THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PBAT

 

By LANRE ADEWOLE

The headline of this column isn’t original to me. I had titled the piece “Osun and What Belongs to Caesar” before a beloved uncle, currently holidaying in Atlanta, captioned the now-viral video of the Thursday encounter between President Bola Tinubu and re-elected Osun Governor, Senator Ademola Adeleke, with the phrase.

 I couldn’t resist borrowing his thought.

When I forwarded the video to him on Friday morning while penning this, it didn’t quickly dawn on me that it would still be pre-dawn over there.

 But somehow, he responded with the caption straightaway, before adding that it was still dark over there, though he couldn’t help laughing uproariously.

As a senior member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and a years-long associate of the president, first as governor, Lagos godfather, regional force, national opposition leader and now Nigeria’s leader, he has seen his political leader at close quarters, severally doing exactly what he was advising the governor against. 

To believe a word of what sounded more like an admonition than a call to unity would therefore require some suspension of disbelief.

The Yoruba will say, “Mo mọ ìwà ara ilé mi, kì í ṣe ẹ̀bù” — this is who this fellow truly is; it isn’t an insult.

In the six-minute, four-second sermon, what I saw was a president in severe pain, regardless of the spin that a so-called accord delivered the win to the governor.

An avalanche of evidence pointed at a national leader who wanted, and worked for, his ruling party to add Osun to its winning column.

Barely 48 hours to the poll, APC A-listers were all over the state, scurrying from place to place, literally grovelling before aggrieved but vote-rich chieftains, long ostracised by the party leadership at federal and state levels, to mobilise them for Adeleke’s main rival, Bola Oyebamiji — their man.

What kind of alliance, or agreement as Festus Keyamo put it, will make you work assiduously for my defeat?

At the home of a scorned chieftain, a quick telephone call between him and the president had to be arranged when the visiting governors and senators couldn’t get through to him, to change his siddon-look approach to the election, despite being a leading member of APC in the state. 

Presidential persuasion would not dissuade his course of action.

If the president was truly in on Adeleke’s re-election, why try to talk the disdained and sidelined strongman into dumping the alleged accord between him and the governor to support his re-election, after his own party had made it clear he was surplus to requirement in the calculation to reclaim the state?

If the president was truly for Adeleke, the other alleged turncoats in his party should need no persuasion from him to support the APC candidate. It should have been a situation the Yoruba will describe as kolanut sprouting where one is planning to plant one.

My people will call it “gege se gege” — perfect timing. The colloquial form is “two ge four” (2 perfectly dividing 4).

No, the president didn’t support Adeleke to win. If there was truly an accord between them, there was no fidelity on the part of the Nigerian leader to it.

Then, what about the ridiculous war chest moved into the state by his men, led by his ally and the country’s number three citizen, Godswill Akpabio, saturating everywhere with what the street will capture as “money na water”?

Under an administration preaching fiscal discipline to citizens, is it possible President Tinubu knew such humongous sums — different figures have been bandied without rebuttal by APC — were being shipped in for an election he had allegedly traded away, and he didn’t stop his progressive governors from wasting such huge amounts of money, whether personal or not, to the contributors?

It’s almost certain the money, largely spent on vote-buying, came from the public till, which is a crime of stealing. 

But if, for the sake of argument, it is taken that the money came from individual contributors, should the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission not be interested in knowing how the funds were pooled and who doled out what?

When someone can’t dare, street lingo will deride with, “Who born monkey?”

EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede has burnt his fingers once, suffering Trump-like public presidential rebuke from Aso Rock over the same Osun election. 

The president is playing games with all of them.

Until his re-election is settled one way or the other, whoever blindly rushes into taking sides on the assumption of knowing where the Nigerian leader stands on a matter of politics will have himself to blame.

Isn’t everything fair in politics? (Chuckle.)

Vote-buying is a crime according to the law governing elections in Nigeria. The only place offenders are convicted for it is in the public opinion court. Institutions of government that should ensure compliance answer to politicians who must buy votes to win.

The law is as toothless as campaign financing provisions, among others. As it has been, so it shall continue to be.

Osun election was a bazaar.

Not known to be glib, the governor’s older brother, Deji Adeleke, who is now neck-deep in Osun politics, openly accused President Tinubu’s APC of burning through N60 billion to try to deny his sibling a second term.

Till date, no whimper of defence or denial from the ruling party’s megaphones at state and federal levels.

His son, David (Davido), who is more susceptible to sensationalism, being an entertainer, quoted N100 billion. Nobody in APC accused him of misrepresenting facts for clickbait.

Wetin dey sef!

Then another claim of N110 billion.

Dr Adeleke is a billionaire businessman operating in Nigeria’s delicate business environment, where government, especially at the federal level, is a major determinant of whether a big business fails or thrives.

If he could say on camera that APC committed the crime of vote-buying, then EFCC should open an inquiry or Olukoyede should simply walk away from the job, which has already tarnished him substantially.

That is the only way to escape with a bit of dignity, provided his palms aren’t soiled in other ways and matters.

When it dawned that money and federal might, backed by presidential suasion and coercion, had failed in Osun, spin doctors spilled all over town, projecting the president as a genuine democrat who allowed a free and fair contest.

My question is: Is he supposed to impede what should be the correct course of the process? Would that not be criminality, to try to thwart the majority wish of Osunites?

At times, I wonder at our collective values as a people. Should we not have shut and shot down the spin doctors trumpeting the nonsensical triumphalism of the president’s supposed goodness of heart towards our democracy and the rest of us?

For heaven’s sake, what kind of people are we as followers? Maybe we truly deserve the conscienceless and insensitive leaders we get from time to time.

