this time the voice was damn decipherable. I have sat in the same room and around the same conference table too many times with one of the doyens of the journalism profession not to recognize his voice. We had rubbed minds while I was at The Westerner newsmagazine, when it was adding The Nigerian Compass to its stable; we also, together with other patriots, had plotted the way forward for the Yoruba Nation at the Yoruba World Congress before it scattered. Aba Saheed of the Nigerian Tribune fame in those politically turbulent days of the Chief Obafemi Awolowo-led Unity Party of Nigeria versus the National Party of Nigeria needs no introduction – a one-man riot squad that was an unrelenting thorn in the flesh of President Shehu Shagari.
“No sir, he has not called me”. “He will call you. I shared your piece with him and told him to call you” “Yes sir. Thank you, sir” The next day Aba Saheed called me again. “Has he called you?” “No, sir!” “Aaha? What is wrong with this boy? He will call you” “Yes, sir!” After one or two more “Has he called you?”, which received the same “No, sir” response, Aba Saheed muttered some words and gave up. Till date, I wouldn’t know what they discussed and why Arakunrin was meant to have called me.
But Aba Saheed was not the only respected Yoruba leader or doyen of the journalism profession that wanted or felt that Akeredolu should call me. Many who called to ask me for his phone number expressed shock whenever I told them I did not have it. “Are you not from the same town?” Yes, we are from the same Owo!” Many felt I should have been one of his unofficial media aides! I wasn’t – and couldn’t have been. I never met or spoke with Aketi, as he is famously called. The closest I ever got to him was during the 8th Day Fidau for my late friend, Taiye Haruna, as Aketi and his team walked off the field at the end of proceedings.
That is not to say, however, that I did not impact his administration in some ways. While he had newly won his election and was yet to be sworn in, I warned the people of Ondo State to watch it; that the bad side of Akeredolu had to be tamed if Ondo State was to enjoy his good side. I was viciously attacked by the elites of Owo! What kind of an Owo son are you, they asked! One even threatened to report me to Olowo! I was at a media function when one of the reporters, a lady, gave a low down on governor-elect Akeredolu’s lack of human relations.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed; so, I decided to sound a note of warning, not because I had anything against the man but just that his tenure as governor might bode well for the state. Weeks later, and Aketi was yet to be inaugurated, an ardent reader of my column, and an Aketi acquaintance, called to complain about what he suffered trying to access the governor-elect. “Aketi’s human relations are bad, his wife’s are worse” he lamented. Again, I wrote and warned. Again, I was bashed by some Owo elites.
However, many of the people around Aketi – commissioners, special advisers, etc – secretly applauded things that I wrote, which they dared not say themselves. I learnt from them that some of my writeups swayed him. Good! Like the one on the Alabi family house at Igboroko, Owo that he had planned to demolish to make way for his cenotaph of controversy but which he later spared after my advocacy.
Playing God is not peculiar to Aketi or Ondo state. Our big men play God and many of their aides are damn too cowardly to stand up to them. Those who dare are unceremoniously shown the door, like Aketi did to my senior at Owo High School, Kola Olawoye SAN, who was Aketi’s Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General. Two stubborn men met in Akeredolu and Olawoye. While Aketi advanced his family interests, Olawoye, supported by the then Chief Judge of the state, Hon. Justice (Mrs.) O. O. Akeredolu (nee Fagboyegun), advanced Ondo state’s interests but Aketi eventually had his way.
Remember that “Abe Nazet Olooni” advert of yore? The razor-blade tongue of aketi was double-edged and spared no one, cutting friends and foes alike. He was blunt, up to the point of being called irascible. Yet, some tact and diplomacy were expected of anyone in high office.
Some of Aketi’s family members did not help matters. Aketi also did not – could not? – help himself. Friends who could tell him the bitter truth, he cast away – or he was made to cast away. Those who were the source of his rise to power he discountenanced. It will interest you to know that many of the Owo elites who shouted me down at the beginning virtually all fell out, one after the other, with Aketi. Olawoye was said to have been the man who opened Aketi’s eyes to the Ondo State governorship tussle.
