How Oshiomhole’s panel trekked from Abuja to Abeokuta

And yesterday the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say
“These are their reasons; they are natural.”
For I believe they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.”
“Indeed, it is a strange disposed time,”
to further quote the inimitable.
– William Shakespeare.

It had all the trappings of a Hollywood movie, save that it is a tragic, if not macabre one. Viewed from a related angle, features of a palace coup are also visible, enacted fully or piecemeal – “here”, and to be fully enacted “there” if Abuja is found remiss in the rapidly unfolding events of the ruling party.

For the taciturn army general turned politician at the helm of affairs of the APC-led government, the augurers are still out there plucking the entrails of an offering. Will they find a heart or not as the clock ticks towards February 2019?

For the clairvoyant, this is not totally about the tall-cap politician at the Governor’s Office in Abeokuta. Heads or tails, he has played his allotted part, creditably and will leave on May 29, 2019 with his shoulders high. He has set a standard below which residents of Ogun will not permit any governor to fall.

One question is likely to impress itself on any keen observer of the recent political happenings in the Ogun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) with regards to the governorship primary of the party: Is Nigeria sliding back to Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature, the state of self-preservation, of ‘war of all against all.’ The English philosopher, in The Leviathan, posits that man is inherently savage and brutal. He is moved to action not by his reason or intellect, but by his appetites, desires and passions. Under this condition, according to Hobbes, law and justice are absent. The life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short!”

On Saturday, September 29, 2018 – a period when expectations were high and party members upbeat following the successful presidential primary of APC on September 28, 2018 – the APC Governorship Primary Election Committee for Ogun State, headed by Mr. Muhammad Indabawa and Senator Gbenga Aluko (the Secretary) reportedly disappeared from the radar. Rather than arrive from Abuja on Saturday, September 29 for the primary slated for Sunday or early morning of Sunday (a worse case scenario), the committee members literally disappeared into thin air with no one able to trace their whereabouts!

Excuses galore! All the airlines in Abuja were on strike! Workers in the Nigerian Railway had suddenly downed tools! All the vehicles in the Nigerian capital, both private and public, all at once vanished, a prelude to the Armageddon or end of the world! The only option left for members of the APC Governorship Primary Election Committee for Ogun State was to trek from Abuja to Abeokuta in order to supervise the conduct of the primary! Sure they must arrive Ogun State weary, drenched, bedraggled, famished and too languid to conduct any election.

Indeed, they did not conduct any election. Three days after they were originally billed for Abeokuta, they allegedly went to a hotel in Lagos to carry out the bidding of their paymaster(s): Return Dapo Abiodun AT ALL COSTS as the Ogun APC candidate for the 2019 general elections. But they were poor actors. At least they could have pretended to organize a semblance of an election and then post their pre-determined results. Even this path of least resistance was too much for them to take. They just sat in their hotel rooms and allocated figures to the aspirants. Sounds surreal, a fiery tale, even the popular governor of Ogun State, Ibikunle Amosun, lost his local council to Dapo Abiodun!!! The frontline candidate, Adekunle Akinlade was also declared to have lost at home!!! Haba! What a poor script! Poor actors indeed!

Because the Abiodun group knew they could not win any election under any free and fair circumstance in Ogun, they allegedly colluded with the Muhammad Indabawa-led panel to write phony results in distant Lagos.

Unlike the purported election (which held on paper), said to be organised by the Muhammad Indabawa committee, the Tuesday October 2, 2018 election, where Hon. Adekunle Akinlade defeated all the contestants including Abiodun, was observed by INEC, and the presence of the police was visible everywhere and widely reported in the press. There are pieces of video evidence of the authentic election in all the 236 wards. The results truly reflected the strength of each of the participants across the state. Akinlade polled 190,987 votes, Mr. Jimi Lawal got 5,046 votes, Abiodun obtained 3,648 votes; Mr Bimbo Ashiru polled 898 votes, Sen. Gbenga Kaka got 833 votes; and Mr. Abayomi Hunye polled 208 votes.

Of course, the Muhammad Indabawa-led panel gave Ogun people a short end of the stick when they met the six aspirants on Monday, October 1, 2018 and announced that the election would hold the next day, on account of which schools were closed to ensure a hitch-free poll. The public did not know they had hidden agenda. But once results of the exercise arrived and it became so evident that Abiodun could not win on the electoral field, the committee went incommunicado and disappeared from the state. But then the child had already been delivered, hale and hearty and like in Lagos, the results had to be announced.

The shocking silence of some prominent leaders of the party like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Chief Segun Osoba, Governors Ajimobi and Aregbesola is too loud to be ignored. Or are they working behind-the-scenes with Amosun to redress the injustice? I dare say, silence in this case is never golden. The daylight election robbery foisted on Ogun by the Indabawa committee and the National Working Committee must not be allowed to stand. If they support the primary that produced Sanwo-Olu in Lagos, integrity demands they should support the even more convincing one in Ogun that produced Akinlade. There should be no case of double standard?

2023 is far, yet it is part of the calculation of the political class. Indeed, it is alleged that 2023 is at the heart of the needless crises that have engulfed APC in at least nine states of the federation, leading to rumours and speculations of mass defection in those states.

Is it over for APC as the ruling party in Ogun since the overwhelming majority of party men cast their votes for Hon Akinlade? Will justice prevail? Will President Buhari act now in the interest of justice and fairness, as cast iron evidence points to the fact that there was no election that produced Abiodun as the candidate of APC?

Will the Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC) return the stolen mandate to the rightful owner, Akinlade, before it is too late? Is this the last pointer to the alleged hidden plan to pull the rug from under the feet of Buhari ahead of the February 2019 presidential polls? These are troubling times indeed!

One can only hope it is not Buhari that is being led to the slaughter-slab by the APC undertaker and his backers. We watched a close scenario in 2011. Amosun has virtually finished his term in office. He has nothing to lose. So the present struggle cannot be said to be about Amosun. But injustice somewhere is injustice everywhere. Therefore, because of our shared humanity, all men of conscience should rise to join Amosun in the struggle to restore justice to the victim, Hon Akinlade, who overwhelmingly won the APC Ogun governorship primary election. Silence at this period cannot be golden.
Dr. Oreniyi, a political analyst, wrote from Ijebu Ode, Ogun State.