BY BISI OLAWUNMI, PhD.
“In all of these, I sympathise with Chief Fasoranti, a decent man and Iju-Itaogbolu native in Akure North LGA, who had to endure the Tinubu army of invaders of his home, in their high stakes attempt to railroad him into being the agent to destroy the house he labored to sustain. At the end, the old man refused to be compromised. But Tinubu’s handlers would do well to remind him the lessons of history. You don’t have to destroy an institution or persons for you to succeed, politically, and those who trod that path of infamy, in their ceaseless attempts to destroy Afenifere, ended in dire straits. So, let Tinubu beware.”
In all of these, I sympathise with Chief Fasoranti, a decent man and Iju-Itaogbolu native in Akure North LGA, who had to endure the Tinubu army of invaders of his home, in their high stakes attempt to railroad him into being the agent to destroy the house he labored to sustain. At the end, the old man refused to be compromised. But Tinubu’s handlers would do well to remind him the lessons of history. You don’t have to destroy an institution or persons for you to succeed, politically, and those who trod that path of infamy, in their ceaseless attempts to destroy Afenifere, ended in dire straits. So, let Tinubu beware.
In the build up to Nigeria’s 2023 general elections, the nation has been in a state of political ferment, with the gladiators deploying varied arsenals and strategies to seek advantage. Ethnic nationalists have joined the fray, particularly in the South.
The Southwest, or more broadly Yorubaland, has been at the epicenter of a tripartite political warfare – the Yoruba Nation irredentists, Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s presidential candidacy supremacy battle and an assault on Afenifere, the umbrella cultural-cum- political organization of the Yoruba.
Yoruba nationalists, frustrated with the drag and encumbrance that the Nigerian state has become to the advancement of the Yoruba nation, are seeking to throw off the yoke. In the consequent confrontation with the Nigerian state, the government, deploying its coercive powers, has forced some of the agitators into exile. Prof. Banji Akintoye, the history professor turned radical nationalist, is , however trying to deploy intellectual fire-power in the agitation and is containing the nihilist tendencies of the Yoruba nation’s militants to prevent Yorubaland from being a theatre of shooting war. How soon, if ever, they realize the goal of an independent Yoruba nation is the womb of time. But what cannot be taken away from them is the moral victory of creating heightened awareness and buy-in into the Yoruba Freedom Agenda by a wide spectrum of Yoruba, home and abroad.
The second is Bola Tinubu’s supremacy battle in the All Progressives Congress (APC ) for the presidential ticket of the party. Tinubu came out, BOLD and DARING, in a public address at Abeokuta a week to the high voltage APC Presidential primaries, declaring that it is Yoruba and his turn to assume the Presidency – The Emilokan mantra. He eventually overwhelmed all intrigues to snatch the presidential ticket, making the party chairman, Abdulahi Adamu, to bite dust in the latter’s last ditch failed attempt to impose a consensus candidate in Senate President, Ahmad Lawan. I had written an article, published in many newspapers titled : ‘ Tinubu’s Thunder in Abeokuta ‘ , a thunder that scorched his opponents. He emerged a gallant warrior. Love him or hate him, Tinubu is a fighter – even if one with no qualms.
Apparently flush from his APC Presidential ticket triumphalism, Tinubu has trained his missiles at Afenifere, for an encore. Surviving President Olusegun Obasabjo’s political tsunami that swept away five of the sixnce for Democracy ( AD ) in the 2003 general elections, Tinubu, as the last man standing, plotted a political trajectory that saw his Action Congress party reclaim those lost Southwest states in the 2007 elections, making him political godfather in Southwest’s politics. It was a feat that induced in him the feeling of a conqueror and disdain for the Afenifere Grandees who gave him his first leg-up in politics by offering the AD governorship of Lagos to him, over the more generally acceptable Engr. Funsho Williams. In his first skirmish with the Afenifere elders, Tinubu engineered a splinter Afenifere Renewal Group ( ARG ) to undermine the authority of Afenifere leaders. The ARG was still-born and lost relevance. After Awo, successive leaders of Afenifere have been men of impeccable integrity and pedigree – from Chief Adekunle Ajasin, former governor of Ondo state, Chief Abraham Adesanya, a distinguished lawyer, Chief Reuben Fasoranti, a frontline educationist, after whom the mantle of Afenifere leadership was passed to the current leader, Chief Ayo Adebanjo , a London-trained lawyer of six decades standing. They all had FAMILY PEDIGREE, hence Afenifere meetings were held in their hometowns : Chief Awolowo – Ikenne, Ogun state; Chief Ajasin – Owo, Ondo state ; Chief Adesanya –Ijebu-Igbo, Ogun state ; Chief Fasoranti – Akure, Ondo state and currently at Isanya-Ogbo, Ijebu-Ode, Ogun state, Chief Adebanjo’s hometown, with whom Tinubu has been having a running battle.
