Opinion
The Abiola Ajimobi I knew | By Adeolu Akande
Senator Abiola Ajimobi went the way of all flesh on June 25, 2020. I had the privilege of serving as Chief of Staff to Governor Ajimobi in the first half of his first term in office. I parted ways with him politically some years ago.
Nevertheless, I feel obliged to record my knowledge of him for posterity.
I met Senator Ajimobi for the first time in 2006. I was involved in a project to develop a blueprint for the development of Nigeria, and I was detailed to invite Senator Ajimobi who was then the Chairman of Senate Committee on Environment to speak on the subject. We related briefly again shortly after at the formation of the Advanced Congress of Democrats (ACD) before he finally opted to contest the 2007 gubernatorial election on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). In 2009, we worked more closely as he struggled to reclaim the mandate he believed he won in the 2007 election. We met virtually every evening in Abuja and threw our contacts into the effort to reclaim the mandate. Expectedly, some of the meetings segued into a discussion about the path to the development of Oyo State, and there was absolutely no doubt that he was prepared to give the state a different paradigm of leadership. The quest for the mandate also brought out his innate qualities as an organiser and a believer in probity.
I recall a particular incident. One of the associates in the effort to reclaim the mandate had introduced Senator Ajimobi to a prominent Nigerian. At the meeting held in the Abuja residence of the businessman, he left no one in doubt of his capacity to deliver on the project as he made telephone calls to some individuals who were to play a critical role in the determination of the matter. But this was to be at a cost. Ajimobi was to sign an Irrevocable Standing Order for the deduction of N1.5 Billion from the monthly federal allocation to the state for one year as fee for the service. Even with the almost absolute assurance that he would become the Governor, he declined. As we drove out of the Asokoro residence of the highly connected businessman, one of those in the backseat of the car exasperatingly wondered aloud “is this man (Ajimobi) ok?. It was later that I realised that Ajimobi heard the offensive comment but chose to ignore it. “Is this how they govern Nigeria?,” he repeatedly asked as he told the contact who took us to the businessman that he would never sign off the money of the state to become the Governor. When we returned home to review the meeting, he insisted that although he craved the office of Governor, he would not sign off the resources of the state to satisfy his ambition. He recalled how he was one of the very few senators who rejected the N50 Million offer to amend the constitution to remove the tenure limit on the office of the president in 2006 and how much he knew his father would be proud of him in his grave.
It was judgement day in 2009. We crowded into the living room of one of his supporters to watch the television broadcast of the judgement of the Court of Appeal, which was the final court in gubernatorial disputes at the time. There was a power outage, and we hurriedly headed to the residence of another of Ajimobi’s supporters, on the other side of Abuja. Within five minutes of the commencement of the judgement, it was evident that we had lost the case. It was a deeply humbling and disconcerting experience to see adults crying and howling as the reality dawned on all of us. Down the drain went the ambitions and aspirations of many of us who were already occupying positions in the imaginary government. The only person who remained calm was Ajimobi as he joked about the contorted mouths of crying adults. He cheered us up with jokes and assurances that we lost because it was not yet God’s time for him to be Governor.
At the next meeting of the group, he came with his diary and his notes on why he thought we lost the case. He shared his ideas about what we needed to begin to do in earnest if we were going to win in the next election. I recall that the most important of the factors were the choice of political party and funds for political engagement. He argued that if he had contested on the platform of either of the biggest parties of the time, the PDP and AC, he would have either won at the polls or successfully reclaimed his mandate in the court. He went to work immediately and got himself on the ticket of the Action Congress (AC) for the 2011 gubernatorial election. He never considered the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) at any point in his political career because he said his father, as a progressive, will never forgive him if he joined the PDP, which he regarded as a conservative party.
ELECTION AND THE FORMATION OF THE AJUMOSE GOVERNMENT
Ajimobi’s prognosis of the 2011 elections was correct with prophetic exactitude. He was a very strategic person. He put together the building blocks of his plans years ahead of the destination. He won the election and went on to form his government. I worked with him closely in the weeks leading to the election. He was a man committed to endless meetings. He resumed at every meeting with his diary full of notes from interactions with politicians and power brokers in the state and as I later found out, his nightly reflections. He was never shy of revisiting issues and changing his position in the face of superior logic. He was good at defining problems and proffering solutions. “You can solve any problem if you define it accurately. If need be, you only need to re-context the problem”, he would say.
