Get Guardian on GoogleBy Alade Rotimi-John
Dance virtuoso and Governor of Osun State, Jackson Nurudeen Ademola Adeleke has, these four or so years, entertained a disbelieving but amused nation with his vintage oratorio and dance steps everywhere he goes. Many serious-minded people have thought him obscene or clownish particularly as he makes no difference between his official engagements and his private outings respecting his schoolboy-like gyration acts. But Adeleke is generally admired as he is perceived to have demystified the mystique of officialdom.
The people of Osun State have welcomed Governor Adeleke’s tenure as a refreshing succession to the austere, severe and cheerless administration of Chief Adegboyega Oyetola and to the boisterously polemical tenure of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola before it.
The Osun country – noted as a generally rustic demography – has continued to be preoccupied with an age-old ethic for political independence respecting thought and action, and a concern for private or self-actualisation. The people appear, as if conceding to the poetic declaration of Joe Wallace regarding the place of Canada vis-a-vis her intimidating neighbour that “Ours is a sovereign nation/ Bows to no foreign will”. The people’s zest for politics and political activities is legendary. They are always at their best during political electioneering seasons. Their political self-expression is buoyed by their profound sense of history – a history of the triumph of self-will over invading hegemonic foes.
Adeleke had ridden on the horseback of this proud sense of history to deliver a historic defeat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its intimidating machinery of a putative federal might, a security overreach, and an army of invidious party hacks in the 15th of August, 2026 Osun State governorship election. But Adeleke now seems poised to reverse the gains of the sacrifices of the people regarding the untold harassment and unspeakable intimidation they suffered, and of the deaths of a yet-to-be identified number of persons in the patriotic pursuit of a regime of a free and fair election. A general palpable sense of a combustible state of affairs had pervaded the entire Osun atmosphere. It was felt nationwide.
For reasons that can only be understood as banal or as thoroughly lacking in thought, Adeleke has identified as the totem at whose feet he must worship, the self-same set of people whom his people valiantly fought against to secure a resounding victory for him. He has found a place for himself as an altar boy in the adversary’s sanctuary. He is the president’s poster boy in Osun, programmed to ensure the president’s acceptability among the people of Osun State. He must deliver. A tall order, given the circumstances!
For Adeleke, a support for the second term bid of President Tinubu is sacrosanct; it is supportable by the reason of kinship ties and of ethnic logic. Tinubu is Adeleke’s tribesman, being a Yoruba man like himself. Further, Tinubu’s alleged ancestral home is Osun State where Adeleke presides as governor. The political underpinnings respecting an ideological difference, no matter how tenuous, between the party that gave him victory and the president’s all-conquering quest are, for Adeleke, no moment. They are not worthy of consideration.
In place of patriotic statecraft, Adeleke has presented his people the evidence of an articulated political jobbery. This is visibly antithetical to the vigorously-unyielding spirit of the revered ancestors of Osun who have been historically noted to be cautious, shrewd, unequivocal, and ideologically clear.
It must be noted that politicians have but one principle; that of self-interest, which situates them properly in the inevitable follow-up scheme of lying, hypocrisy, and cowardice.
Adeleke’s attempt to award the trophy of his victory to the people’s adversaries has understandably drawn the flak of the ordinary people of Osun State. They have said in no uncertain verbiage that Adeleke is on his own. He is free to choose a presidential candidate of his fancy just as the people are able to freely exercise their fundamental right of choice regarding candidates for election. The people say they are not duty-bound to follow the governor willy-nilly or blindly. Our leaders will seem to have a poor estimation of their fellow countrymen.
Granted that the great mass of the electorate are ignorant, it is proper still for their leaders to credit them with some acumen and perceive them as clearheaded enough to rather do business with some mean, vulgar fellow than with some shameless breed of speculators. To the credit of the people, they have become scornful of political wiliness, particularly the one thrown at their faces. How the people wish they could trust their leaders! Thankfully, for betraying the people’s trust, the political demise of wily leaders is sure; it is predictable. They are often seen to retire prematurely to private life, even as a thoroughly used-up character.
The struggle to completely throw off the yoke of the ultra conservative APC in Osun State may have received an own-goal setback even as men whose characters are detestable are today degrading the political space by their putrid presence. It is incredibly unthinkable and troubling too how men who otherwise have a modicum of esteemed pedigree, a passable character and forgivable infractions could fatally help to swell the ranks of the meanest kind of office-holders, office-seekers, political jobbers and contractors, pimps, mafoisos, and grisly goons.
Adeleke has unwittingly danced himself into the jaws of unmitigated irrelevance. He has not allowed his dexterous dance steps to be his guide but his accomplice. He has allowed the contrast between him and Oyetola, for instance, to be blurred by association. His bon homie and Oyetola’s publicly-noted hubris are today considered equable or, at best, not easily differentiable one from the other. Thanks to Adeleke’s ill-exercised discretion.
Within the Nigerian political and cultural tradition, the fickle abandonment of a popular, even if, emblematic effort or vision is generally denounced. It is not a mere vague metaphor that such an abrupt change of position conveys an impression somehow similar to the effects of the betrayers of the vision of ages gone by. We are largely left with the insipid or uninspiring biographies of such personages and of the poor ethical and emotional choices they made. In the end, we come to the grave conclusion that they have been misguided by their art, their craft, their hubris or by their overestimation of their real worth.
Adeleke’s dance mastery which ought to have led him inexorably to the apogee of his political career for its peculiar distinctiveness is today his famished road to golgotha. Adeleke is dancing himself away from the warm embrace of his people; the ones who valiantly averted a looming shame and heroically translated it into a confounding story of folk victory. Adeleke is dancing himself into oblivion where his erstwhile good deeds will be consumed by a dim memory – a blocked off residue of the past.
What Adeleke has presented us with is a fateful picture of an up and coming but indiscreet star in the horizon, sleepwalking himself into a decadent, buccaneering, and brutal constellation where it will be dimmed, vanquished or consumed. He may never recover.
Rotimi-John, a lawyer and commentator on public affairs, is the Secretary-General of Afenifere.
