Unconscionable defections

Aweek in politics is like millennia on the Gregorian calendar. If you ask Adams Oshiomole’s enemies, it looked like yesterday when he was an Obioma or tailor in Kaduna. Trust Nigerians to demote you once you fall out of their favour. Officially, Oshiomole was General Secretary of the Garment and Textile union in Kaduna from where he honed his unionists skills to become the chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC.

When soldiers returned to their barracks in 1999, Oshiomole dodged his traditional unionist base - the newly formed Labour Party and for the Action Congress Party under which platform he contested the Edo governorship seat at a time his fans thought he was good candidate for the presidency. Some say he was robbed at the polls and the courts appeared to believe that too, they gave him a judicial victory and he went ahead to serve two terms as governor of his home Edo State. He also installed a protégé, Godwin Obaseki as governor, again some say against the more famous Izze Iyamu.

Two years after leaving office, Oshiomole became the chairman of the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC which could fittingly be called one of the two hands of a deformed body. Oshiomole, like his colleagues in politics are the pictorial example of a greedy hunter bent double with the weight of elephant meat on his head but finding time to dig a cricket hole with his foot. Being chairman appeared not enough for him and he was bent on clipping the wings of his crowned successor.

Things did not go according to plan however and his home base passed a vote of no confidence on him and removed him as a member. A king without a throne, Oshiomole approached the courts which affirmed his suspension. A second court reinstated him. It was a pyrrhic victory that has now been upturned by a third ruling.

Like humpty dumpty on a political wall, Oshiomole has had a great fall with ripple effects. Oshiomole’s removal pulled down his party at the state level and put his successor on a tightrope. Fearing uncertainty, Obaseki made deft calculations and has also unconscionably dumped his party after consulting known rebels of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

Playing his cards right, Obaseki is now the flagbearer of the PDP for September’s elections. If things work according to his plan, he hopes to win a second term, becoming a governor who served two terms under two opposing parties. Call it an unconscionable defection but Obaseki must be hoping to annihilate his erstwhile political godfather at least for a while.

Rejoice not at the fall of a Nigerian politician, like the Phoenix, they know how to rise from the ashes of defeat. In the 2023 political calculator, Nigerian politicians do not factor COVID-19 and the economic impact it might have to a country that runs on autopilot. Nigerian politicians believe that the chaps at WHO headquarters would deal with COVID-19 while they position themselves like vultures waiting for its victim to take its last breath.

A similar drama is playing out in Ondo State, where Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu has just parted ways with his deputy, Agboola Ajayi. Barely four years ago, the duo looked like a couple taking Catholic marriage vows when they are just church hoppers. Last week’s divorce reminds of the characteristics of church hoppers – doctrines change and so do values. Agboola handed his resignation to his boss and was riding in majesty to renounce his party membership when the state police commissioner working on strict orders from his Ogas at the Top blocked him. A verbal exchange between the two is the stuff of Nollywood docudrama.

For a lawyer, drama is something Ajayi knows how to orchestrate. As soon as he bailed himself from police blockade, he wrote himself into the history books by becoming the first deputy governor to resign, dump his party and obtain the favour of the opposition within minutes.

While Edo people go to the polls in September, their Ondo counterparts would be voting in in October. For Yahaya Bello, the generalissimo of the ruling APC, defectors are in for a big surprise. The originator of Tatatata brand of electoral fraud has nothing but pity for the defectors. Hear him: “We are going to go to Edo State and we shall win Edo state election overwhelmingly for APC. We are going to go to Ondo State and win it overwhelmingly for APC.” When a man who ‘won’ re-election on the knees of Aisha Buhari and Nasir el-Rufai and the power of bullets, thuggery and ballot snatching talks, only fools would fail to listen.

The strategy that ‘won’ Kogi was pretty scary to political neophytes. Till date, nobody has been prosecuted for the bloodletting that characterized that process. Our elders say, that when a blind man threatens to stone you, take heed – for it he does not have a stone in his pocket, he could be stepping on one.

For those asking where the people are in all these and their votes, we have a way of answering questions with questions in Nigeria. We say in pidgin English – if you ask me, na who I go ask?

One thing is certain – in all these permutations, it is not about the people when politricians strategize for their political rights. The people have a choice, fall in line with the wishes of their elected masters or get crushed blocking. Politicians don’t give up; one recycled politician is in hospital battling deadly COVID-19 but he is in contention for APC chairmanship. Just don’t forget that a gathering of apes is also called a congress.