Who owned 2017?

THE recent Donald Trump/Time Magazine spat over the Man-of-the-Year nomination has brought an international dimension to an award that is always contentious, with strings attached. Time Magazine wanted an exclusive peep into Trump’s unconventional world, before awarding the world feather-rumbler. He went public with what the medium thought was a whisper between two comrades. To spite the kiss-and-tell fellow, the magazine went for an “unworthy” choice.

Time Magazine might have been a little tacky with the 2017 award, but its ways are miles purer than the odious that defines such in our clime. Here, the very scarce deserving that ever got celebrated is an aberration to the cash-and-carry norm that has come to define the yearly ritual. True, the award should not necessarily be celestial in texture, but being bestial can’t also define its essence. And “beasts” in different spheres; politics, religion, portfolio-business and public service have been served the award a la carte at different times by different groups simply because the price was right. More like Shopping Rite. But the fact remains that some personalities made the difference in the outgone year, both internationally and in our backyard. And they don’t have to be the “popular choice” of the norm. Regardless of the media mess, who can deny Trump’s impact on the global scene in 2017? Yes, the conventional world which wanted to set all rules, may revel in denial of the obvious, but that is one voice that roughened rule book pages last year and I dare say, in the positive. Though the corporate media wanted everything about him to read, deficit, he is Gibbers’ undisputed international choice.

Interestingly, back home, bears so much semblance with the global stage. Ayodele Fayose, the home-made Trump, broke boundaries like his older version, in 2017. Like him too, he isn’t media darling, especially for his solo dare of President Muhammadu Buhari when the president was still a god. After the initial derision, he became the leading and at times, the sole voice of reason when governance plummeted to an all-time low. Without the theatrics, he could become the leading conscience of the nation, with the way he brutally speaks truth to thrones, principalities and powers. If only for his effective occupation of the oppositional void when the balls of the rest shrank like melted ballons, he would be more than eminently deserving of the award, considering the damage the polity would have witnessed without someone shouting himself hoarse when fine lines were being trampled with impunity. Another fundamental qualification is his winning formula against terrorist Fulani herdsmen. States now scrambled for it complete with the otapiapia footnote. Should anyone beat the one with a home-made solution to a national calamity?

Without dabbling into the controversy of his performance in Ekiti, the back-to-back first position in national examination, should not be glossed over, in a season when certain Excellencies got their states stuck in the two-digit positions for six years running.

Fayose is definitely not a saint, but history must surely be kind to him for his thief-catcher role as this government toys with national patrimony in an unprecedented manner. If the court case he instigated against the $1billion ECA-gate succeeded, he would have done a hat-trick. Without doubt, some equally “touched” the nation in profound ways in 2017, but Fayose’s imprints were irrepressibly bold, impressively indelible, compulsively positive and manifestly productive. He is the Man-of-the-year and I wish he completes the Trump script by achieving his presidential dream, to the consternation of the “world” hating on him.

Omisore and PDP monologue

BY a decent margin, Iyiola Omisore towers above the rest of PDP stalwarts in Osun State. Though his “mainstream” faction is thought to be in the minority, outside impression favours his emergence as the party’s standard bearer for the September 22, 2018 governorship election and he has been everywhere on swashbuckling peace voyage and trouble-shooting expeditions, to cement the front-runner status and get everybody behind him. The viewing “political” public, is already even thinking beyond candidate identity for PDP, maybe in the assumption of “ceteri paribus”. For those “permutators”, it is Omisore against X, from APC. Such projections have also thrown up interesting pairings; Omisore Vs. SSG, Speaker, Chief of Staff, et al. And he is being given more than an outside chance to win. But there is an on-going monological narrative among party prince-makers that could make those projected gladiatory contests, ordinary fantasies. PDP’s Pythagoras theorem, is working the Ife prince out of the gubernatorial equation. And he isn’t unaware of the “minus Apesin, plus victory” cold calculation. During the yuletide, I sat around a couple of these party tacticians, statisticians and mathematicians. Did they make sense? The party isn’t ready to lose the state which it believes is just for the asking with the “right man for the job”, going by the conviction that outgoing APC Governor Rauf Aregbesola has handed it over on a platter. Omisore isn’t ready to let go of the crown-prince decors. Something will eventually give way. One major political lesson in the building saga is that there isn’t anything like sesede (latecomers) again. All you need is for permutations to favour you and God willing, someone, hitherto, without a jolting identity may become an overnight sensation. Just like the “boogie” dancer, who by some withering calculations, may relocate from Abuja to Abere and Apesin, forced once again, to the senate. Will there ever be a path for this prince to the throne?