He interviewed many people for the principal offices in his government, notably those of Secretary to the Government, Chief of Staff, Head of Service, Commissioner for Finance, Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Commissioner for Works and Commissioner for Education, among others. I sat in on some of the meetings as I played the role of coordinator of the nascent Governor’s Office in his Oluyole Estate residence. For each of the offices, he had defined the roles he would assign to them and the personal qualities he wanted in the appointees. For the appointment of Commissioners, Special Advisers and Senior Special Assistants, he requested the party at the local government level to make nominations into a pool from which he filled the offices. He ended up with over 1000 Curricula Vitae to scrutinise to fill those offices. I recall that on the deadline he set for himself on the appointment of commissioners, we worked in the office till 5.30 a.m. He made telephone calls to some nominees in those early hours to make clarifications on their CVs. Many of the successful nominees made the list because the Governor was impressed that they could make coherent clarifications in those hours of the day, where many others didn’t pick their calls or had switched off their phones. In one particular instance, he changed his choice for an office because someone unknown to him had presented an incredibly intimidating CV. At about 3 a.m., he put a call to the nominee and the nominee unexpectedly picked his call. The Governor introduced himself and sought clarification on some of the claims in the CV. Then he asked him why he was awake at that hour of the day, and the nominee responded that he had a deadline to meet in another two days but preferred to complete his task ahead of time. He offered him the post immediately. When we reminded him that he had rejected some other nominees because he claimed to have made up his mind on someone for that office, which was truly critical to his priorities, he retorted “Kama paro fun’rawa, CV eyan wa o da to eleyi, A ma wa nkan mi fun. (Don’t let us deceive ourselves; the CV of my preferred candidate is not as good as that of this person. We will give our candidate something else.”)
He ended up with an outstanding cabinet and one of the most resourceful teams I have ever worked with. Cabinet meetings were always very engaging, and members had to work hard on their papers before coming into the chambers for presentation. He introduced many members to PowerPoint and the rudiments of high-level presentations. He abhorred mediocrity and ruffled the feathers of some members with his blunt and brutal assessments. When the exigencies of politics made it ill-advised to remove some commissioners, he introduced the committee system to carry out some assignment which he felt one or two members of the cabinet could not successfully carry out.
He came into government with a clear vision to return Oyo State to her previous position as a major economic player in the Nigerian federation. To accomplish this, his priorities were security, infrastructure development, functional free education and revitalisation of agriculture with emphasis on large-scale commercial farming driven by the private sector. He set up a policy advisory council with members drawn from the academia and the private sector. He prioritised the Ibadan Circular Road that was initiated by Governor Rasidi Ladoja and sought to execute it in a modular form beginning from the Lagos-Ibadan
Express Road /Ibadan-Ife Road axis. It was to be executed by a private investor, and the proceeds from the toll collection would be deployed to develop the second half of the project. He planned to open up the state through the dualisation of entry- points to the state capital and major towns in the state. He placed the establishment of a technical university on the same pedestal and envisioned the resolution of the crisis between Osun and Oyo States on the ownership of Ladoke Akintola University. He was part of the initiative to make Asiwaju Bola Tinubu the Chancellor of the University believing that being the political leader of the incumbent governors of both states, he could authoritatively help resolve the crisis on the matter.
HIS WORK ETHIC
He was a hard taskmaster who expected everyone to work at his speed and with the same attention to detail. He worked late into the night. He came to the office about 9 a.m. and hardly left before midnight to consult with critical stakeholders in the state on issues under consideration or resume his daily nightly meetings at the Government House. What many regarded as one of his shortcomings early in the administration was his preference for endless meetings. Ajimobi would schedule meetings with different groups on the same matter even when commissioners felt the issues were not as complex as to warrant so many meetings. He always argued that the essence of such meetings was not only to arrive at a consensus but to let the people know that government decisions were taken after due consultation. He had an incredible energy for meetings and an equally incredible intellect to synthesize diverse and divergent outcomes of such meetings.
He was an avid reader. His experience at Shell Petroleum exposed him to many specialties, and he complemented the knowledge by reading wide. He would take his time to read on any subject under the consideration of government and was never shy of asking for the guidance of those he believed were knowledgeable in the field. Even before commissioners at cabinet meetings, he would place calls to governors in other states who had tackled the problems before and ask them how they handled such situations. In many instances, he dispatched his commissioners and top officials to other states to understudy how certain programmes were executed. I recall when we attended the launch of the OponImo project in Osun State. He expressed his displeasure and agony sitting through such a laudable programme while he would have preferred to host the other states as the initiator of such a project. “Anyway, if you cannot initiate such a programme, you should at the minimum be able to replicate it. At least, let us know we are paying you for something”, he charged openly at his commissioners in the Coaster bus taking members of the cabinet back to Ibadan from the Osun State capital. He sent his commissioner and top officials to Lagos State to understudy town planning and housing estate development. He led a delegation to Rivers and Imo States to understudy certain programmes of the states. He asked his commissioners to replicate and improve upon the initiative on the management of the property ownership in Ogun State among many others. Beyond Governors, he was always in constant touch with critical stakeholders in decision making. He never shied away from contacting people with requisite academic and professional experience to guide his thoughts on any matter he was contemplating. One of such people that he was always in contact with was the late Alhaji Arisekola Alao, the highly influential Aare Musulumi of Yorubaland. We visited his Oluwo Nla residence regularly at night where the Governor had scheduled meetings with prominent traditional rulers and indigenes of the state on contentious issues before the government.