As Aketi’s wife, several years his senior in age, got a foothold in her husband’s government, an Igbo mafia emerged. A cabal of political associates with eyes fixed on the next governorship tussle in 2014 also grouped themselves. Some also talked of the Owo mafia. Akeredolu’s illness helped; just like that of former President Umaru Yar’Adua and Muhammadu Buhari’s helped the formation of cabals that took hold of the reins of power. This should interest political researchers.
One theory says Akeredolu’s family members were aware of his health conditions and prepared themselves for any eventualities. That was why his son, Babajide, was promoted to a position of relevance. During COVID-19, Babajide was in the engine room of the State’s response to the virus. Afterwards, Aketi tested the waters when he boasted that he could make his son his Chief of Staff and nothing would happen. Of course, he has a precedence in former Gov. Segun Agagu who made his younger brother, Femi, his Chief of Staff.
Maybe the uproar that attended his boast made Aketi to change the nomenclature but he still installed his son, Babajide, as the most powerful person in his administration. Conflict of interest is the reason why many, who vouch for Babajide’s competence, disagree with the arrangement. But it would appear that Aketi was a man who, like Nostradamus, saw the future. He needed someone he could trust; and there was no one better than his own blood and flesh.
If, then, Aketi and his family knew of his failing health, and prepared for any eventualities, can we still ascribe his health challenges to “Irunmoles” and Ondo State traditional rulers said to be angry with some of his decisions? Or can we still say that it was the cenotaph erected as a memorial to those slain by terrorists at Owo, right in the precincts of the Owo palace and to the alleged dismay of the traditionalists, that triggered the anger of the “Irunmoles” against Aketi?
Sheer coincidence or what? But many people who are not as privileged as a governor survived cancer, why not Aketi who had the money to spend? Aketi’s wife is a cancer survivor; why not Aketi? Aketi – and God — must have been instrumental to Betty surviving cancer; what role did Betty play in her own husband’s battle with cancer?
Aketi is gone; nothing can bring him back again. As Marc Antony said of Caesar in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones” But before the good deeds of Aketi are interred with his bones, let us recount a few of them here. As president of the Nigerian Bar Association, he kept alive the radical tradition birthed by Alao Aka-Bashorun. His role in the formation of Amotekun will never be forgotten. But for his courageous stand that led to the formation of Amotekun, the South-west today might have become similar killing fields like the Middle Belt. Aketi doggedly and resolutely fought for the presidency to rotate to the South. He spoke vehemently against back-to-back Fulani/Northern presidency. He trod where even angels feared to – and that was massive; really, really massive. While many others were compromising or eating their words, Aketi stood firm like the rock of Gilbraltar, insisting without mincing words that the presidency must rotate to the South. And it did! Again, that was massive! Aketi’s efforts at developing his Owo hometown has given the ancient town a face-lift that many could never have thought possible. Although there are complaints that the development was not evenly spread within the town and that the suburbs were not factored into it, Owo will not forget Akeredolu in a hurry.
Aketi’s shenanigans were many: His and some of his family’s alleged greed and avarice; his lack of tact, civility and gentility; some of his family members were no less obtuse; and together, they lacked finesse and human relations. Still, Aketi managed to leave indelible imprints on the sands of time. May his soul RIP!
LAST WORD: Lucky Aiyedatiwa is the new governor of Ondo State! Congratulations, Your Excellency! I don’t know if I can extend similar congratulations to the in-coming First Lady but let me warn: No battery, no bashing in Ondo State Government House, please! But how I wish the child had been allowed to die from its mother’s hands! Some will now say that our brand new governor was disloyal to his boss! That he broke Aketi’s heart! That in Aketi’s moment of anguish, Aiyedatiwa’s blow – like Brutus did to Julius Caesar – was the unkindest cut of all! That Aiyedatiwa was one of those who couldn’t exercise some patience but harried Aketi to his untimely grave!
