Osun West Bye-election: Lest We Forget! By Abiodun Komolafe

All over the world, accepting and coping with the death of a loved one is usually a daunting task. Little wonder C.S. Lewis refers to it as “an amputation.” Those in doubt of this sympathetic state of mind should rather ask yours sincerely how he felt seeing his ‘old man’ on a hospital bed as a result of age-related ailments recently. Having said that, strange developments from Osun West Senatorial District are sufficient enough to compel objective observers to inquire when cheap blackmail took over as  a spice of influence on which political actors would always want to ride to power.

Quickly, let me concede that Isiaka Adeleke’s political dynasty left the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) the very day the late politician chose siding with unpatriotic and reactionary extrationists as a full-time job. Some renegades from the ruling party only used the unfortunate tragedy that befell the Adelekes to give teeth to it.That Ademola Adeleke allowed himself to be used as a willing tool is an issue for another day!

Goodbye, politics of confussionism and pestilential extortionism! By the way, Ademola and his comrades in deceit on this infamous road should blame their handlers for embracing perverse logic, instead of pointing accusing fingers in the wrong direction for their political misfortune. Butwhat did Isiaka forget in the Senate that his younger brother is so much in a hurry to go back for? For the record, while the politically powerful Nehru-Gandhi familyhas shown that concession was not a bad venture as some may think, the incommodious confusion of political party action with family matters by some particularly petty politicians, in my view,runs against the grain ofhuman values.For example, Indira Gandhi didn’t enter the Indian National Congress party leadership contest until two years after her father’s death and we are yet to read it anywhere that Rajiv, his son, was involved in any ‘DeceptionCampaigns’ before he was appointed as Prime Minister on October 31,1984, following his mother’s assassination earlier in the day.

But would the chameleon in Adeleke have lost anything by not defecting from APC, all in the interest of the party that once served as a house of refuge for his late brother?In any case, can an aspirant who ran away from party primaries be considered as a serious contestant in any election whatsoever? Again, this is where those who always refer to progressive politics as a cult seem to be missing it. For all I care, progressivism is about loyalty and ability to do something better. This loyalty is not measured; it is total! For instance, those who insist that MudashiruHussain ought to have been disqualified on account of his native home have forgotten that competence, skill and open communication, not candidates’ geographical locations, are the hallmarks of progressive choice.  Beyond dignifying the renegades with any form of relevance, how soon have those now falling ‘a corps perdu’ to remove the peck from their neighbour’s eye forgotten that Adeleke as Senator and Adejare Bello as Speaker of the-thenOsun State House of Assembly once drank from the same cup of birthplace?

Let’s face the loud truth! Were Nigeria’s political leadership positions by inheritance, I am surethe leadership of the Yoruba nation would have, on a platter of concession, been handed over toObafemiAwolowo, Adekunle Ajasin and Abraham Adesanya’schildren after their death. In like manner, at least one of MKO Abiola’s offspring would have occupiedAso Rock  as Nigeria’s president. After all, it is believed that their father and breadwinner was killed in government custody! Painfully, Awo’s cap disappointed his children when political offices came to play whilethe Adesanyaswould always remain grateful to former President Olusegun Obasanjo for ignoring Abraham’s advice. Not even Abubakar Audu’s son had thatsingular honour of succeeding his father who was only minutes away from history before the destined Moses in him came to pass.

That American author, George William Curtis once wrote: “A man’s country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but … a principle and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.” Those with the erroneous impression that APC doesn’t have a chance in Osun West or that Governor Rauf Aregbesola has lost a considerable chunk of his winning streaks had better look elsewhere for their attempts at rewriting history. For God’s sake, how can a man who has never defeated the governor and his party in any election in the Senatorial District be credited with helping Aregbesola to win the 2014 governorship election? Was Adeleke not the current holder of that office in 2011 when Hussain defeated him by 44,881 votes to clinch the seat? In the 2014 Osun governorship election, APC defeated PDP by 37,537 votes in the zone. This featwas repeated in the 2015 General Electionswith 53,713 votes. Even in the House of Assembly election held that year, APC garnered 109,783 votes while PDP struggled to poll 51,540 votes.

To the best of my knowledge, the Adeleke-PDP quandary is indicative of the unfortunate political abracadabra that has for long been the undoing of Nigeria. How do I mean?If, indeed, Ademola is such a political sell-out, the betrayers who prefer personal benefices to communal togetherness made him so. By the same token, blame an unpredictable political Nigeria in which herinhabitants have found themselves if PDP is such a cult of unrepentant turncoats. For the almost eight years that the party held sway in Osun, the ‘nest of killers’was so obsessed with frivolities and flagrant outrageousness that dear state became a cataclysmic turf for incompetence, uncharitableness and backwardness.

It is therefore a statement of fact that PDP or ‘Nurudeen’ Ademola ‘Jackson’ Adeleke’s wish that they can win elections again in the State of Osun no longer exists; not even in Nigeria!

May principalities and powers, assigned to rubbish our leaders’ efforts, scatter!

Komolafe writes in from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State (ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk)

abiodun KOMOLAFE,

O20, Okenisa Street,

Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State.