HIS CAPACITY TO SAY “NO”
One major attribute of Ajimobi was his ability to look many prominent people in the eye and say “No” to their requests. His argument was always that he would be shortchanging the people of the state if he acceded to many of such requests, which he considered self-serving. I recall when some elders visited him in the Governor’s Office with what they called an “urgent and important message”. The message was that Ibadan people were not happy with his government over certain issues, which they outlined. “Who are the Ibadan people that are angry?” he asked them in Yoruba language and before they could answer, he continued,” I am an Ibadan man and I am not angry with the government”. He dismissed their requests, which he said were disguised in the garb of Ibadan interest whereas they were purely personal. On one other occasion, in the aftermath of the sacking of some civil servants who were indicted for falsifying their academic and birth certificates, some elders came to complain that majority of those sacked were from Ibadan. He looked at them for a moment and replied: “Baba, you know that majority of the civil servants are from Ibadan, and by law of proportion, they will form a larger percentage of those we are sacking especially if the same proportion is reflected in the number of those who committed the offence.
Besides, I’m sorry to ask, Baba, did they get the approval of Ibadan people before they falsified their certificates?Once,when some elders from the Oke Ogun area of the state met the governor about the underdevelopment of the area, he told them that there were some areas in Ibadan that were so underdeveloped that they would need 50 years of government attention to attain the same level of development in parts of Oke Ogun. It was not unusual to witness the Governor half prostrating for elders but yet affirming his rejection of their request at the same time. “E ma binu sir. Ko seese sir” (Don’t be angry sir, I cannot accede to your request, sir), he would say as he would repeatedly bow to the elders.
HIS GIFT OF THE GAB
Ajimobi had a facility for words. This was one of his strongest strengths. As Chief of Staff, it was my responsibility to prepare his Talking Points ahead of any major public appearance, where we reckoned that a formal speech was not necessary or when he so directed. I did this in concert with the relevant ministry or government agency and the duo of the Special Assistant (Media and Publicity), Dr Festus Adedayo and Senior Special Assistant (Public Affairs), Mr Toye Arulogun. The Governor would go through such notes shortly before stepping out of his office for the event if within the Government Secretariat or in his car while driving to the event. Every single time, he would leave us wondering whether he had previous knowledge of the event and had done extensive research on the subject. He would recall relevant life experiences, throw in related jokes and pass innuendos about some of the important dignitaries in the audience and then delve into the subject with the depth and dexterity of an expert in that field.
Ajimobi was a faithful student of Thomas Huxley, the 19th century English biologist famous for his maxim: “Learn something about everything and everything about something”
HIS UBIQUITOUS AGBADA
Ajimobi was a sartorialist. He was always impeccably dressed and eager to regale in the quality of his appearance. He tutored me on the importance of always having a cap on caftan each time I adorn one. He was always blunt to chastise a government official who appeared shabilly and once looked into the eye of a top official and asked him if he had just finished a bowl of fish. “ It is most appropriate to make utterances after a bowl of fish because you will leave the whole environment smelling”, he mildly complained when the official answered in affirmation. I remember many occasions when the Governor was reminded in the wee hours of the day to change from his flowing Agbada, and he would respond that he needed the Agbada to look good for his meetings, even at 3 a.m! He was always conscious of his stature and the need to look good at all times. “I have a small stature, and I am always the smallest in every gathering. What has helped me is my intellect and hard work”, he would say. He cared about his image and treated the media with particular respect. Although his automatic response to any request for money was a frowning “No”, he was always ready to accommodate requests of the media department and was regularly available to play role of a good host to visiting journalists to the state.
HIS JOKES
Ajimobi was a natural raconteur. He enjoyed jokes and always had bubbling belly laughs at good jokes. He equally liked to unwind after a hectic day. “Let us share a bottle of wine”, he would begin a process that could lead to hours of debates, controversies and brainstorming. He would have a good laugh when a guest or a cabinet member didn’t know what glass to use for which drink. “This is because you worked with …B and Sons (he would insert the name of an indigenous company in Ibadan to provoke protests from Ibadan businessmen in attendance). He would throw jabs at guests who became loose-tongued after a few glasses of wine. He would teach a guest which cutlery to use for which food, revealing how he had to learn all of this while he worked with Shell Petroleum.” I didn’t work with B and Sons..”, provoking another round of protest from indigenous Ibadan businessmen in attendance and the Governor would burst into hilarious laughter. He was good at putting people at ease. He would throw banter at the dress sense of officials, helping them to adorn the dress appropriately, regaling his audience how Mr Akanbi, his boss at National Oil, taught him the same lesson.
His sparring partner in many of his jokes was his wife whom he adoringly called “Florie”. Once in the early days of the administration, he returned home and surged forward to give his wife, who had come to the doorstep to receive him, a kiss. She walked away as if embarrassed by the gesture in the presence of aides in tow of the governor and the Governor retorted,” you mean you want to reject an executive kiss?; How many women have the privilege of being kissed by a governor”. The wife said he was right and officials who were in the Governor’s tow looked away, not knowing whether the kiss took place or not…
He had two favourite jokes. The first was about his wife setting up a motherless babies home. He always recalled telling his wife that while he appreciated the philanthropy behind the gesture, he had advised her to let him procreate the babies while she took care of them. “At least we will know their father if we don’t know their mothers!”, he would say to a bemused look from the wife.
