~Debo Akinbami, PhD
Ondo State, latterly, has been in the news, for strange reasons. The national secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) removed the names of national assembly candidates believed to be loyal to Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, with a view to undermine his interests in the processes leading toward the 11th National Assembly. It was a sordid sabotage spurred by maneuvers from home-grown pirates.
Actors at the party’s national secretariat yielded to malicious forces, citing petitions from aggrieved aspirants in the post-primary appeal, so that the names of candidates who legitimately participated in the primary election were jettisoned for aspirants absent from the elections conducted by the party’s own committee and witnessed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), without the benefit of fair hearing.
The candidates whose names were unscrupulously delisted have not, in fact, sinned. Their bruises benefited from frontally identifying with the Governor, who, by the party’s own admission, is the political leader of the state. The candidates were sacrificed for failing to join forces with renegades who have swore to demarket, disrespect and de-emphasize the governor’s preeminent position, towards ulterior ends.
Meanwhile, the governor’s political adversaries are, in their conceit, clever. They built a subterfuge and sold it as substance, attracting buyers across the board. They branded and bandied the fraud as exceeding love for Tinubu. In a well coordinated scheme, Governor Aiyedatiwa was sufficiently portrayed as having lukewarm love for the President, and the rebels labeled as the authentic Tinubu lovers in the presidential book.
The single story was sold to the men who stand in proximity to the president’s ears, whose opinion constitutes a presidential verdict. Their biases become the truth, no matter the size of superior facts. To further soil the governor’s image, false sins were listed about him, to wit: that Aiyedatiwa refused to inherit the enemies of his predecessor; he failed to compensate those who sought to oust him as deputy governor. He did not join the charlatans to receive a pompous minister at the airport.
The governor’s bogus sin list is a long one. He did not die with his boss; he disallowed usurpers to hijack the party’s structure from him; failed to bear a pall for the wild widow. They claim Aiyedatiwa serially disregards party elders. He’s parsimonious with public funds; dominates the stakeholders and refuses to devolve part of his powers to the minister who daily devises his fall.
The weirder part of the hoax is even that the sworn enemies of former Governor Akeredolu are now leading his disciples in mutual disaffection for Aiyedatiwa. To this extent, all Ondo residents are genuine lovers of President Tinubu except Governor Aiyedatiwa and those who fail to fight him. These lies laid the wobble
foundation for what bellied the intra-party discontent, ahead of the fraught primary elections.
Under this sort of compromised climate, the shadow election was held. And, while the party held her primaries, rather than participate to prove popularity, some aspirants ran to Abuja to profess superior love for President Tinubu, and, in the end, supplanted candidates whose names were pronounced as winners from legitimate elections. Whatever happens, thenceforth, Aiyedatiwa has since taken all in stride while daily recommitting himself to the goal of returning President Tinubu for another term.
Ahead of the lies, Governor Aiyedatiwa has adopted Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the party’s sole candidate in Ondo State. To suppose that Aiyedatiwa loves the President less is a lie for the credulous class. It’s all a game. What is not said is the truth that, behind the fraud of Tinubu’s love is a veiled political ambition. While the ambition to be governor is not a problem, the subterfuge is; inciting the people against a sitting governor under the guise of being the president’s superior lover is mischievous.
The governor of Ondo State is an incurable party person and a spirited supporter of President Tinubu. He puts all things in place to ensure stupendous win for his party. He sits on a sturdy governmental and political structure that is difficult to either compare or contend with, and he is deploying all to Tinubu’s advantage. Other jetsams in the cloak of support groups are nothing when compared to the weight of government for a cause. Aiyedatiwa holds the aces; the subterfuge, the lies in Tinubu’s name, should cease forthwith.
***Dr. Akinbami, a journalism teacher at Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba Akoko, writes from Igboegunrin.