Not many should have been surprised at the outcome of the electoral showdown in Osun State when ex-governor/current Internal Affairs minister Rauf Aregbesola lost the battle for an electoral test against his successor, Gboyega Oyetola. The result was the same as was at every stage when existing political leadership. In Osun State, the man on the defensive was not even Governor Oyetola. Rather, the man with his political reputation at stake was one of the presidential aspirants of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu.
The Osun State primary election, quite unusually, attracted massive national attention mainly because public perception of the encounter was that of a popularity test between Tinubu and his erstwhile confidant, Aregbesola. After a few decades of close collaboration, differences developed, such that even Aregbesola could not have bargained for the magnitude of his loss. Yet, his experience was just in line with past history of electoral showdowns in politics. Such past showdowns were mostly to test strength in national politics, while the electoral brawl in Osun was for the control of one out of Nigeria’s 36 states.
It was also wrong to have faulted the timing of the showdown, a year to the 2023 presidential election.
For one, 1941 was a good example: eve of a by-election to the old legislative council. Ernest Ikoli, as president of the Lagos (later Nigerian) Youth Movement, won the nomination battle. A disappointed Samuel Odesanya (later Odemo of Isara), insisted on contesting against him as an independent. They were all members of the Lagos Youth Movement: Ikoli, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Samuel Ladoke Akintola and Odesanya. Ikoli won the by-election but the division and bitterness were everlasting. Zik, for example, joined Herbert Macaulay to found NCNC in 1944, while Awolowo and Chief Akintola aligned with Chief Ajasin and founded Action Group in 1950.
Whatever the bitterness was a child’s play compared to the situation in 1953 when NCNC’s federal ministers, namely, Alfred Chuku Nwapa (Commerce and Industries) famous for his bowler hat, Eni Njoku (Mines and Power), Okoi Arikpo and E.L. Endeley, the Cameroonian, became sit-tight ministers in defiance of their party’s directive to resign in protest against Governor John McPherson’s proposed new constitution for Nigeria. The leader of Government Business in the East, Professor Eyo Ita, supported the rebels. For this, he lost a vote of no confidence on the floor of Eastern House of Assembly and had to resign. The rebels formed new parties, United National Party and National Independence Party. After suffering woeful defeat, the two parties fused to form United National Independence Party, (UNIP) with the hope of winning the 1954 federal elections in the East. But the party did not win a single seat. All the NCNC “sit-tight” former ministers lost the 1954 federal elections (from the East) into the House of Representatives in Lagos.
Shortly before the 1956 West regional elections to the House of Assembly, a crisis in the ruling Action Group led to the resignation of the erstwhile education minister, Chief S.O. Awokoya, and some members of the party, who formed a new group, Nigerian People’s Party, which did not win a single seat in the elections.
The 1958 “Zik Must Go” revolt in NCNC, led by national vice president K.O. Mbadiwe and national secretary Kola Balogun, was spectacular and gave the impression the party would sensationally suffer electoral defeat in the 1959 federal elections. While Zik survived as leader of his party, Mbadiwe formed a new party, Democratic Party of Nigeria and the Cameroons (DPNC), which also lost all the seats contested. One fun of the day was provided by the Nigerian Broadcasting Service Hausa newscaster, Christopher Emdin, who, in awarding zero for Mbadiwe’s DPNC, made many Nigerians acquire the hausa word/sentence “Ba ko daya” for the performance of the party as every election result from the East came in.
Following the parting of ways between Chief Awolowo and Chief Akintola, it was not easy to measure the resultant electoral strength of each but there was no doubt that Chief Awolowo would have the edge. Well in advance of the expiration of the emergency rule in December 1962, the Premier, Chief Akintola, obtained court judgments up to the Supreme Court upholding the decision that emergency should be followed by restoration of the suspended government. On the other hand, as soon as the British Privy Council ruled that emergency in the West should be followed by fresh general election, the Tafawa Balewa government rushed through parliament an amendment to the Nigerian constitution banning appeals from Nigeria to Privy Council and backdated the amendment to October 1960. In effect, the Privy Council ruling became ineffective.
Only one man, Ibrahim Imam, justified his showdown with previous party leadership. A former member of the Northern Peoples Congress. Imam broke away and formed the Borno Youth Movement, contested elections, won a sizable number of seats in the Northern House of Assembly without being subjected to or subjecting his opponents to any harassment.