His other favourite joke was about an armed robbery operation. The robbers had invaded a house, and the leader of the gang took instant notice of an expensive necklace on the lady of the house. At the end of the operation, the gang leader took an inventory of their loot but could not find the expensive necklace. He confronted the lady and she pointed at the member of the gang who yanked the necklace off her neck. They searched the culprit and found the necklace on him. In anger, the gang leader charged at him: “Awa wa sise, iwo wa jale!” (What impudence! We came here to work, and you are here stealing!).
Like every mortal, Governor Ajimobi had his flaws and weaknesses. May God forgive his sins, admit him to Al-jannah Firdaus and grant the family the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss.
Professor Akande, chairman of the board of commissioners of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), was chief of staff to Governor Ajimobi between June 2011 and September 2013.
Former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, is a restless and courageous politician. However, he ought to have learned political patience from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who spent years building a viable political alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when its stalwarts boasted that they would rule Nigeria for 64 years.
Cleverly, Tinubu abandoned the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to establish another political platform, the Action Congress (AC), which later metamorphosed into the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
In collaboration with other political groups—including the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and some elements of the PDP—the All Progressives Congress (APC) was born, with El-Rufai as one of its foundation members. Ultimately, the APC wrestled power from the PDP, truncating its 64-year dominance plan.
For El-Rufai to abandon the APC now is nothing short of political suicide, as Tinubu is strategically positioned to secure a second term with an array of both seen and unseen political foot soldiers.
The Social Democratic Party (SDP), as a political entity, effectively died with the late Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola. Any attempt to resurrect it is an exercise in futility.
For the sake of argument, let’s consider a hypothetical scenario: Suppose another southern politician is fielded in 2027 and wins the election. Even if he signs an agreement to serve only one term, political realities could shift, and he may seek another four years.
If anyone doubts this, they should ask former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. The simple implication of this is that President Tinubu remains the best candidate for northern politicians seeking a power shift back to the North in 2031—at which point El-Rufai could have been one of the credible northern contenders for the presidency.
When Ebenezer Babatope (Ebino Topsy), a staunch Awoist, chose to serve in General Sani Abacha’s regime, he later reflected on his decision, saying: “I have eaten the forbidden fruit, and it will haunt me till the end of my life.”
By abandoning the APC for another political party, El-Rufai has also eaten the forbidden fruit. Only time will tell if it will haunt him or not.
However, for some of the political leaders already contacted from the South West, supporting any party against President Tinubu would be akin to Judas Iscariot’s betrayal—a reputation no serious South West politician would want to bear.
El-Rufai’s departure from the APC to SDP is nothing short of a suicidal political move, reminiscent of Harakiri.
Prof. Adeniyi Olowofela, a former Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Science, and Technology and the Commissioner representing Oyo State at the Federal Character Commission (FCC), sent this piece from Abuja, the nation’s capital.
For most of last week, Senate President Godswill Akpabio was in the eye of the storm as his traducer, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who represents Kogi Central, was relentless in getting her voice hear loud and clear.
Though the matter eventually culminated in the suspension of the Kogi senator for six months on Thursday, it is clear that the drama has not ended yet. The whole saga, as we have seen in the last few weeks, smacks many wrongs and few rights. The Senate scored some rights and some wrongs, the same for the Kogi senator. But in apportioning the rights and the wrongs, we have to distinguish between emotions and the rules.
Recall that in July of 2024, Senator Akpabio had compared the conduct of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan to that of someone in a nightclub. That statement incensed the Kogi Central senator, the womenfolk, and a number of other senators. Days later, Akpabio, having sensed the mood of the Senate, spoke from his chair and said: “I will not intentionally denigrate any woman and always pray the God will uplift women, Distinguished Senator Natasha, I want to apologise to you.” That was expected of him and by that statement, Akpabio brought some calm into the relationship between him and the Kogi senator, but as we are to discover in the last two weeks, still waters do run fast under the surface.
The latest scene of the drama started with what looked like an innocuous development on the Senate floor. The Senate president, in exercise of the power conferred on him by the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and the Senate Rule book, made adjustments to the seats in the minority wing of the chamber and relocated Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan. The excuse was that following the defection of some senators from the minority side, seat adjustments had to be effected. That was within Akpabio’s power. Remember that the Senate Rule book does not only empower the Senate president to allocate seats, but he can also change the seats occasionally. So, Akpabio was right with that action. But perhaps Akpoti-Uduaghan, based on family relationships with the Akpabios, expected that she would have been alerted of the impending seat change. And on getting to the floor of the Senate to discover the seat switch, she got alarmed. Was she right to flare up? No, that is the answer. Apart from the powers of the Senate president to change seats allocated to senators, the rule book also says that every senator must speak from the seat allocated. The implication is that anything a senator says outside the allocated seat will not go into the Senate records. The Senate, or any parliament for that matter, is a regulated environment. The Hansards take records of every word and action made on the floor of the chamber. And so, it is incumbent on every senator to follow the rules.