Haba! You conveniently forgot that he was not obliged to make you deputy governor. Wouldn’t your predecessor, Agboola Ajayi, now say it served Aketi right? There were others even more deserving – but he chose you. The other side of the argument, though, is that if Aiyedatiwa hadn’t fought for his political life, he wouldn’t be where he is today! I take no sides! But now that the world or stage, as William Shakespeare called it, has become yours, as Aketi himself inadvertently prophesied, the whole world waits to see to what use you will put it. All eyes are on you. The ball is now in your court. The buck now stops on your table!
You declared a 3-day mourning period for your boss; great! But you couldn’t wait out those days of mourning before making important appointments! Incongruous! Now, some will ask if you were truly mourning! But now that you are shopping for a deputy, the criteria you listed amuse me! Did I hear you say you are searching for a loyal, trusted, and supportive deputy? Karma must not hear that from you! What goes around comes around! Did not the scripture say whatsoever a man soweth…
Oorun ni n gba t’owo omode/Iku ni n bo bata l’ese Rago/Ko sohun t’o ni’bere ti kii l’opin/Bee si ni ko si ohun ti a n je l’enu ti kii tan/Afi ola Olorun Eleduwa/Igba o lo bi orere/Aiye o lo bi opa ibon/Bi oni ti ri, ola o ri be/L’o mu Babalawo d’Ifa ojoojumo/Toto, o se bi owe/O tun se bi ayajo/O si le f’ara jo ogede/Sugbon ase ti Eleduwa fi da ile aiye niyen/ Enikan o si le yii pada/Yala Oba ni, tabi Ijoye/Yala olowo, tabi talaka/Ogbo-oogba ni gbogbo Ise Ojo Kefa/Ni’waju Aseda, Ameda! Oro ree, e gbee yewo!
“When sleep beckons, a child is forced to release what he had staunchly held on to/It takes death to remove the hooves of a horse/There is nothing that has a beginning that will not have an end/So also there is nothing, no matter how sweet, that we can savour forever/Only the grace of God is everlasting/No condition is permanent/What is today, may not be tomorrow/Which is why Babalawos consult their Ifa oracle on a daily basis/ This may sound proverbial/It may even appear like incantation or divination/But it is the way the Creator has arranged the things He created/And no one can change it/Be you king or chief/ Be you rich or poor/ Equal before God are the Man He created on the sixth day/This is food for thought/Consider it!
* Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, BOLAWOLE was also Managing Director/Editor-in-Chisf of THE WESTERNER newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the SUNDAY TRIBUNE and TREASURES column in the NEW TELEGRAPH newspapers on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.
Opinion
Ademola Lookman showed Davido and Kemi Badenoch that wisdom is not by age – Omokri
Ademola Lookman showed Davido and Kemi Badenoch that wisdom is not by age – Omokri
Recently, the singer David Adeleke was given a global stage to do whatever he wanted and deliver any message.
Sadly, Mr. Adeleke used the opportunity to speak in an American accent. Not only that, he used that American accent to talk down on Nigeria and tell the world not to invest in Nigeria because, as he put it, Nigeria’s “economy is in shambles”.
Coincidentally, a month after his faux pas, Kemi Badenoch, probably inspired by Davido, used her British accent to talk down Nigeria, calling us “a very poor country” where the police rob citizens.
But the interesting thing about her own case is that the next day, the BBC featured a panel of Conservative Party big shots, and one of them, Albie Amankona, a party chieftain from Chiswick, who is also a celebrity broadcaster, said, and this is a direct quote:
“If you are a Brexiteer, and you are saying we need to be expanding our global trade beyond the European Union, we want to be looking at emerging markets for growth, don’t slag off one of the fastest growing economies in Africa.”
Is it not strange that it took the BBC and a British politician to promote Nigeria as one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa?
And just when we thought it was all bad news, God gave us a breath of fresh air in the youthful Ademola Lookman, who used the global podium granted to him by his winning the 2024 African Footballer of the Year award to promote and project Nigeria and the Lukumi Yoruba language to the world.
