20th February, 2022
By Idowu Akinlotan
Former Osun State governor and current Internal Affairs minister Rauf Aregbesola is not known for moderation. He showed this trait once again last week in Ilesha when he publicly denounced All Progressives Congress (APC) national leader and former governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Asiwaju Tinubu mentored Mr Aregbesola. But all the mentoring counted for nothing last week as the angry minister, frustrated by his failed ambition to take over the Lagos APC machinery and the Osun APC leadership, denounced his mentor in unprintable, venomous terms. He believes he has solid grounds for dismissing his mentor, whom he accused of deceit and pride, and went on to solicit God to punish and dethrone his mentor from his peacock throne.
During his governorship, Mr Aregbesola was the apple of Asiwaju Tinubu’s eyes. He could do no wrong, and the former Lagos governor was prepared to sacrifice anyone, anything and anybody to placate the irascible former Osun governor as often as he took umbrage. The separation between the two was so spectacular and so unexpected that there are reports a few national lawmakers and governors are said to be mediating a truce. They need not bother. Even though the dispute had been simmering since last year when Mr Aregbesola’s bid to control the nerve centre of the Lagos APC was thwarted by Asiwaju Tinubu himself, no one expected that the disagreement would boil over to untethered and unmitigated vitriol. It did, and there are speculations as to why it happened.
Mr Aregbesola is no longer influential in Lagos politics, having lost his Alimosho base. Osun is his last redoubt, and he seems dangerously close to losing influence in the state and becoming an outsider. To lose both Lagos and Osun is unimaginable and detestable to him, in fact a political death sentence he is unable to contemplate, notwithstanding his ministerial position. He is, therefore, fighting an existential battle, probably his last. Governor Gboyega Oyetola, who was for eight years his chief of staff, and has endeared himself to the people of Osun by his policies and attention, is merely caught in-between the fireworks. Mr Aregbesola, therefore, has the unpleasant and herculean task of diminishing the national and overarching influence of Asiwaju Tinubu as well as preventing Mr Oyetola from securing the candidature of the APC in yesterday’s governorship primary. He was optimistic he could pull the stunt. How he hoped to do that with a detachment of civil defence officers and a captive audience held in thrall by his sorcery is hard to understand.
When he publicly fell out with his mentor, Mr Aregbesola expected those who sympathised with Asiwaju Tinubu to come after him with the vilest language possible. Most commentators have been too shocked to do so. There were a few comments here and there, some endorsing his tactics and gloating over irreverence, and others taking sides with the APC national leader. It will serve no purpose to hate the former Osun governor, let alone abuse him roundly. He has the right to fall out with his mentor, disagree with him ideologically, even denounce his politics to the point of defecting to another party. That Asiwaju Tinubu mentored him does not mean that the former Lagos governor holds a permanent lien on his politics and person. What caused the national shock is the style by which Mr Aregbesola mediated his disapproval of his mentor, a style that now obviously reflects his own failings and flaws than the overbearing politics of the party’s national leader which he described in last week’s Ijesha and Iwo rallies as offensive and divinely punishable.
It is of course unlikely that God, whom Mr Aregbesola importuned in cavalier language last week to help destroy his chief enemy, would come to his aid by punishing the former Lagos governor. It is in fact instructive that a few days after the minister flew off the handle, the monarch of his town, Oba Adekunle Aromolaran, hosted Gov Oyetola and, without mincing words, heartily denounced the minister, assured his guest that his second term ambition was non-negotiable, and sarcastically condemned the minister’s rascality. There will be many more such denunciations, not simply because Mr Aregbesola disagreed with his mentor, but also because of the unexampled and off-putting way he vented his spleen. It is possible Asiwaju Tinubu angered his mentee, but to so immoderately hurl invectives at him, complete with scornful songs, exposes the fragility and uncouthness of the mentee more than the overbearingness of the mentor. There are many ways to skin a cat; and there are many civil and enlightened ways to part ways with friends and mentors. Other than his captive audience, few other Osun people and politicians would take sides with their former governor. They will continue to see him as uncultured, unmanageable and unconscionable.
Months before the courts finally decided in Mr Aregbesola’s favour in the election dispute between him and former Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, a top member of the Osun elite based in Abuja spoke to this writer on phone about the case. Mr Aregbesola would win, he said ruefully, but we have doubts about whether he is cultured, cosmopolitan and stable enough to justify expectations. His eight years in government proved the skepticism of the Osun elite right. There was no political, social, religious or economic experiment that Mr Aregbesola did not attempt. He knew a little of everything, from Marxism to Sufism, from democracy to fascism, and from Einstein’s theory of relativity to particle physics, and he constantly tyrannised his cabinet and legislature with half-baked theories about everything, including recondite theories about the creation of the world. He posed as a social and political liberal, but he was fundamentally a dictator and a closet religious fanatic.