So, on Thursday, February 20, when Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan raised hell over her seat relocation and engaged Senator Akpabio in a shouting match, she was on the wrong side of the Senate Rule book. No Senator is expected to be unruly. In fact, unruly conduct can be summarily punished by the presiding officer. It is important to note that the rules of the Senate treat the occupier of the chair of Senate President like a golden egg. The President of the Senate is the number three citizen in the country, even though he was elected to represent a constituency like his colleagues. He is first among equals, but the numero uno position comes with a lot of difference.
A legislative expert once told me that the Chair of the President of the Senate must be revered at all times and that infractions to the rules are heavily punished unless the offender shows penitence. The rule says the President of the Senate must be heard in silence; Senators must avoid naming (being called out for unruly conduct); and that any situation that compels the President of the Senate to rise up to hit the gavel in trying to restore order could earn the culprit (any named senator) summary dismissal. Those are the powers of the President of the Senate, which Madam Natasha was trying for size. I think it is important that Senators are taken through inductions on the rules and regulations, whether they got in mid-term or at the beginning of the session.
Rules are very key to operations in a big club like the Senate or the House of Representatives. But as we will later discover on this page, the number of years spent on the floor does not necessarily guarantee a clear understanding of the rules.
Well, as we saw it, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan raised hell by protesting the decision of the Senate to relocate her seat. She was out of order, and her colleagues noted the same. With another presiding officer, she could have been suspended right there. But Akpabio didn’t do that. Then, the Kogi Central senator opened another flank, this time, outside of the Senate chamber. She granted an interview to Arise television, claiming that she had been sexually harassed by Akpabio. Here, too, Senator Natasha was on the wrong side of the Senate rules. Yes, she has a right of freedom of speech, but if the right must be meaningfully exercised, she must do so in compliance with the rules of the club she belongs-the Senate. This is expressly so because she is covered by Order 10 of the Senate Rule Book, which permits her to raise issues of privilege without previously notifying the President of the Senate or the presiding officer. The elders and the holy books also say that when you remove the log from the eyes, you show it to the eyes. As a club, the senate detests the washing of its dirty linen in the public. Such conduct led to the suspension of the late Senators Arthur Nzeribe and Joseph Waku, as well as Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, Senator Ali Ndume and even Senator Abdul Ningi in recent past.
Rather than go to the court of public opinion to accuse Akpabio of sexual harassment, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan should have quietly assumed the seat allocated to her, raise her complaints through Order 10 and at the same time tender details of her sexual harassment allegation against Akpabio and seek Senate’s intervention. If she had done that, she would have been on the right side of Senate Rules and had Akpabio by the balls. As much as the Senate rules forbid a senator from submitting a petition he or she personally signed, the Senate does not forbid any lawmaker from raising allegations that affect either their rights or privileges on the floor. Several newspaper editors have been summoned before the Ethics Committee to answer questions of alleged breach of the privilege of senators. I recall that as correspondents in the chamber, senators were always unhappy each time we scooped a story or blow open a report they were about to submit. Such senators didn’t need to write a petition. They would only come to the floor and raise points of order on privilege. Senator Akpoti- Uduaghan failed to do that.
But the conduct of the Senate President and some of the principal officers on Wednesday, March 5, left so much to be desired of the Senate. I was shocked to see Senator Akpabio rule Senator Natasha in order; he also ruled Senator Mohammed Monguno in order as well as Senator Opeyemi Bamidele. How do you have three right rulings on one issue? First, he allowed Senator Natasha to lay a defective petition on the Senate table. That’s expressly out of order. In the days of Senate Presidents David Mark, Bukola Saraki, and Ahmad Lawan, we saw how such scenes were handled. A David Mark would simply ask the senator, ‘Distinguished Senator, please open to Order 40(4) and read’. By the time the senator finished reading the order and seeing the order had negatived his or her motion, he would only be begging to withdraw that motion. That was not the case with Akpabio. And to make matters worse, the clerks at the table were also looking lost. They could not guide the presiding officer in any way. That tells a bit about human resource capacity in the assembly. But then the Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele and the Chief Whip, Mohammed Monguno, who have spent quite a long time in the National Assembly, should know better. Their interventions did more damage to Akpabio’s Senate. Once the President of the Senate had ruled Senator Natasha in order to submit a petition she personally signed, (against the rules of the Senate which forbids such), and the Kogi Central senator had approached the chair and laid the petition on the table, the matter in a way becomes sub judice, to borrow the language of the law. The Senate Rule Book classifies such an action as “Matters Not open to Debate.” So at that point, the matter was no longer open to debate. Since the gavel has been hit and the action has been taken, no senator has the right to reopen the case. It was wrong of Senator Bamidele and Monguno to immediately start to revisit a closed matter, and that’s illegal. It is wrong for Akpabio to allow it.