Although Tinubu and his surrogates have been taking potshots at various leaders of Afenifere, dismissing them, after the 2003 governorship debacle, as people with no electoral value, yet, Tinubu brought things to a head when Chief Ayo Adebanjo publicly declared Afenifere’s support for Mr. Peter Obi , the presidential candidate of the Labour Party. An apparently incensed Tinubu decided to go for the kill and launched a two pronged attack – first on Chief Adebanjo for what he must have considered the effrontery of the chief’s support for Obi, of Igbo ethnic group. But the Afenifere leader had reasoned that based on the principles of fairness and equity, the Southeast deserves the presidency, this time around, as both Southwest and South-south have produced presidents for the nation in President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Goodluck Jonathan, respectively. Those principles didn’t sell with Tinubu and his warriors who launched the second vicious flank attack on Sunday, October 23, 2022 when he led a political posse to hunt down the frail, former leader of Afenifere, Chief Fasoranti, in his Akure home for a trick photo opportunity, celebrated as endorsement of his presidential bid and return of Chief Fasoranti to Afenifere leadership saddle.
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It was meant to be a decisive, killer punch to finally rip Afenifere apart, by pitching Chief Fasoranti against Chief Adebanjo, in a mutually-assured death duet. Ironically, the visit smacks of dancing on the grave of Mrs. Funke Olakunrin, Chief Fasoranti’s daughter, report of whose 2019 killing by suspected Fulani herdsmen had been dismissed by Tinubu. What audacity, what callousness.
The Tinubu crowd must have been thoroughly embarrassed and deflated when Chief Fasoranti refuted the falsehood, brazenly propagated in the media, of Afenifere leadership change ; reaffirming that Chief Ayo Adebanjo remains the leader of Afenifere.
In furtherance of the Tinubu Agenda of what he cannot have and control, he must destroy, a fiery, insolent writer on the stable of Tinubu’s ‘THE NATION ‘ newspaper, one Sam Omatseye, with a penchant to pretentious scholarly posturing, had cast slurs on Chief ( Mrs. ) H.I.D. Awolowo and even attempted to demystify Awo, the sage himself, as a peremptory strike at the foundation of Afenifere. However, if Omatseye can be excused as a ‘ kobokobo ‘ – a term used by the Yoruba to describe a person of brash, uncultured conduct – what can one make of a full blooded Yoruba elder, Chief Bisi Akande, a former governor of Osun state, who lent himself as Tinubu’s attack dog on Chief Adebanjo, current Afenifere leader ? In his autobiography, titled ; ‘ My Participations ‘, Chief Akande had claimed that it was Tinubu who built the Lekki, Lagos residence where Chief Adebanjo lives, for him. I refer to page 415 of the book where Chief Akande stated thus : ‘’ Tinubu told me that after he presented Adebanjo’s C of O to him, Adebanjo was always pestering Tinubu until he helped built a house on the plot. The street was also named in honour of Adebanjo and he is living in that house now at Lekki Phase One “. The obvious aim was to denigrate Chief Adebanjo as a hungry man. It was meant to be a put down, a mean , unkind cut to disrobe. So, Chief Akande, became ‘’ elenu gboro’’ for Tinubu, apparently an enduring trait from his youth when he said he ‘’ was foolhardily bold ’’. Chief Adebanjo, to salvage his integrity, had to publicly explain, in details, how he put resources together to build his Lekki home. Maybe one should not be that surprised at Chief Bisi Akande doing a denigrating, hatchet job on someone who is his elder if, in his autobiography, he can derogatively describe his own father as a failed, poverty-stricken palm wine tapper !!!
In Chapter 3 of the autobiography titled : Poverty and The Lore of Palm-Wine , Chief Akande had stated in the opening paragraph : ‘’ My father was a palm –wine tapper. .. what baffled me was the apparent, debilitating and abject poverty of my parents. “ ( p.37) pointing out in page 45 that ‘’both my father and mother … never succeeded in forging alliance with wealth’’.
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Chief Akande was not done – he portrayed his father as a fortune squanderer stating that ‘’ for at least two years after my grandfather’s death, we were living large on his wealth’’, but that ‘’after the inheritance was dissipated’’, the father returned to his poverty state, till death.
But Chief Bisi Akande is enthused and enthralled by Bola Tinubu. He devoted Chapter 34, titled : Tinubu, The Strategic Thinker , to a celebration of the former Lagos state governor, with references to him in the book majorly in the superlatives – ‘’ an all-round leader ‘’ , one who ‘’demonstrates consistent courage and resilience ‘’ ; ‘’ powerful and strong political mobiliser’’ and ‘’ a fierce and ferocious fighter ‘’.
Chief Akande projects Tinubu as someone not averse to fighting dirty. “ For whoever he ( Tinubu) senses negatively, he detests, condemns and, if possible, fights ferociously’’, he stated, concluding that ‘’ it would be safer to persuade Ahmed Bola Tinubu to fight on your side’’. (p. 418) The fawning clincher is on page 421 when Chief Akande, a former state governor, 83 ( DOB 16.Jan. 1939), stated that Tinubu, age 70 ( DOB 29 March 1952 ) ‘’makes me feel resolutely pampered ”. A rather childish effusion !
