Despite becoming governor by default in 2011 and scraping a win four years later, it would have been an aberration for him to depart from the successor-sifting, king-making addiction of his brother-governors, which has made many of them come to grief as recent as yesterday.
So by going oracular about who would not succeed him, Amosun isn’t offending any known political creed. Many of his colleagues had played Nostradamus in the past and the heavenly said yes. Some also had their fore-telling shamed before their korokoro eyes. But truth be told, the temptation to predict the future when it comes to party politics, voting, candidate selection and election outcomes in Nigeria, can make even the simplest of men cocky, because the arithmetic looks so simple. Just add omo wani e je o se (it is our turn syndrome) to bulging sacks of ill-sourced currencies, then spice the combo with ethnicity, cronyism, godfatherism, crooked incumbency advantage, compromised security and the Big Brother in Abuja and you have your winning formula, maybe with 90 per cent accuracy. Isn’t that an excellent result by any standard?
But the Ogun helmsman seems not content with the known winning formula for settling for a successor. He decided to land a sturdy step in the indigene/settler slippery terrain and I guess he should be very careful with finger-pointing about those who got to Ogun on their heads and those who walked there. While going for supposed political enemies, he could ruffle feathers that may fly into his own eyes. I figure the first barb was mainly for governor-wannabe, Lagos Senator Olamilekan Adeola (Yayi) and the concluding stone of a foreigner former governor, for Gbenga Daniel’s forehead. I leave both to defend their ancestry.
But as the Chief Security Officer of the state, such profiling of citizens with constitutional qualifications to be what they desired on their fatherland, should shame the office of governor. Even if those referenced in the governor’s irreverent classification falls on the negative side of the constitution which solely guides elective offices in the country, only a competent court of law and not the governor can rule them out of order. It will not matter if Amosun’s cap is higher than a judge’s wig.
Does the governor realise he was mobilising opinions against his targets without providing empirical evidence? Well, you may want to say anything goes in politics, but what about the required decency of office. Amosun could also be guilty of hate speech, which his party has turned into a mantra to quell strident public discontent against its underwhelming performance in the last two years. Imagine now, if everybody had bought into the campaign by his kinsman, Yemi Osinbajo who, as Acting President, tried to equate supposed hate speech with terrorism. Politics should not triumph nationalism. If the national tragedies in states in Plateau, Benue and Nasarawa, among others, currently steaming in the madness of who owns the land and who is a stranger, as much as stray in anybody thoughts and thoughts are spared for thousands of souls lost to the crises, you won’t need to be a governor before you are moderated in your politics and tempered in your words. The body of humanity has been proved through countless credible research works, to own no land. Did we all come from somewhere to settle somewhere? Was the root of a former leader with deep Yoruba tribal marks not mischievously traced to the East? Did another mischief not link a serving leader’s root to Sudan? Were both not constitutionally qualified to serve as president? It is likely that many may want to explain this away as ordinary political jab. No, I think both the content and the context matter here.
Tribune, skiing on skies
NIGERIAN Tribune, the company and the paper, is a multiple-decade victim of tightly-screwed mindset. That the obstinate subjectivity hadn’t screwed it up, can only be God. But you have to be inside, to know the inside. The perennial media underdog status, bestowed on the oldest surviving newspaper in the country, though harrying to the psychology of those who have shed blood and still daily shedding blood to grow and sustain it, comes with plenty hidden blessings. One of such is serving as an infuriating catalyst for Tribunians to seek higher mountains to climb and fountains to burst with bare knuckles. The “destitute” tag also allowed for germination and re-germination without meddlesome attention. Now, the underrated oak is so rock-solid that shelter is being sought underneath it by its peers that are logically, shorter in status and unsure in stature. While only those inside could testify before now to a system needing not a financial inhaler to live for 68 years, its prosperity and success can now be attested, by outsiders and bystanders with the imposing testament to its historic place in the Nigerian media industry, which was commissioned last Tuesday in Abuja. The “housewarming” isn’t just another Abuja owanbe. The event wasn’t a Tribune “feferity.” The intimidating structure is an audacity of hope, compliments to the past and a shining armour to the future. Tribune is a pudding. The true value is in having it inside of you.
and then