I recall an incident in the 6th Senate when President Umaru Yar’Adua was bedridden in Saudi Arabia. Some senators moved a motion, seeking the Senate to constitute a panel to visit Saudi and ascertain the health status of the president. Somehow, when the motion was finally passed on a day, Senator Ike Ekweremadu presided, it turned out that the motion only mandated the Federal Executive Council to do the assignment. The original proponents of the motion were enraged, but they were not allowed to reopen the matter. They had to go into lobbying and eventually secured signatures of two-thirds of the Senate to re-table the matter and that paved the way for the adoption of the famous “Doctrine of Necessity.” That’s how serious the matter should be handled, but it was trivialized by Akpabio, the Senate Leader and Senate Whip. That’s on the wrong side of the rule.
Now that Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan has been suspended, many would say she was being silenced. That is far from the truth. Her suspension was on the basis of what the senate perceived as unruly behavior on the floor. We are yet to hear the details of her sexual harassment allegations, and I believe that she has avenues to ventilate that. Nigerians earnestly await these details, which should be salacious enough to help us cool off some heat.
In South Africa under the presidency of Jacob Zuma, any analysis of government and governance without factoring sex into the mix was tame and lame. Zuma was a notorious polygamist who had six official wives as president, many more by unofficial account and 22 children from the liaisons.
He was a kingpin of lechery. On May 8, 2006, a South African court under Judge van der Merwe acquitted him of rape of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, an HIV-positive AIDS activist, who was the daughter of his friend, Judson Kuzwayo. During trial, Zuma pleaded that the sex was consensual but admitted that he had unprotected sex with the lady. He then stunned the world with his bizarre claim that he had “showered afterwards to cut the risk of contracting the infection.”
In the process of studying power relations in Nigeria, sex as a phenomenon is often understudied or underrated. In other words, while power relations are known to be shaped by a complex interplay of factors that range from the economic, political, social, to the cultural, including individual characteristics and relationship dynamics, hardly are gender and sex reckoned with.
In my piece of March 6, 2022 with the title, Buhari’s Serial Rape Of Nigeria’s Lady Justice, I doubled down on a sub-theme of the powerful role sex plays in national politics. To do justice to this, I recalled a September 7, 2008 cartoon sketched by Jonathan Shapiro, award-winning cartoonist with the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times whose cartoon identity was Zapiro. I illustrated the piece with a submission that though political cartooning may look harmless, it can be nerve-racking, provoking the bile of political office holders and triggering a huge political umbrage in the process. This cartoon triggered a huge ball of fire in South Africa. Named ‘Rape of Lady Justice’, in it, Zuma, who was then leader of the African National Congress (ANC), and later to become president, was seen loosening his trousers’ zippers for a sexual romp. On his head was a shower cap. Before him, flung on the bare floor, was a blindfolded lady with a lapel inscribed, “Justice System” hung on her chest.
Four hefty and menacing-looking men knelt by the Lady Justice’s side, holding down the “wench”, whose skirt was half peeled off. They were political surrogates of Zuma in the ANC, which included Julius Malema, then leader of the ANC Youth League. The scale of justice had fallen down beside the Lady Justice, with one of the men smilingly beckoning on Zuma to clamber her, muttering, “Go for it, boss!”
That cartoon shot Zuma into a fit. Indeed, he immediately sued Zapiro for the sum of £700,000. Massive reactions followed it, ranging from the condemnatory to the laudatory. The ANC, SACP and ANC Youth League pilloried it as “hate speech,” “disgusting” and “bordering on defamation of character” and then petitioned the South African Human Rights Commission for redress.
I went into all these dogo turenchi, just as I did in another piece I wrote on February 6, 2022, to ask that we must not underrate the power of sex in high places. In that February piece, I borrowed a line from Irish poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde, who said, “everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power”. With it, I submitted that the Wilde theory should tell us that there is an intersection between gender, sexual power and political power. This was further escalated by renowned scholar, Prof Wale Adebanwi, in one of his journal articles, where he submitted that “the African man of power must display or exhibit his virility – particularly sexual virility.” In the same vein, Zimbabwean journalist and blogger, Fungai Machirori, urged us to study the sexual histories of our men in power because, from the rhythm of their silently dangling penises, we may find a compass to their politics.
Last Thursday, the ghost of the spat between Senate President, Godswill Akpabio and senator representing Kogi West, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, will seem to have rested. In the relations of power in the senate, on that day, Akpabio, it will seem, had succeeded in showing Akpoti-Uduaghan that, as bland-looking as the old Nigerian pence looked, it was not a currency to be trifled with by the Kobo coin (Bí tọrọ ṣe yọ to, kíì s’ẹgbẹ Kọbọ). Not only was she suspended for six months for violating senate rules and bringing the senate “to public opprobrium”, her salary and security details were withdrawn while her office would be locked during the pendency of the suspension.
If you watched the senate proceedings leading to Akpoti-Uduaghan’s suspension, you would be sorry for Nigeria. Then, African-American Sterling Brown would come to your mind, just as you visualize Jonathan Shapiro’s cartoon in Akpabio figuratively loosening his trousers’ zippers for a forceful sexual romp with the Lady Justice. With same lens, you would see Majority Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, Adenigba Fadahunsi and other fawning senators holding down the “wench”, smilingly beckoning Akpabio to “Go for it, boss!”