That near-collective sense that the president has done us good for not upturning the prevailing desire of Osunites to keep Adeleke in office for another four years must have emboldened the kind of statement credited to the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, that if the president wanted victory at all costs, he would have sent him to Osun — meaning he would upturn the popular choice and heaven would not fall.

I pray the president sends him for his own re-election in January 2027.

For appearing to want to love those who do not wish him well, particularly the president, the governor has come under flak even from his own associates and supporters.

True, his seeming forced association with President Tinubu, and practically crediting the Aso Rock tenant with his victory hours after he was declared re-elected, would seem a slight on the brave Osun voters who put their lives on the line to confront the APC behemoth and invaders from Abuja and other states.

But I think his pacifist approach is borrowing sense from the Yoruba saying about the leper who can spill the milk he can’t extract. It’s called wisdom.

I’m sure as he sat listening to the hypocritical sermon — that is Jesus’ definition of telling someone to do what you have not been doing — on the rock of the president, another Yoruba saying about calling someone something to have a thoroughfare to the desired destination must have been playing in his head.

The one with palm oil should be careful with the yangi (laterite rock) owner.

The governor has just hobbled out of a political battle of his life. At a point, his older brother confessed to someone close to him, also known to me, that the state had been so financially squeezed by Abuja that he was the one picking all campaign bills on behalf of his brother.

Imagine the governor not having a billionaire brother.

And some people were condemning him for prostrating and crawling publicly for his big brother.

If na you nko?

Pray you have the governor’s kind of family support.

Whoever will not allow the governor to eat and drink water on top, he seems ready to add their portions to the yam on fire for the pounded-yam meal of the next four years.

Despite Wike being the architect — though the minister is justified to fight for the party he practically resuscitated after Jonathan’s 2015 loss — of the governor having to scamper around for a platform to contest after PDP was infernally fragmented, he still sought the minister out, for obvious reconciliation, presenting his re-election certificate to him in Abuja.

Someone joked it is about the judiciary too.

There was even a light-hearted video of Davido and the minister bantering.

Politicians should learn something from Adeleke; those who can’t energetically engage life with the fun way he does should emulate his free spirit.

One person I will recommend this to, especially the non-rigid approach to politics and less meanness in dealing with men, particularly when God has lifted you above others, is the man Adeleke has now conquered thrice: Gboyega Oyetola.

The president’s nephew/direct sibling, depending on the version of their filiality, has been roundly condemned for condemning his party to defeat in Osun, long before the poll, due to his hard-heartedness in political and human relations.

How do you vow never to talk to some party bigwigs ever again in a very fluid political space like Nigeria’s, devoid of decorous lines, simply because you lost re-election?

Even Baba Akande sat with his jailer to craft a winning formula to gain power. And the wisdom from such an old warhorse won’t count?

I hope the man who looked so dejected in his first public appearance after APC’s defeat has particularly learnt something from what happened in his Boripe Local Government Area during the poll.

His APC won nearly everywhere in the LG, only for him to lose his polling unit to Adeleke’s Accord.

I went personally to iRev to download the result to be certain, and it was true.

I should not say more to him.

For the president’s serial anti-party conducts — he reportedly sold his party out in Anambra too and now Osun, if we concede there was an accord, though I personally think the president was just throwing a gambit around to appear good to the leading candidates — certainly nothing would happen to him.

He is the party.

Those who will suffer consequences for working against the party which they believe has left them behind are the lesser mortals.

Hopefully, their new friends won’t disappoint and abandon them like what they ran away from in APC.

The president is desperate.

A close associate told me they are worried about mitigating big numbers from the North and South-East, and Osun has thrown itself up as a potential big player in the coming presidential election night, with over a million voters showing up for the leading candidates in the just-concluded governorship poll.

The president covets the state’s impressive numbers and would desire mostly all in his column, which will explain the emergency fatherly role and advice to the man who got more than half of the million votes.

But nothing is given.

An Adeleke voter is not necessarily a Tinubu voter.

I know several Adeleke voters who are warming up for Obi in the state, but the president appearing beside Adeleke could help the optics of the Nigerian leader in his ancestral state.

But he’s got work to do and decisions to make, starting with his Oyetola problem.

Yes, the president has an Oyetola problem — the kind, for a father who can’t say no to a son, where that permissive father should be prepared to clean mess aplenty, times without number, behind his dear boy.

First, the hare-brained judicial challenge being considered by Oyetola and his jesting associates against Adeleke’s victory should be immediately halted and discarded by the president.

The funny plot to resuscitate and pursue the intra-party litigations in Accord to strip Adeleke of lawful nomination at the Supreme Court should also be dismantled.

Who says the apex court is only for some people?

Then there is this jejune claim about outstanding results yet to be loaded on iRev.

Whoever gave these people this as a ground to void the election’s outcome?

Worldwide, elections are called once gaps can’t be closed, and a result not completely on iRev won’t vitiate the documented and signed version.

Three years after the presidential election won by APC, the result is yet to be completely uploaded on iRev, and the same party wants to challenge the Osun election on that basis?

Maybe God wants to use the Osun poll to expose certain shenanigans.

If Adeleke’s victory is judicially upturned on this basis, how does Tinubu’s stand?

If the president must know, there are talks about him assuring Osun APC leaders of Adeleke getting the David Lyon treatment.

He should shut down such talks immediately by openly disavowing the rumour.

As a reminder, Lyon was sacked as governor-elect by the apex court less than 24 hours to his inauguration.

Even with the president’s support, I doubt if Adeleke will go down that easily.

His footwork seems pleasing to his Maker.

End.