Acn Victory: Paradox Of A Prophecy

One of the normal privileges that a special aide enjoys is accessibility to his boss. He sees and talks to him regularly. He strolls in and out of his office with officious lordliness. What this means is that the man that people pray and crave to touch; the man that people hope to hold and hug; the man that people dream to meet and greet; the elusive and fortified man of the people is seen, touched, hugged and greeted by his close aides unrestrained. When some wise men say no man is an Island unto himself, they are simply acknowledging the fact that no matter how highly a man thinks of himself because of the position he occupies, he still needs people around him to amplify his humanity and concatenation.

Indeed out interdependence is deliberately designed by GOD to remove absolutism from the reach of man because of the evil that man can do with it. Many of our leaders do not realise that the people around them, those who flock after them and those they rule over are the manifestations and symbols of the power they possess.

One secret of Bola Tinubu is that he has developed an egregious capacity to appreciate and accommodate the people around him and those who are far from him.

As his special aide for eight years, I enjoyed some uncommon privileges one of which was that I could enter his office at will when he was the governor of Lagos State. Sometimes, especially when he was in a bad mood and very rarely was he in a bad mood, he would shout on you and ask you out. But, most times, I was allowed in to either participate, eavesdrop, observe, note, eat and record some of the issues being discussed.

One day in 2003, after the Alliance for Democracy (AD) had been swept out of almost all the states in the south west except Lagos, I walked into his office where I met him discussing with Dele Alake, the then commissioner for Information and Strategy. I came in cautiously and carefully unable to determine his mood and the nature of their discussion. However, Tinubu said nothing as I came in. The two of them continued their discussion. It was on the Obasanjo betrayal and the loss of Southwest to the Peoples Democratic Party in the governorship election. One could see that he was disturbed, confused, perplexed and sober. He said so many things about the episode but the only one I can recollect with historical perspicacity is this: “Dele, people are very funny. They are saying that I should be grateful to GOD that the Obasanjo’s tsunami did not affect me. That I should just spend my four years and go and leave Obasanjo to run this country the way he wanted. But never. I will not let him have the last laugh. He thought he was smart. Whatever it is going to take to win back the Southwest for the progressives, I will give; including my life. Dele, we are going to do this together. Just let us keep the heat on him with our media power. If we need to do more, let me know”.

Let us have a brief historical recollection of the genesis. In 1999 when Obasanjo became the president of the country, he was alienated by the people of Southwest because his antecedents were as bad as his character. Besides, he was not and is still not well loved at all. In that election, Chief Olu Falae was the presidential candidate of the AD. So, the South West voted for him en-masse. But before the 2003 election, Obasanjo came up with an ingenious calculation to ensure that this time around, he won massive votes in his own territory. He met with Bola Tinubu, Segun Osoba, Lam Adesina, Bisi Akande and the rest, pleading for their support in the presidential election and pledging to ensure that all AD governors were returned. Based on this arrangement and understanding, AD decided not to have a presidential candidate and even went further to instruct their supporters to vote for Obasanjo in the presidential election.

In the 2003 order of election, the presidential election came first and Obasanjo was re-elected. The next election was the governorship. But instead of going by the spirit of the agreement, Obasanjo not only threw away the agreement, he went ahead to supervise the rigging plans and the falsification of the results so that all his stooges can become governors, thus enhancing his scope of influence in the Southwest.

The great tsunami as the event had come to be tagged by the media brought in people like Gbenga Daniel (Ogun), Ayo Fayose (Ekiti), Segun Agagu (Ondo), Rasheed Ladoja (Oyo) and Olagunsoye Oyinlola (Osun).

Determined to reverse this situation, Tinubu began extensive consultations with the people and the ACN leadership of the lost states. He was shuttling between Ondo and Ekiti, driving to Ibadan and Osun on a regular basis and watching from his observatory with keen enthusiasm the unfolding events in Ogun. In addition, he was spending heavily in the rebuilding of the structures in the affected states. All through this period, Dele Alake was with him. At a stage, it was mooted in the enemies’ camp that once Dele Alake could be taken out of the way, Tinubu would be finished. Dele became the target. He was trailed and monitored. Anyway, the rest is history as they say. The ACN and Tinubu had recovered all that the enemy (Obasanjo) had stolen in 2003.