Like Africans, African-Americans grew to know the wisdom which teaches that injustice is a furnace that burns and destroys. The life of Sterling Brown, professor at America’s Howard University, folklorist, poet and literary critic, was chiefly dedicated to studying black culture. In one of his poems entitled “Old Lem,” Brown wrote about mob violence and injustice which black people suffered in the hands of the American criminal justice system. American writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin’s ‘The Fire Next Time’ also speaks to this theme. In the America of the time, black parents, aware of the danger of their blackness and the violence and death they could suffer, deployed folklore to cushion them, even as they told stories that depicted their skewed realities.
There was this famous folklore told to African-American children while growing up. Entitled “Old Sis Goose,” it goes thus, as I reproduce it verbatim: One day, “while swimming across a pond, Sis Goose got caught by Brer Fox. Sis gets pissed off because she believes that she has a perfect right to swim in the pond. She decides to sue Brer Fox. But when the case gets to court, Sis Goose looks around and sees that besides the Sheriff who is a fox, the judge is a fox, the prosecuting and defence attorneys are ones too and even the jury is comprised entirely of foxes. Sis Goose doesn’t like her chances. Sure enough at the end of the trial, Sis Goose is convicted and summarily executed. Soon, the jury, judge, Sheriff and the attorneys are picking on her bones.”
The morals of this old anecdote are two. One, as encapsulated in one of the lines of Apala musician, Ayinla Omowura’s track, is that, if you do not have a representative in a council where your matter will be decided, even if you are right, you would be adjudged guilty. The second moral is that, if the courthouse is filled with foxes and you are an ordinary, lonely goose, there will be no justice for you.
In the senate last week, Akpoti-Uduaghan was Sis Goose who looked around and saw that, beside the judge, Akpabio who is a fox, the prosecuting and defence attorneys were all foxes, too. Even the jury is comprised entirely of foxes. Though they appeared as unbiased umpire senators, they were flesh-starved foxes baying for blood of the hapless little Goose. And Sis Goose was summarily executed.
First, we must realize that, just like other Nigerian institutions, the power, glory, graft and corruption at the beck and call of Akpabio’s senate presidency is breathtakingly awesome and humongous. Don’t mind his suffocation of these agencies in his most times nauseating jokes, Akpabio has the power to literally turn anyone’s night into day. If you enter his senate as a pauper and find favour in his ego, you could upstage Mansa Musa, ninth Mansa of the Mali empire’s wealth. Owing to this largesse in his hands, as ants gravitate towards the pee of a diabetic, the senate president has the pleasure of a humongous number of solicited and unsolicited fawners and senatorial Oraisa (praise-singers) and hangers-on latching to his apron strings. It is a tactic to have a bite of the corruptive mountain of pies in the hands of the titular. This need to grovel by the feet of power was affirmed by Senator Opeyemi Bamidele. Akpoti-Uduaghan had alleged that, in a midnight call he made to her, he had threatened that, if Akpabio went down, she, too (ostensibly meaning a huge mound of free wealth) would similarly go into the incinerator.
As I recalled last week, immediately Akpoti-Uduaghan leveled allegations of sexual harassment against Akpabio on Arise TV, a build-up began to salvage Akpabio, the King Fox and prevent the largesse empire from falling. First came Onyekachi Nwaebonyi, senator representing Ebonyi North. Nwaebonyi’s fawning is nauseating. On a television show, he acknowledged Akpabio, a first among equals senator, as “our father” and had to be rebuked like an erring kindergarten pupil by the anchor of the programme. Nwaebonyi later came back to attack Akpoti-Uduaghan in the unkindest manner as a serial philanderer. Thereafter came Ireti Kingibe and Neda Imasuen. While Kingibe, who claimed to have driven herself to the television station, struggled frenetically to make her female senator colleague the victimizer, she deodorized King Fox as her victim. Imasuen, chairman senate committee on ethics, even before his committee sat on the alleged infraction of Akpoti-Uduaghan, told the world on another television interview that Akpabio shared same beatification qualities with Angel Gabriel. The question then is, if Nwaebonyi, Kingibe, Yemi Adaramodu and Imasuen could externalize an issue on television and not the parliament, what criminalizes, in the so-called senate rules, Akpoti-Uduaghan doing same?
At the televised senate hearing, King Fox, in defiance of the rules of equity and justice, was judge, jury and accused who sat in judgment over his own case. Second, it was obvious that the foxes had gathered for Akpoti-Uduaghan’s legislative obsequies. It was also apparent that the executioners had been carefully selected for the job. One by one, the senators assembled arsenal with which to shed the Kogi senator’s blood. Chief Whip Mohammed Monguno clinically prepared the guillotine. Spears, axes, knives and swords were readied. Monguno stood up and went into oblique narration of how Standing Order 55(1) had been violated. Now, like an objectionable character, a meddlesome interloper who Yoruba call Karambani, Kogi West Senator, Sunday Karimi, acting like all fawners at the feet of power, admitted he put Akpabio in “this problem” because he pleaded with King Fox to allot chairmanship position to Akpoti-Uduaghan.
