A notable politician who is as well as spiritual and religious leader in Oyo State drew my attention to the underlisted political offices allocation among the elective and political appointees from the Ogbomoso Zone of the state which, according to him, offended and breached the constitutional provision of Federal Character and the principle of inclusiveness, as contained in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, as amended.
My immediate reaction was to pretend as if I did not see it and therefore ignored him because of two main reasons: Firstly, the incumbent Chief of Staff (CoS) to the Governor of Oyo State, Honourabke Segun Ogunwuyi, is my very good friend and we both have mutual respect for each other. No matter what anybody may say about him, Segun is a decent gentleman and I hold him in high esteem. It may not be unlikely that the towering and rising profile of Honourable Ogunwusi is the target of the political attack and gunshot contained in the said release.
Secondly, I have been equally guilty of the same unfairly political appointment configuration too as I was fond of advising my governor, Senator Abiola Adeyemi Akanji Ajimobi (SAAA)- whom I served meritoriously as the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in the state from August, 2011 to 28 May, 2015 before I voluntarily opted to exit the government- that agitations for spreading of political offices in government, though may be just and fair and constitutional, but that it is not justifiable just like the principles of state policies and objectives as contained in Part 2 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
The referenced release which has since gone viral are as stated hereunder:- “Political analysis cum observation in Ogbomoso Zone: 2, a brief to digest on how state appointments and 2023 elective position are slotted:
Chief of Staff: Christian
CPS: Christian
Commissioner for Justice: Christian
Commissioner for Education: Christian
Commissioner for works: was a Christian
SSA media: Christian
OYSEIC Member: Christian
Tourism Member: Christian
SUBEB Member: Christian
TESCOM Member: Christian
Teaching Civil Service Commission: Christian
Local Govt Service Commission: Christian
Christian Pilgrimage Board: Christian
Hajj Board: Muslim
Liason Officer: Muslim
LAUTECH Board: Christian
LAUTECh Teaching Hospital: Christian
Oyo Hospital Management Board: Christian.
LG Chairmen:
Ogbomoso North: Muslim
Ogbomoso South: Christian
Orire: Christian
Ogo Oluwa: Christian
Surelere: Christian
2023 Permutations:
Senate: Christian (Osupa Ward)
HoR: Christian (Osupa Ward)
HoA:
Ogbomoso North: Christian (Osupa Warr).
Ogbomoso South: Christian
Orire: Christian
Surulere/Ogo Oluwa: Muslim
✓Christian: 25
✓Muslim: 4.
No bad feeling, just to analyse what Muslims deserves in Ogbomoso in Oyo State PDP Government.”
Before I proceed, it is pertinent for me to state it clearly here that no human being can use religion bait to hoodwink me or to throw up any emotion or sentiment in me at all because I am fully convinced that both the Western World and the Arabs long deceived and cajoled our forebears to sack and do away with their own prophets and gods with they substituted for them with the two prophets of the Christianity and Islam that we now assimilate and take as ours without questioning and rationalisation. That is a matter for another day.
I am lucky and blessed that I have friends accross all the world known religious divides, including having atheists as friends and same goes for my politics as I have bosom friends among all the major political parties.
Indeed and in truth, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, the incumbent governor of Sokoto State, is not only the closest person to me among all those jostling to become the county’s president in 2023, but he is, in actual fact, the only one who has impacted positively on my life and career personally among all the rest.
The truth is that while Governor Tambuwal is a Fulani from the North-Western part of the country, I am a Yoruba from the south-western part of the country. Tambuwal knows me more than Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu or the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, SAN or Dr. Kayode Fayemi and/or more than the three of them altogether, yet we are all kinsmen.
Also, while I am not even sure whether I am a devoted Muslim or a pretender to be one or a fake Muslim for that matter, I know for sure that my only wife and the mother of my children and daughters, Dele, is a godly and devoted Christian of the Christian Apostolic Church extraction. So, religion to me is inconsequential and pale into insignificance.
Though, speaking for myself only, I personally don’t care if all members of the president’s kitchen cabinet or cabal and or the cabals of any state governor are members of the same family, provided they can perform, deliver on the dividends of democracy and are just, fair, compassionate and considerate in all that they do for the sake of mankind and humanity.
For crying out loud again, my dear friend, brother and soulmate, Zacch Adelabu Adedeji, our Commissioner for Finance in Oyo State between 2011 to 2015 and unarguably the best person ever to occupy that office since Oyo State was created till date, is a devoted Christian from Iwo-Ate in Ogo-Oluwa Local Government Area, yet he continously extends his milk of kindness and selfless humanitarian services that are unparalleled to all manners of men and women accross all political religious divides, localities, ethnic and tribal affiliations. Zacch’s houses in Ibadan, Iwo-Ate, Lekki and Abuja are Mecca and Jerusalem of unanimity of purposes and interests whose only consideration of those who trooped there daily know is humanity and or mankind and neither political, religion, ethnic or race divides.
Once a government exists to serve and provide beneficially for the greatest number of people, it has fulfilled its mandate. I have seen kings and royal fathers whose reign on the throne existed or are existing to serve members of their immediate family alone comprising of the king as the dather, the queen as the mother, the princes and the princesses as the sons and daughters, respectively. Since nothing lasts forever, their regimes, reigns and rules passed away and posterity is judging them accordingly or posterity shall judge them accordingly.