Because I was a witness of the prophecy, I am excited about some of the side attractions that came with its fulfillment. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. Ayo Fayose was Obasanjo’s first nemesis. The two of them became sworn enemies that today they don’t see eye to eye. The conspiracy that brought them together has torn them apart to the point that if left alone in a room, they can kill each other. Good for them.

Then came the Daniel episode. It rubbished whatever was left of Obasanjo’s ego. Daniel not only demystified Obasanjo, he reduced him to a toothless bull-dog and silenced him in Abeokuta and made him look so ordinary. It was a shame that a man who prides himself as the Chairman of the PDP’s Board of Trustees became so timorous in his state because Daniel had taken complete control of the party and the state. Worse still, the party hierarchy in Abuja accorded him more leverage than they did Obasanjo. The chief conspirator became a victim of apprentice intrigue.

What is more, when Obasanjo thought he had triumphed over Daniel when the national leadership of the party accepted his list and rejected that of Daniel, the unseen and seen hands moved against him. His daughter’s ambition to get re-elected into the Senate suffered tragic set back when she was trounced by the ACN candidate by wide margin. Iyabo became a victim of her father’s past and present.

When it mattered most for Obasanjo to use the instrumentality of power to facilitate his daughter’s victory, he discovered that he was a deserted and a sequestrated persona and, in fact an ordinary human being as different from the god he thought he was when he was in power.

The isolated case in the Southwest is Ondo state. The control of the state by Labour Party ordinarily should not bother Tinubu because of the role he played in the legal victory of Segun Mimiko. But the disturbing signals coming from Ondo State concerning the flirtatious relationship between Mimiko and the PDP call for concern. The dramatic volte-face of Mimiko was different from his apostolic sobriety when he used to visit Bourdillon for necessary consultation. Should Mimiko venture to join the PDP as it is being speculated in high quarters, he will be committing political suicide as his name will now be associated with all the evils perpetrated by the PDP in the Southwest.

It is instructive to emphasise that all the dethroned PDP governors in the Southwest had nothing to show-case than the legacies of sorrow and blood. Is this what Ondo people bargained for when they voted PDP out from their state? Let Mimiko have a rethink.

Another unfortunate fall-out is the withdrawal of Dele Alake from the senatorial race. Dele wanted to contest for the senatorial seat of Ekiti Central but eventually withdrew when the whole contest was getting too messy and personal. In an abutting statement on his withdrawal, Alake stated that politics to him was not a do-or-die affair. He said he was not ready to tarnish his integrity and professional attainments for any political scrimmage. While I am not encouraging or suggesting imposition of any kind, the Ekiti arrangement which left Dele Alake out was oblique. It was a grave irony that the man in whose presence the prophecy was revealed; the man who provided the strategic direction for the prophecy; the man who almost lost his life in the course of ensuring the fulfillment of the prophecy, was unable to achieve his own political ambition within the prophetic viscera. The strategic networking and planning for this victory began and ended at the Bourdillon pentagon and Dele Alake was the Robert Gates.

While conceding that some of those favoured by the Ekiti Arrangement were also active participants in the whole struggle, I still think it is unequitable and flagitious that Dele Alake who should be one of the beneficiaries of the prophecy ended up becoming the major casualty of the Ekiti power anomaly.

With the victory of ACN in the Southwest and the restoration nearing completion (Ondo State is still out of reach for now), Tinubu is obviously having the last laugh. When Tinubu told journalists after the victory of ACN in the Southwest that “I dey laugh o”, he was only throwing a metaphorical missile at Obasanjo with emphatic mockery, prophetic vindication and political triumphalism.

Bola Tinubu has every reason to laugh. Dele Alake has every justification to frown. But how do we reconcile this paradox with its irony? Time will tell.

•Thomas was a Senior Special Assistant to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu from 1999 to 2007.