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Wisdom is not by age. If not, Ademola Lookman, who is just twenty-seven, will not have displayed greater wisdom than David Adeleke, who is thirty-two, and Kemi Badenoch, at forty-four.
Mr. Lookman proved that the age of Methuselah has nothing to do with the wisdom of Solomon.
And it is not as though other ethnicities with global icons do not also project Nigeria. They do.
Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala spoke Igbo on the podium of the WTO in Geneva. In terms of prestige, she is FAR above Lookman.
My campaign is not for the Lukumi Yoruba alone. It is for all sub-Saharan Black Africans to learn to speak their language and not use ability to speak English or another colonial language as a measure of intelligence.
Besides Lukumi Yoruba and Hausa, every other Nigerian language, including Fulfulde, is gradually dying out.
General Buhari is half Fulani and half Kanuri. Yet, he cannot speak either Fuifulde or Kanuri. But he speaks Hausa and English.
Fact-check me: In 2012, UNESCO declared Igbo an endangered language.
However, the Lukumi Yoruba are to be commended for their affirmative actions to advance their language and culture.
Let me give you an example. All six Governors of the Southwest bear full Lukumi names: Jide Sanwa-Olu, Seyi Makinde, Dapo Abiodun, Ademola Adeleke, Abiodun Oyebanji, and Orighomisan Aiyedatiwa.
No other zone in Nigeria has all its governors bearing ethnic Nigerian names as first and second names. They either bear Arabic or European names as first names or even first and second names.
If we truly want to be the Giant of Africa, we must take affirmative steps to preserve our language and culture so we can have children like Ademola Lookman.
Teach your language to your children before you teach them English. They will learn English at school. Being multilingual is scientifically proven to boost intelligence.
Fact-check me: In the U.S., Latino kids do not speak English until they start school. They learn Spanish as a first language.
Even if you relocate to the UK, the best you can be is British. You can never be English. And if your choice of Japa is the U.S., the highest you can be is an American citizen. You will never become a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant WASP.
Your power lies in balancing ancient and modern, Western and African, English (or other colonial languages) and your native tongue.
That is the way to reverse language erosion, like the Lukumi Yoruba.
Ademola Lookman showed Davido and Kemi Badenoch that wisdom is not by age – Omokri
Opinion
Kemi Badenoch’s Hate for Nigeria – Femi Fani-Kayode
Kemi Badenoch’s Hate for Nigeria – Femi Fani-Kayode
“I find it interesting that everyone defines me as a Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with my specific ethnic group. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram, where Islamism is. Being Yoruba is my true identity and I refuse to be lumped with the northern people of Nigeria who were our ethnic enemies, all in the name of being called a Nigerian”- @KemiBadenoch.
Dangerous rhetoric
Kemi Badenoch, MP, the leader of the British Conservative Party and Opposition in the @UKParliament, has refused to stop at just denigrating our country but has gone a step further by seeking to divide us on ethnic lines.
She claims that she never regarded herself as being a Nigerian but rather a Yoruba and that she never identified with the people from the Northern part of our country who she collectively describes as being “Boko Haram Islamists” and “terrorists”.
This is dangerous rhetoric coming from an impudent and ignorant foreign leader who knows nothing about our country, who does not know her place and who insists on stirring up a storm that she cannot contain and that may eventually consume her.
It is rather like saying that she identifies more with the English than she does with the Scots and the Welsh whom she regards as nothing more than homicidal and murderous barbarians that once waged war against her ethnic English compatriots!
All this coming from a young lady of colour that is a political leader in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural country that lays claim to being the epitome of decency and civilisation! What a strange and inexplicable contradiction this is.
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Her intentions are malevolent and insidious and her objective, outside of ridiculing and mocking us, is to divide us and bring us to our knees.
I am constrained to ask, what on earth happened to this creature in her youth and why does she hate Nigeria with such passion?
Did something happen to her when she lived here which she has kept secret?