Ditto for political powers which are even more limited in scope to fixed tenures. Kings, ezes, obis, okparas, sultans, olus, tors, etc who are all royal fathers, don’t have fixed tenures, except where they are deposed, but must ruled till they breathed their last.
Conversely, political leaders and rulers will rule or govern for fixed tenures, as agreed or prescribed by the writ or law or the Constitution under which they were brought into office or power. Yet, we have seen sit-tight rulers who toyed and pondered with such laws as they wish and wanted to turn themselves to royal fathers too. But, as history is always a nemesis and a reckoning factor, historical books are replete with how Nature or Karma or, may be, Providence shoved such sit-tight rulers aside ingloriously and unceremoniously.
The referenced scenario in this piece may seem not too harmful, toxic and dangerous to some of us but because (if truly it is true) it is unconstitutional and must therefore be condemned by all and sundry because our Constitution prescribes and recognises the sharing of office according to what we know in Nigeria as the Federal Character formula.
All areas, localities, zones, regions, religions and even gender must be taken into consideration when offices are being allocated or shared among the constituting units making a country, a state, a zone, a district, a local government and indeed a ward within any particular polity. Hence my insistence that it is now ripe, right, fit and proper that my Ward 5 of Ibadan South-East Local Government Area of Oyo State be allowed to produce member representing Ibadan South-East State Constituency 1 in the state House of Assembly. Anti-party or not, I will support any of the two big political parties that fields a member of my ward as its candidate for that office.
I must not fail to commend the governor of Oyo State, Engineer Abiodun Oluseyi Makinde, FNSE for finally redressing our age-long suffering and injustice in Ward 5 by allowing our Honourable Oluwole Alawode to emerge as the chairman of the Ibadan South-East Local Government Area in the last OYSIEC-teleguided election, but which however liberated Ward 5 finally from our oppressors in the local government. Kudos GSM!
When my hero, leader, mentor, benefactor and confidant, Senator Abiola Adeyemi Ajimobi (may Allah, SWT continue to grant him aljannah fridaus), who unarguably was the father of the modern Oyo State and the authentic Koseleri 1, was in the saddle as the governor, quite a sizable number of us in the Executive Council, including the Archipelago himself, are indigenes of Ibadan South-East Local Government Area. We included, but not limited to, SAAA himself, my good self, Honourable Dapo Lam-Adesina, Honourable Kazeem Adedeji, Aunty Hafasat Tokunbo Oloko-Fayokun, Honourable Biyi Oloko, Late Honourable Akinyo, etc. We were members of the cabinet and for crying out loud, we saw nothing wrong with it then. Hence, I am also estopped by way of moral burden to condemn the Ogbomoso’s office formula enumerated above because I had also been guilty of same in the past.
Our great leader, Alhaji Honourable Lam Adesina, the governor of Oyo State (1999-2003) was a native of Ibadan South-East, like Senator Ajimobi who was governor between 2011 and 2019, while my highly-reverred and respected father who introduced or brought me into politics and handed me over to SAAA, the indomitable and irrepressible Senator Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja (one man army batallion), who is the newly-minted Otun Olubadan of Ibadanland who was governor between 2003 and 2007, hails from the Ibadan South-West Local Government Area, just as the quintessential Oyato Gomina himself, the Otun of the Source, the amiable and ever-cheerful Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala, JP (of blessed memory), who was the Governor between 2007 and 2011 hailed from Ogbomoso.
Giving the above-stated scenario and political configuration of Oyo State into- Ibadan City, Ibadan Greater City (known before as the Ibadan Less City), Oyo zone, Ibarapa zone, Ogbomoso zone, Oke-Ogun 1 and Oke-Ogun 2 zone, it is fitting proper, constitutional and legal that none of the zones that had produced the governor of Oyo State in the past, and that included the Ibadan Greater City because Papa Kolapo Ishola of blessed memory who was governor of Oyo State between 1991 and 1993-when the late General Sanni Abacha truncated the Third Republic following the annulment of the June 12 election-hailed from Akinyele Local Government Area, hence from Ibadan Greater City.
It therefore follows that commonsense, fairness, equity, justice, good conscience and, indeed, the natural justice should let us allow and permit only candidates from Ibarapa, Oyo, Oke-Ogun 1 and 2 only to field candidates for the governorship election in Oyo State in 2023, failing which we should not be agitating for a return of the Presidency the southern part of Nigeria in 2023. This is because we shall also lack the moral vires and justification to demand for such if we cannot allow charity to start from our home.
And, if that be the case, it pays me personally and selfishly because my friend, brother and colleague, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto, is in the race to become the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023, same office I had called on him to run for in 2015 before we foisted on ourselves the current affliction battling all of us in the presidency. U
Jesus Christ said that before you can remove the log of woods in other person’s eyes, kindly remove the speck in your own eyes too. Rotation formula in the sharing of political offices in Oyo State among the constituting cooperating units in the state is long overdue and we must start to implement it for the 2023 general election.
•Adebayo Esq, a former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in Oyo State, writes from Abuja.
