SINCE the declaration of the PDP candidate as the winner of the Osun State governorship election, I have been seeing quite a number of posts insinuating that the people just brought a sad fate upon themselves. We never fail to sit in our lofty cynicism and look down our noses making postulations after postulations, right as some of them might even turn out to be. I left town just before the elections because I was angry with the PDP and what I had termed its lack of strategy. I felt that for a party whose mandate had once been whisked from under their nose in the twinkling of an eye, it was too passive, less tactical and remarkably without a solid plan for ensuring that the same fate did not befall them again. I couldn’t be persuaded that it would win. The handwriting on the wall sure didn’t portend a different outcome.
It took speaking at the Thursday Film Series UI post-screening discussion about the office of the people for me to see the error of my ways. I had taken the easy way out. I had talked about how the people must stand to guard their mandate to the very last and like the proverbial Jonah taken the fastest ship in the opposite direction. To sit in heavenly places and make postulations is in fact the easiest part. For the critical eyes, one must acknowledge that what tipped the scale in favour of the PDP in this just concluded elections wasn’t its workings. The incumbent beat PDP hands down at that. It was the people. The people had grown tired of the status quo. They wanted a change. They came out in their numbers, stood guard at the polling units, made videos, kept count, and guarded their mandate to the very last. The office of the people arose. This is in itself a victory if nothing else. The validation that power indeed belongs to the people. What this portends for the 2023 elections is a glimmer of hope, a beacon of possibilities. An emboldened electorate who has seen the outcomes derived from their coming together as a force. As I had written in my earlier piece, it will be a fight for the soul of the country.
A wise man recently drew a strategy for winning this battle that I find a lot of sense in and heartily endorse. @ojo_olukuloye said: “The polity is divided into three spectrums. The Government, the conscious, and the lost. The conscious- actively conscious or passively conscious.” He opined that the mistake of the conscious is thinking that going after the government will create any change in the polity. It is the reason why a lot of our agitations, resistance, and protestations have failed. #ENDSARS comes to mind. The missing link is the lost. We must rouse the passively conscious from their apathy and go all out to win the souls of the lost. Sounds like Jesus and the disciples, yeah. That’s exactly what it is. Grass-roots enlightenment and illumination. Was it Bashir Ahmed that said most APC voters aren’t online?
Sadly, he is 100 per cent spot on. The people who make up the huge percentage of the LOST aren’t on social media. They are the artisans, bike men, street touts, garage boys, riffraff, illiterate and semi-literate handymen, the ones that we the Actively Conscious look down our noses at. They are the vehicle through which government actualizes all of its ends. You will most likely scoff at N5,000 to buy your votes, so they won’t even bring it to you. They will target the ones that N5,000 means a lot to. That is why we must reach them first and bring them into the light. The beautiful thing is that it doesn’t take being lettered or educated to come to the light. All it takes is illumination. It can be done in every indigenous language and targeted at every tribe and sect. This is one of the things about the PO campaign train that gives me hope.
Back to Osun, one thing that the people also achieved by this unequivocal statement is that they have created a case of “to whom much is given, much more is expected”. Expectations are high. By this validation, the people demand more from the governor-elect and his party. The success of a government doesn’t have to consist in who seats on the throne as much as in the quality of people surrounding him. The quality of brains, thinkers, advisers, and problem solvers in the hollowed rooms. There is only so much one man can do and will do after all. If there was ever a time for the Critical Actively Conscious of Osun State and all those who wish the state well to arise and put all of that energy into charting a course for the advancement, development, and growth of the state, it is NOW. All of that strategic, critical, and analytical thinking will serve us, than just being used as a harbinger of doom and destruction, don’t you think. After all, omode gbon, agba gbon la fi da Ile-Ife.
Thankfully, Ile-Ife is not far from Osogbo. That’s an attempt at dry humour. My point is that Adeleke has been given a clean slate. He now has his story to write. Of course, his work is cut out ahead of him and no doubt he will falter here and there as humans do. But by and large, it is a new dawn. There is hope in the hearts of the people. There is the satisfaction that the will and mandate of the people have been restored. Because I have asked myself each time that I have seen the tweets portending the worst outcome, what do these folks really expect to happen? A re-emergence of the ruling party. The knowledge of being truly and effectively trapped for another 4 years or even more. And you think feelings of hope, whether misplaced or not, yet to be found out isn’t better than this? I think we speak from our pedestals because we fail to acknowledge our privileges.
I celebrate with the people of Osun State and sincerely hope that like I was proven wrong this time, I am again. Imole de! This chant infers illumination. May illumination spread across the whole country and create the ripples for drastic change come 2023.
- Adebimpe, a lawyer, writer, social and political commentator, writes in from Osogbo, Osun State.
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