Kemi Badenoch’s Hate for Nigeria – Femi Fani-Kayode
Opinion
The cockroach called Dele Farotimi (1)
The cockroach called Dele Farotimi (1)
Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, December 13, 2024)
The official name for cage fight is Mixed Martial Arts. Street fight, known as ‘ìjà ìgboro’ in Yoruba, is the bane of Ibadan people, says the panegyric of Oluyole, the city of brown roofs scattered among seven hills. MMA, I think, is organised street fighting.
But, long before MMA became a global combat sport in 2000, little devils of St Paul Anglican (Primary) School, Idi-Oro, Lagos, and Archbishop Aggey Memorial Secondary School, Mushin, Lagos, engaged in ‘ìjà ìgboro’, the progenitor of Mixed Martial Arts. Retrospectively, I’m guilty of being part of the little devils of both schools.
Because, instead of heeding the ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ injunction in the Holy Scriptures, to ‘inherit the kingdom of God’, what we did as little demons that we were was to add fuel to the embers of hostility smouldering among fellow students.
As soon as you noticed two students in a heated argument, instead of you to sue for peace, the naughty reaction was for you to grab some soil in clenched fists and spread your fists towards the two disputants, daring both pupils to slap one of the outstretched fists: ‘Ení bá lè jà, kó gbon!’
‘Ení bá lè jà, kó gbon!’ was a call to arms. To prove you’re a lionheart ready to fight, you slap the clenched fist open and watch its content pour out to the ground.
So, in a jiffy, you would see friends who were laughing a while ago, engage in a free-for-all instanter. Regrettably, I initiated some of such fights and participated in not a few. You probably can’t grow up in Mushin and be fainthearted.
Taliatu Mudashiru was my friend and classmate in Forms 1 and 2. Occasionally, when I didn’t get dropped off at school by my father, and I had to make it to school on my own, I first trek from our Awoyokun Street residence to Taliatu’s house on Adegboyega Street before both of us would head up to Akinade Ayodeji’s house two blocks away en route to school.
I thought I was stronger than Tali, as we fondly called him, or Pali Tutu (Wet Cardboard) – if the caller was a mischievous classmate – until one day when we disagreed during a break-time chatter involving other classmates.
A peacemaker stepped forward with clenched fists, chanting, ‘K’éyin lè jà, k’émi lé wò’ran, Èsù ta’po si,’ evoking Baba Devil himself. I slapped one of the fists; Tali slapped the other! ‘Ha, Tali ke? I go kill sombodi!’
Toe-to-toe, Tunde rained blows. Tit-for-tat, Tali responded. We upturned desks and seats as the brawl spiralled to the delight of cheering classmates. But it was short-lived as the break-time bell saved the day. We swore at each other but classmates begged us, like peacemakers, to save our punches and wait till after-school hours to throw them.
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After school, excited classmates such as Taliatu Olokodana, Akinade Ayodeji alias Kuruki, Hakeem Adigun alias Slate, Jide Oladimeji alias Agama; Kunle Adeyoju alias Iron Bender, Sunday Pedro Oshokai, Sanmi Okuwobi, Sule Mustapha alias Maito; Olalekan Egungbohun, Kazeem Osuolale alias Oju etc led Tali and me to ‘Ojú Olómo ò to’, an arena so named because no parent or guardian’s eyes ever got to see what happened there.
Only Lukmon Yusuff aka OC, Jide Ajose and Segun Majekodunmi would have separated us if they were around. For his good-naturedness, Jide got the nickname Unreasonable while Segun was called Brother because he belonged to the Deeper Life Church and Yusuff got nicknamed O.C. because of his effectiveness as a football defender.
The ‘Ojú Olómo ò to’ was the playground of a primary school that had closed for the day. Impish classmates sat around the edge of the big field, leaving Tali and I at the centre to unleash the devilry in us.
Tali, bigger and an inch taller, was hoping to use his weight to an advantage, grabbing at me but I knew if he slammed me he would feed me with sand, so I used my fists to keep him off.
We wrestled and boxed and kicked and clawed for God knows how long. There was no referee. There was no timeout. There were only ringside viewers who laughed and cheered every kick and blow and the sight of blood. Tali and I bled all over, spent and gasped for breath.