Burden of an offspring
It is natural, in any rivalry, to exploit a seeming wide opening for a heavy, occasionally knockout, blow to be landed on the opponent. But opponents are not that careless. That seems to be the lot of Ondo State governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, and his PDP opposition. The row for the past few months had been over Akeredolu’s appointment of Babajide Akeredolu as director-general, Performance and Project Implementation Monitoring Unit.
On the surface, it is a non-issue or it is not done or has never ever been done anywhere in the world. Who said so? That is not enlightening. Why did the PDP keep quiet in the days of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and allegations were rife that one of his sons, Gbemiga Obasanjo, was not only lifting oil but was also cornering fat contracts all over the place? The issue was not whether the allegations were true or not but that the allegation was made at all. As in other parts of the world, including regimented societies, is there any law forbidding offspring of presidents, prime ministers or state governors from engaging in lawful business or serving the state? This is not a modern allowance, an indulgence as old as 1960 Independence era, which won sovereignty for many African countries.
That same year, American President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, on his inauguration, appointed his younger brother, Bobby Kennedy, as Attorney-General. This was a discretion, even indiscretion, in which the whole world aquiesced. And if the whole world consented to such development, why should it be wrong in Nigeria? Yes, we are trying to set a public moral standard higher than what obtains in Britain, United States and other countries. A tall, if not unattainable, standard. Three members of the Bush family in the United States, one after another, served as the country’s Vice President, the substantive President, Governor of the state of Texas, Governor of the State of Florida and President of the United States.
The problem with Nigerians is that, with their limited horizon, they poison the minds of innocent public that virtually every development in the country is unprecedented anywhere in the world. But there is this difference: For elective offices, every member of the Bush family attained his status on personal merit rather than be defrauded into office to succeed father or brother. Son was elected President on personal merit eight years after his father left office and the two sons were each governor of different states at different times from themselves and the tenure of their father. This should not be mixed with President Kennedy’s executive power to appoint ministers, including Attorney-General.
The situation in Nigeria is worsened by sheer hypocrisy. Critics spot nepotism only when it suits their purpose. No matter his moral standard (who gauged it anyway), Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, minister of heath in the administration of former President Ibrahim Babangida, appointed his younger brother, Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, the chairman of the board of Lagos University Teaching Hospital. Was Koye Ransome-Kuti any more Nigerian than his fellow citizens to appoint his brother to head a parastatal under him as a minister? Were the Kuti brothers in any way faulted? And if it was proper for Koye Ransome-Kuti to appoint his younger brother to a post, why should it be wrong for a state governor to appoint an offspring as one of his lieutenants?
Former British Prime Minister Jim Callaghan, on assumption of office in 1976, appointed his son-in-law, Peter Jay, as Britain’s Ambassador to the United States. Who complained anywhere in the world? Not even members of the opposition Conservative party. That was a capitalist society lacking any morality? Nigerians and argument of convenience and, indeed, double standard. In which case, the same critical Nigerians must explain their studied silence in the matter of their hero, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, memorable for harsh measures in a totally regimented society. The man, at the end of the day, realised that even his rigid ideology could not bar the need to utilise the services of his blood relation for the progress of society.
In 1989, President Castro, accused his very close friend and minister of defence, General Amaldo Ochoa, of war crimes and drug peddling. When the trial returned a guilty verdict on both charges, General Ochoa was executed. Who did Fidel Castro appoint the new defence minister? The Cuban leader chose his younger brother, Raul Castro. Was that Nigeria? Wait for this. When Fidel Castro was to retire from public life, he single-handedly appointed his younger brother, Raul Castro, as his successor.
Critics should broaden their horizon, observe and learn beyond their village events, past and present, in other parts of the world. You don’t have to be offspring to loot the treasury. But if you do, that will be a family tragedy of unlimited dimension. There are cases serving as mere decoration at Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Such cases are mentioned and adjourned indefinitely. As if to ridicule observers. Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi is on record in an interview with Channels News that a whopping sum of N5 billion donated by his (Rivers) state government to the aviation ministry some 15 years ago disappeared without trace. Amaechi said he was not making an allegation but was stating facts. The suspect is not an offspring of a state governor. Neither did he serve under his father.
On his part, Ondo State governor Akeredolu has a burden, unless his son does not mess him up. It was courageous of the governor to have appointed his son to a public office. Governor Akeredolu must also have the guts to ensure clean performance in all undertakings under his son throughout.