Oyegun: Playing the nice man

At 77, His Excellency, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun should no longer be afraid of the face of a painted devil. He has seen so many faces, been to many places and tasted the sweet and sour sides of life. He should therefore not be intimidated by any circumstance or person.

Chief Oyegun, left public service as permanent secretary. He then tried his hands in business and found that it takes more than pen and paper to make a successful business. His brief tenure as governor of Edo State, however, exposed him to the realities of executive power. Although the short span did not leave enough room to assess the man’s managerial competence, not much was heard of his personal initiatives after.

However, Oyegun got back his voice when he was made chairman of the Technical Working Committee of Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reform (CODER), a brainchild of former Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu. Finding himself in the CODER committee helped to wean Oyegun away from the trauma of abridged life in the government house.

It was from that quiet corner of working towards a better electoral system and behaviour in Nigeria that the former Edo governor was pushed to become the first elected national chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), on June 13, 2014.

Having been aided to become the first substantive national chairman of the conglomeration of APC, Oyegun seems to be struggling to grapple with the challenges of uniting the disparate crowd that make up the party. Most often, he finds himself torn between pleasing everybody and not offending the powerful members of the party.

The snag became worse ever since small talks about his possible sack from the chair of APC started featuring among leaders of the party. Harassed by the possibility that his perceived aloof style of leadership could cost him the office, Oyegun devised new tactics. And believing like the party, that talk could be the key to power, the national chairman craved every opportunity to sound much like the party’s former spokesman.

But even as he was eminently qualified to advertise and defend the party through public communication, Oyegun, who graduated in Economics from the great University of Ibadan, suffered from the economy of style as his public interventions most times beggar tact.

For instance, it was the effort to serve as the party’s official voice that hot the old man into a shouting match with a younger member of the party’s National Working Committee, who ordinarily was in line to step into the shoes of the former spokesman.

Sounding much like a military apologist, Oyegun barred the young man from speaking for the party, claiming that though being next in rank to the former spokesman, the young deputy had interests that run parallel to those of the party and its owners. The chairman said: “Timi Frank does not represent or speak for the party. He is a nice young man but unfortunately, he has interest, which goes beyond the party. And if you have that you can’t speak for the party. We want somebody who is totally loyal to the party.”

But the younger party official discovered that the reputation and ranking of the ruling party was inclined towards the downward plane, due to the inability of the national chairman to take charge.  “If my national chairman was in charge, the division within the party’s National Assembly caucus would have been resolved. If he was in charge, the crises within the party, especially in Kano, Bayelsa, Kogi and Adamawa would not be there,” the young man declared, stressing that the challenges in APC could be traced to Oyegun’s desire to be national chairman and party’s publicity secretary at the same time. In the verbal warfare, it was clear that composure and contrition were lacking.

And as if to prove the party’s deputy national publicity secretary right that the chairman’s troubles are tongue-related, the national chairman fouled national political air by asserting that APC was ready to sacrifice the number three position, held by Senator Bukola Saraki, as evidence of change.  “For change to take place there is price you have to pay; so losing the position may be sacrifice for change,” he stated.

When the wind of public opinion seemed to blow ferociously against his stand, the national chairman decided to qualify the meaning of his avowals. He said there was no way APC would lose the number three position on the national protocol list even if the incumbent president of senate was removed.

But those who know Oyegun from close quarters say that as a gentle and easy going man that he is; his desire to survive in the midst of hawks and desperadoes hurts his natural mien. It was that natural goodness that endears him to many, particularly his choice as running mate to Ibrahim Shekarau in the 2011 presidential election on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).

Oyegun’s puzzling tendency for ambivalence has reached new heights. At one point he complained that the party was broke, alluding to the lack of funding from the party bigwigs. At another breath he told journalists that “we can’t go into public treasury to take money for funding the party; that is change…So, the change is even affecting the party.”

And in this alacrity to float with every tendency, the party leader leaves traces of blunder. In Kogi, he tarried for the wind, not the still small voice, but the official tenor before he cast his vote on what should be the best way to inherit the votes cast for a dead man, who had a next of kin.

Due to the popular perception then that even forces of nature were responding to the body language of a new Sheriff in town, Oyegun, may have decided to be seen as an accurate interpreter of body language. The party, which he leads, is yet to recover from the scars of that confounding judgment that alienated wisdom in Kogi.

Not long after, Bayelsa saw the hallmarks of a confused captain. He depended on second guesses to cancel the governorship primary and call for a repeat. Later, when he was to canvass for votes for the party candidate, Oyegun revealed that the two neighbouring states of Rivers and Bayelsa were financially ‘too strategic’ to be left in the hands of opposition.

For his haste to speak, it did not take long before party leaders stopped taking him serious; believing rather that the next best way to temper his outbursts was to set up a committee of elders to advise and decide for the party on which paths to take on crucial matters.

But instead of keeping to his jokes within the precincts of 44 Blantyre Street, Oyegun began another verbal insurrection by joining issues with an eminent member of the APC. Forgetting that the fourth republic vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, was speaking as a citizen of the country under his fundamental and constitutional rights, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, took citizen Atiku on. He disclosed that APC “is not focused on restructuring the country at the moment”, as if to say that he is the oracle of the party.

The former vice president had in his remarks at a book launch endorsed “agitations by many right-thinking Nigerians call for a restructuring and a renewal of our federation to make it less centralised, less suffocating and less dictatorial in the affairs of our country’s constituent units and localities.” With those words, Atiku threw his weight behind the call for restructuring of the country.

Oyegun’s response was that “President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is presently preoccupied with rebuilding the economy, creating jobs and ensuring the security of lives and property” than to talk of restructuring.

Denoting the call for restructuring as the equivalence of “unnecessary diversion”, the national chairman brought on his legendary ambivalence, when he said: “Nothing is wrong with the idea but at this time, it is best for us to concentrate on our priorities. As a party, our priority right now is to rebuild the economy, create jobs and deal with the security problems at hand.”

Perhaps, what every Nigerian knows that Oyegun seems not to know is that he has been trying his best to be seen as the president’s lackey.

Oyegun would not convince Nigerians that if this were to be an election year, his response to Atiku’s call on the state of the nation represents the voice of APC’s chief salesman. Coming from the South, Oyegun knows that what the country urgently needs is to restructure and quell the uprisings springing all over the place.

But he seems bent on pleasing the conservatives within his party.

Oyegun’s stand may have pleased his paymasters, but he has greatly injured the reputation of his party and his standing as its national chairman. What is more, the former governor of Edo State has demonstrated that living in denial is a better way of confronting socio-economic challenges.