Then I threw a punch, it caught Tali right in the face, and he first went down in a squat, before flattening out on his back. I should have jumped on him and finished him off, but I was barely breathing. I just left him and I turned away to look for my bag and shoes.
The following day, Tali was looking for me on the assembly ground. He appeared proud of us. He shook hands with me vigorously and we hugged for a long period – like warriors after a pyrrhic victory. He earned my respect, I earned his. Tali probably thought I was a sportsman for not finishing him off when he blanked out, but little did he know that all that was on my mind when he fell was me getting home. I probably would’ve fallen too if the fight had lasted longer.
There are similarities between my fight with Tali and the ongoing fight between one of Nigeria’s heavyweight lawyers, Aare Afe Babalola and human rights activist and lawyer, Mr Dele Farotimi.
I know Nigeria is broken and needs fixing urgently. I know that to fix it, something has to give. I know Nigeria’s coconuts of corruption must be cracked on skulls and the water thereof used as atonement for the nation’s corruption.
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I see many coconuts. I also see the head of Babalola and that of Farotimi. I see other heads, too. But whose skull(s) would crack open the coconuts?
I see a poisonous cockroach encircled by a brood of chickens. Among the chickens is the breed called Supreme. There’s also a breed called Appeal and another breed called High. There’s yet another breed called SANyeri, a name symbolising the breed’s big gowns. The chickens thrust their heads forward, sharply looking right and left, watching intently, communicating in esoteric language. What shall we do to this irritant?
Yet, the cockroach is adamant in the valley of jeopardy, six legs gangling, two antennas roving; person wey wan don die jam person wey wan kill am.
Tali Vs. Tunde. Today, I can’t even remember what caused the disagreement that snowballed into our fight, but I can never forget the pain of the fight. I had thought I would make light work of Tali but I didn’t see his gallantry coming.
Although I’ve never met Baba Babalola, he comes across as a man of commendable philanthropy and frankness. It’s only frankness that could make him stand by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, in the 2023 presidential election when the elite of his tribe was queuing behind Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as ‘Shon of the Shoil’.
In the 2023 presidential election, I was neither BATified nor Atikulated just as I wasn’t Obidient. In some articles during the countdown to the election, I called for an overhaul of the 1999 Constitution before the conduct of the general elections, saying none of the presidential candidates would succeed as president if the Constitution wasn’t amended.
I also said there was no ideological difference among the All Progressives Congress, Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party. If they were different, Nigeria wouldn’t witness six House of Representatives members of the Labour Party defecting to the APC recently, despite LP’s promise of a new Nigeria. While I predict more defections in the coming days, those already defected include Tochukwu Okere (Imo), Daulyop Fom (Plateau), Donatus Matthew (Kaduna), Bassey Akiba (Cross River), Iyawe Esosa (Edo) and Fom Daniel Chollon (Plateau).
In my recommendations, I called for devolution of powers to the states, resource control, independent candidacy and patriotism by the generality of Nigerians for a new order.
And I’ve not repented from my belief that elected Nigerian politicians loot the treasury according to the amount of money available in it, not because one was more decent than the other or one party was better than the other.
This is why I find the anti-corruption campaign of 56-year-old lawyer and human rights activist, Dele Farotimi, assuring though I’m not going to touch the libel stuff just yet.
Although Farotimi is an LP member, his rhetoric resonates with equity, fairness and justice – cornerstones of democracy.
However, there are concave and convex perspectives on the Babalola-Farotimi issue. In secondary school, Physics was intriguing to me, though I found its abstraction intimidating and perplexing. It was in Physics that I learnt about convex and concave lenses. I was taught in secondary school that both lenses are used for correcting short-sightedness and long-sightedness.
Tali died a long time ago. May his soul rest in peace. Baba Afe Babalola is 11 years older than my father who died last March at 84. May the Lord grant Baba Babalola more years in good health, and may he see the end of this war.
To be continued.
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
X: @Tunde_Odesola
LinkedIn: @Tunde Odesola
The cockroach called Dele Farotimi (1)
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