It was not surprising that he left Osun a detestable figure on account of his utter lack of empathy, a major reason his party struggled to win the governorship election four years ago. He engages in revisionism by persuading himself to believe the lie that the last poll was a close call because candidate Oyetola was imposed. It is not true. Not only did Osun resent the former governor’s education and social policies, particularly his erasure of legacy schools, imposition of abominable school uniforms, and a cluttered and wasteful school feeding programme, they reviled his lack of taste and culture, his abysmal and cruel approach to payment of salaries, his delusional projects, and total lack of sense for sense. It led the state into a quandary in the last poll to the extent that they were unsure whether the bohemian, Ademola Adeleke, would not be better than anyone else, even a genius, associated with Mr Aregbesola.
It is not surprising that Mr Aregbesola, contrary to his boasts, came to grief at yesterday’s governorship primary. Given Mr Oyetola’s strides, it is inconceivable that Mr Aregbesola’s pick, Moshood Adeoti, could win. The minister’s faction of the APC, which he insists is the main body of the party, half-heartedly began psyching up themselves to use strong-arm methods. Their failure was predictable. The governor has appeared to do enough in his first term to make the second term a formality. He earned it, in the fulsome words of Oba Aromolaran, by his competence and empathy. More significantly, the governor has throughout his first term been placatory and diplomatic, ensuring that in the midst of scarcity, the dignity of Osun people was not compromised by delayed salaries and benefits. Mr Aregbesola cannot erase his own abysmal record. What legacy was he then speaking of when he railed against Mr Oyetola’s lack of fidelity to his predecessor’s programmes and policies?
Nigerians and the social media have been in uproar over the minister’s fight with Asiwaju Tinubu, who incidentally is also the first APC bigwig to declare his interest in the presidency. They use the bitter and acrimonious separation between the two as an example of the failure of the party’s national leader to rein in his protégés and retain their loyalty, a failure they say should disqualify him from seeking the presidency. The commentators have significantly been less censorious of the abject failings of the minister. Parting of ways between mentors and mentees in politics particularly is not uncommon, as Nigeria’s recent political history from the First Republic demonstrates. There will be many more.
Judging from the Interior minister’s scurrilous reiterations during a rally in Iwo, his main grouse was not even with the governor. He knew there was little he could say to convince Osun people wearied by his anarchic years in office to reject Mr Oyetola. But he knew there was so much to say when Asiwaju Tinubu is dragged into the controversy, as Edo State’s Godwin Obaseki did last year by invoking the spectre of the meddlesome godfather. Such a tactic was, however, unlikely to gain traction in Osun. Yesterday, whatever Mr Aregbesola did, his candidate was bound to lose the primary, and the minister’s demystification and isolation may be now complete. More, after the primary, Mr Oyetola has seemed to do enough to win the main July governorship poll. It will not be because of his closeness to Asiwaju Tinubu, as the Interior minister has futilely campaigned, but because he has largely met the aspirations of the people of Osun. After July, Mr Aregbesola will finally confront the fate his boisterous but heedless politics has sentenced him to, a fate which from hindsight seemed ineluctable when his mediocre administrative ability began forcing Osun State to ski off-piste.
Sadly, the Interior minister, like other Tinubu mentees, appears to think it is a mark of courage, independence and dignity, even integrity, to defy one’s mentor and call him names. Perhaps the mentor deserves some of the name-calling. But it is remarkable that Mr Aregbesola’s defiance, which is rather common with Southwest politicians, is a poignant reflection of the inability of the mentee to intelligently manage his differences with his mentor. Honour demands patience of the mentee, and civility demands a mentee should manage his separation with decorum. But neither virtue has seemed to impress ambitious Southwest politicians, nor lead them to the adoption of great principles. Potential political mentors will then wonder whether it is not counterproductive to invest in future leaders. But they must keep on investing in the future, regardless of frequent betrayal. It is their duty, a duty the likes of Mr Aregbesola must never be allowed to deter or extinguish. Perhaps out of a dozen men, the laws of probability would produce one great mentee with the character, intuition and wisdom to know when, as Otto von Bismarck once said, to touch the hem of God’s mantle, no matter how briefly, as He thunders through the pages of history.