I have quoted fairly extensively from Chief Bisi Akande’s autobiography as typical of the slavish worship, adoration, Bola Tinubu had come to expect from those he has brought under his political orbit. His reputed generosity, perhaps, is the carrot. He trots Chief Bisi Akande around as a trophy. Some have used the word : Lapdog.
Tinubu, thus sees himself as THE LEVIATHAN that must run over, destroy any organization, person or persons, within range of his political or cultural radar, he can neither control nor compromise. His Sunday, October 23, 2022 storming of Chief Fasoranti Akure home was an assault on the ramparts of Afenifere, aimed at destroying the organization.
Unfortunately, the Akure Tinubu Ensemble included Aremo Segun Osoba, a former governor of Ogun state, whose post on social media after the Akure visit sought to buttress the notion of a dictatorial leadership of Afenifere by Chief Ayo Adebanjo. Chief Osoba is not persuaded that Chief Adebanjo is not an enemy, but someone with a strong personality, inclined to exercising paternalistic hegemony, allowed in Yoruba culture as an elder. Chief Osoba resents what he considers Chief Ayo Adebanjo’s overbearing attitude and his claim that he made them governors, back in 1999. However, I don’t expect Chief Osoba to get himself conned or corralled into Tinubu’s political slave camp.
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He already had professional integrity and public name recognition, as Editor of the flagship Daily Times newspaper in the mid 1970s, when Bola Tinubu was an unknown.
In spite Tinubu’s hostility, to demonstrate that political differences need not degenerate into enmity, Chief Adebanjo, as Yoruba leader, had visited Tinubu at his Bourdillon home in Lagos when he returned from medical treatment abroad. But the gesture is apparently lost on Tinubu.
There is Dare Babarinsa, formerly of TELL magazine, who in a Thursday, November 3, 2022 Guardian newspaper back-page article went on wild, speculative conjecture about a change in Afenifere leadership. I learnt Babarinsa is one of the Tinubu foot soldiers who wangled the mission to Akure. He noted that ‘’ Fasoranti appointed Adebanjo as acting leader and declared, rather pontifically : ‘’ Now Fasoranti is back ‘’. It was his hallucinatory imagination, an outright fabrication.
But then, one is not that surprised, Babarinsa practices ‘guerilla’ journalism and is therefore given to unorthodox professional conduct. Incidentally, he is also the publisher of Chief Bisi Akande’s 557-page autobiography which reads like the ramblings of a joyous palm wine drinker, replete with repetitions, hanging sentences, conflicting dates of events and historical fallacies.
The spin doctor of the Tinubu visit to Chief Fasoranti, Abagun Kole Omololu , who wrote as Afenifere national organizing secretary, and magisterially declared that Chief Ayo Adebanjo was on his own in his Obi endorsement , is ordinarily a decent, respectful person who you would not expect to lend himself to a charade. But then Kole exhibits a flamboyant lifestyle – shuttling between Nigeria and the UK – a lifestyle that could do with resource replenishment from a generous giver.
In all of these, I sympathise with Chief Fasoranti, a decent man and Iju-Itaogbolu native in Akure North LGA, who had to endure the Tinubu army of invaders of his home, in their high stakes attempt to railroad him into being the agent to destroy the house he labored to sustain. At the end, the old man refused to be compromised. But Tinubu’s handlers would do well to remind him the lessons of history. You don’t have to destroy an institution or persons for you to succeed, politically, and those who trod that path of infamy, in their ceaseless attempts to destroy Afenifere, ended in dire straits. So, let Tinubu beware.
History is even lost on those basing their argument on the imperative of Afenifere supporting Tinubu’s ambition, as a Yoruba man, for the post of president of Nigeria.
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Afenifere, and its political wing, the Alliance for Democracy ( AD ) got persuaded on similar Yoruba solidarity of ‘omo wa ni’ sentiment in supporting President Obasanjo’s 2003 second term bid, after massively defeating him in the 1999 elections, only for Obasanjo to ambush the party, sweeping it from power in five of the six states it controlled – with only Tinubu, as Lagos state governor, surviving ‘Hurricane’ Obasanjo . Obasanjo was still relentless to destroy Lagos state, withholding its revenue allocations – yes, Obasanjo is ‘omo wa ni’. And WHAT IS THE YORUBA BENEFIT FROM EIGHT YEARS OF OBASANJO AS PRESIDENT ? Practically, Nothing. Yet, ‘omo wa ni’. Now, a vengeful Tinubu, another ‘ omo wa ni ‘ seems determined to destroy Afenifere , the last vestige of Yoruba identity, simply because he could not get its endorsement for his Presidency ambition . And you ask : In what ways has Tinubu even identified with a Yoruba cause in the last 23 years of being The Lagos Overlord ? It is turning out that in Yorubaland, the enemy is within. Afenifere, and its successive leaders, have weathered many storms. This Tinubu Storm shall also pass.
Dr. Bisi Olawunmi, a Mass Communication Scholar and Public Affairs Analyst, is a former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria. Phone: 0803 364 7571. Email : olawunmibisi@yahoo.com
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Friday, 11 November, 2022.
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