Then, Ade Fadahunsi, ex-Customs officer, representing Osun East, began his own gibber on the floor of the senate. While accepting that the senate was a consequential parliament and that its integrity(?) had gone down, Fadahunsi saw the allegation of sexual harassment against King Fox as “mere trivial matter” and admitted he didn’t “want to know what is the undercurrent.” In his parliamentary arrogance, Fadahunsi even saw it as “an insult” for “a radio we licensed” to invite a man alleged to have gone on a rampaging libido to come and explain what he saw inside the pot of soup that made him tilt his hands suggestively (t’ó rí l’obe t’ó fí gaaru ọwọ). Fadahunsi then lifted the bible to reify his doggerel, fawning over King Fox in the process.
Still during the executioners’ hearing aimed at taking Akpoti-Uduaghan through the gallows, Mohammed Dandutse, representing Katsina South senatorial district, stood up, his babanriga fluffing helplessly like the lame hand of an invalid. He waffled so pitiably that you would wonder what he was talking about. After him, Cyril Fasuyi, in his usual kowtow, did not fail to fawn. Even Senator Ita Giwa, on television, propounded a bizarre theory which argued that, once a woman had risen to become a senator, she was immune to sexual harassment. This pitiably suggested that a woman senator must have had enough of men to be moved by the typhoon of their harassment. Nigerians’ mouths were agape.
So many issues crop up from the Akpoti-Uduaghan travails. The first can be seen from Opeyemi Bamidele’s argument in favour of her suspension. During this executioners’ session, he argued that the Kogi senator must have been so execrable in behaviour that, all political parties, all genders and all age demographics were in alignment with King Fox against her. Opeyemi did not tell Nigerians that the executioner senators were only defending their esophaguses in the hands of King Fox.
As argued by many, the National Assembly is our modern day equivalent of the “I” as “We” thesis, the secrecy and single-purpose pursuit cult of the Yoruba Ogboni fraternity. Espoused by Peter Morton-Williams in his journal article entitled, “The Yoruba Ogboni Cult” (Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct., 1960, pp. 362-374) Morton-Williams didn’t follow Leo Frobenius’ earlier 1910 examination of the Ogboni cult in Ibadan, in the process of which he referred to its members as “mystery-mongering greybeards’.
Morton-Williams classified the Ogboni Cult into two grades membership – the Wé-Wé -Wé – ‘children’ of the cult, its junior grade Ologboni or Alawo (Owners of the Mystery or the Secret), and the the Olori Oluwo, ritual head of the Ogboni. The Nigerian senate is similarly classified, with the Senate President replicating the Oluwo. The senate chambers, which is akin to the Ilédì (lodge) of the Ogboni, is where secrets are lidded. In Ogboni cult, kolanuts are split and eaten as an act of reminder that the Ogboni members are bonded in secrecy. This act makes it very hard for any of the Ogboni to factionalize the fraternity and breaking the pod of secrecy that binds the cult. Any member who violates this code courts ritual sanction. As the Ẹdan Ogboni, a pair of brass/bronze figure that represents male/female, linked by a chain, is a symbol of membership and abidance by the rules, so is the Senate Order book. So, when Remi Tinubu, a woman who had also once been a victim of verbal sexual flagellation, also came out to reinforce the power of the secrecy of the Senate over an alleged debasement of womanhood, it only confirmed the fraternal solidarity of this modern senate cult.
The Akpoti-Uduaghan travails have so many symbolisms. One is gender, in which case, the Kogi senator is suffering the audacity of her femininity. In this patriarchal society, it is a crime for a woman to be beautiful, brainy and, on top of it, attempt to disrupt the status-quo. The penal sanction meted out to such disruptors is ostracism or death, as is in the Ogboni cult. Second is that, as the pigeon (eyele), the bird that eats and drinks with the house owner in time of plenty, the senate fraternity considers it sacrilegious for Akpoti-Uduaghan to repudiate the fraternity oath. The Ilédì, Senate chambers, a la Senator Ita Giwa, is home for the lascivious, the sleazy and the heart-wrenching. As the harvest for the seed of membership of Ogboni is prestige, wealth and societal honour, for the Nigerian senator, it is humongous cash. If Akpoti-Uduaghan is aquaphobic, not ready to face the ostracism that logically comes from fighting a fraternity’s status-quo of which she had been a member, she had no reason to jump inside the river.
For the man of power, sex is a conquest game, won either by shedding drops of a virile libido or the victory of ego over a woman traducer. It was what Adebanwi meant by his “the African man of power must display or exhibit his virility – particularly sexual virility.” As it stands now, Fox Akpabio has succeeded, according to Akpoti-Uduaghan’s unsubstantiated allegation, in being “made happy” through his summary execution of the Goose. For how long? Only time will tell.
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