Of Ibarapa by-election and looming trajectory

THE name of the hit  was ‘’Ain’t no stopping us now’’. The year was 1979 just before summer and two years before stevie wonder released his cracker, Hotter than July, whose lead single, Happy Birthday, was able to halt Ain’t no stopping on its box office track. After the shock victory of the PDP or more aptly put, after the defeat of the APC in the Ibarapa East bye election on saturday June 2, 2018, that 1979 disco song by the R&B duo of Mcfadden and Whitehead came to my mind and I began to hum it by reflex throughout that fateful weekend. The result of the election was steeped in its unpredictability yet predictable in the face of the free falling image of a party that promised everything but marred it all through serial unforced errors, arrogance, befuddling mistakes, miscalculations and straight forward lies. The two major parties needed to win that election very badly. For the APC, coming from the ruins of an embarrassing one-sided local government election, which it organised, supervised, umpired and which it predictably won on May 12, to the Oorelope house of assembly bye election which it lost last year the incumbency factor notwithstanding and the fatal internecine battle of supremacy currently ravaging the party,  winning the Ibarapa East by-election became a matter of life and death

As for the infamous May 12 local government election farce, the APC realised that the party will be the butt of political, sublime and beer parlour jokes if it loses the Ibarapa East bye election 21 days after “sweeping” the LG polls. Unfortunately, that was exactly what happened. For the PDP, still reeling from the effective mud splattered on it by the efficient propaganda of the ruling party and struggling with a divisive internal crisis but buoyed by a wide spread dissatisfaction and disappointment by the masses who felt they have been conned by the ruling party,  PDP believed that the Ibarapa East bye election was the best way to test what 2019 would be like.

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With brazing savagery and slaughter going on under the President’s watch and a provocative announcement by the Security Council asking states not to implement the anti- grazing law, the president is set to be done in in places like Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba and Plateau where he performed well in 2015. The quick fix decision to edify MKO Abiola, as deserving as it is, is a classic Greek Gift that cannot obliterate the incompetence of the past three years. In Oyo State, it is an irony of fate that the APC’s comeuppance will finally arrive via an unexpected route and a unique family. Eruwa is home to that diminutive, fair- skinned, taciturn and deep pocket politician and business man who, between 1978 and 1991, almost single-handedly financed with millions of naira the establishment of conservative political tendencies in the old Oyo state from National Party of Nigeria (NPN) 1978 to 84  and the National Republican Convention (NRC) in the early 90s. Chief Adeseun Ogundoyin, before his sudden death, bought brand new station wagon 504 cars for each local government area and funded most of the party’s activities. One of the most unique features of his philanthropy was that he never wanted to contest for any political position other than to see the ideals of conservatism entrenched in the polity.

He loved his community, Ibarapa, with a passion and his kinsmen, while he was alive were, the cynosure of all eyes as they lived privileged lives. It was therefore a fitting compensation that 27 years after, his son, Debowale who was barely five years old at the time of his death has now, by classic providence been elected as the Honourable, representing Ibarapa East constituency consisting of Lanlate, Maya and Eruwa.  Ogundoyin had friends where it mattered. He was not only a very close pal to General Ibrahim Babangida, the father of Babangida’s wife, Mariam was  Mohammed King was the chairman of Ogundoyin’s multi-million dollar construction company. When in 1988, Fountain Publications, the company where I was General Manager published HOME FRONT, written by Mariam Babangida, her brother the famed Sunny Okogwu, the Kaduna billionaire bought a copy of the book for N1m and Chief Ogundoyin and a few others came close to that amount. On the Ibarapa bye election, kudos must go to two politicians who made the victory possible. To Senator Rashidi Ladoja who led the campaign and to Engr Seyi Makinde whose sense of belief in the project and his unalloyed trust in the youths made him to provide all the necessary wherewithal, may be because he is a youth himself.

• Oyelade is Director, Strategy and Communication of the Seyi Makinde Campaign Organisation