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AD/Afenifere: The Squandering of Heritage

By

Dr. Wale Adebanjo

Now that the Yoruba have overwhelmingly voted, as the election results indicate, for the People's Democratic Party, we must note that it will not be the first time a people will vote against what they do not 'like' and vote for what they do not 'need'.

The electoral defeat of AD has come to be seen as a major rupture in Yoruba politics. It is not. Rather, it is the consolidation of a process that began much earlier but distinctively in 1998/1999 when the Afenifere leadership started behaving like autocratic inheritors of a democratic legacy.

In an earlier essay, 'Obasanjo, Yoruba and the Future of ' (ThisDay, The Sunday Newspaper, February 16, 2003), I had referred to the soon-to-be ex-Governor Bisi Akande's statement that the soon-to-be two-term President would always be an embarrassment to himself. I had added, crucially, that that was not the whole truth, and that it was an abdication of the predisposition to face the whole political truth, for, indeed, President Olusegun Obasanjo would always be an embarrassment to the Yoruba.

Now, Akande, who made bold to reveal this partial truth, has been kicked out of Government House and Obasanjo, about whom the partial truth was revealed, has been overwhelmingly returned to Aso Rock Villa. Beyond that, Akande's party, the Alliance for Democracy, has been overwhelmingly rejected by the people for whom it was primarily created, and Obasanjo's party, the People's Democratic Party, a largely derelict association of mostly light-hearted buccaneers, has been overwhelmingly voted into the government houses in the West, except .

It is a great irony of fate. In 1999, it was Obasanjo who couldn't win his ward, punished for his many years of working hard against his people. In four years, it was , the leader of the people, who could not win his ward, punished for his lack of foresight and flexibility.

However, more than at any other time in the four years of Obasanjo's presidency, the results of these elections have confirmed that Akande indeed never saw or told the whole truth. Now, more than ever before, is the chance to prove that Obasanjo is an unmitigated embarrassment - in the long term - to the Yoruba. And more than any other factor, it is the leadership of the Afenifere, which stubbornly, and against all wise counsel, tied its umbilical cord to that of the AD, that is responsible for the collapse of the party's goodwill in Yorubaland. How did we get here? Some historical backdrop will be crucial.

When General said Chief , regarded in his lifetime as the leader of the Yoruba, was the issue in Nigerian politics, it was not just because he attracted so much love or hate, it was because he was an ideas man -

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so you had no choice but to strongly agree or strongly disagree with Awo, given the intensity and passion of his ideas. It was not because he could not chant incantations or pursue his internal political adversaries without relenting, like the present 'inheritors' of that mantle. It was about the transformatory power of his ideas and politics, in spite of the eagerness of his adversaries then and now to brand him a 'tribalist', even while they enact/ed their own unspeakable bigotry.

He was also a very practical man; a man of praxis, if you like. There was no idea that Awo espoused that he did not back up with either practical examples of how it could be done or practical processes of how it should be accomplished. More than any other of his peers, Awo was the one who gave practical examples of the possibilities of the Nigerian Union - first, while he was the Premier in the West, and later, as the federal finance minister and beyond, as leader of a party - after espousing them in Path to Nigerian Freedom (1947), Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution (1966), The People's Republic (1968), The Strategy and Tactics of the People's Republic of Nigeria (1970), The Problems of Africa (1976), Path to Nigerian Greatness (1981), and the speeches collected in the Voice (1981) trilogy. His peers towered above him in some other qualities but could not march the penetrating power of the mixture of his vision and politics. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the singular most famous Nigerian at independence, was more resonant in his idea of continental and national transformation, possessing an oratorical and rhetorical flourish that Awo could not match. At the level of ideas in the air, which could move millions of people and set them in a particular direction of emancipatory politics, Zik was nonpareil. But he lacked the knack and talent for the practical administrative manoeuvres that translated such ideas in the air into concrete practical politics, particularly in a post- independence era.

As for Ahmadu Bello, the late Premier of Northern Region, Awo could not also match him at the level of practical manoeuvres for political engineering. Bello only lacked a broad vision of emancipatory politics - that was the forte of a Zik - produced as he was from a very aristocratic background, even where, as Karl Meier points out in his important book, This House Has Fallen, his mother was of opposite pedigree. Bello lacked, largely, an elaborate vision of a modern, efficient, egalitarian and thoroughly democratic polity, buoyed as he was by a politics of tradition and of total advantage.

It was the combination of practical vision and a quality of mind that accomplished purposes (where there was the opportunity to be in charge), and to set out how (where the opportunity to be in charge was lacking) through a deliberately designed programme, that marked Awo out and put him above his peers, so much so that in a hundred years hence, you can still engage with Awo's ideas, where you can only support or oppose Bello's politics and only admire Zik's contribution to Nigeria's freedom.

Awo's exit left the political space in Yoruba land with a yawning hole to be filled by the second eleven made up principally of the erstwhile Unity Party of Nigeria governors. The battle was open, but then Adekunle Ajasin, who obviously was not running, was the natural choice to take over the mantle of, at least, the titular headship of the political clan. He had age and wisdom on his part. In fact, he was more a part of the first eleven than he was a part of the second eleven. He was only part of the latter by 'default'. So, the (politico-cultural) leadership shifted to . Meanwhile, the jostle for political visibility and ascendancy continued among the authentic second eleven, as it was clear that Ajasin had neither age on his side nor the ambition to be president.

Bisi Onabanjo, the thinker and organizer in the clan, was soon to be taken out of the orbit by death, caused in part by incarceration by the sadistic duo, Generals Buhari and Idiagbon. He was a major contender for Awo's vacant stool. Reputed to be one of the boldest among the Awo followers with a knack for saying his mind even in the august present of the Sage, Onabanjo would have been difficult to shove aside in the battle. Death also took Ambrose Folorunsho Alli - perhaps the least reputable among the UPN governors - out too, even though his own contest for the stool would have been vitiated by his location at the fringe of the Yoruba nation. That left and .

Jakande was a consummate administrator who, more than any other of his peers, had taken on the image of Awo's demonstrable competence in public administration and attention to details. But in one or two moments of political

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indiscretion, the affable and beloved Baba Kekere, (literally, Junior Father, or metaphorically, Junior Awo), blew his widespread goodwill based on his reputation for efficient and effective administration in Lagos. He had something going for him, he was the most earthy among the UPN governors. He had a warmth and austerity around him that was endearing to the masses. He was unlike the aristocratic Ige or Onabanjo, the effervescent Alli or the paternal Ajasin. Where Ige exuded charisma and authority, Jakande matched it with his down-to-earth nature and disarming mien. For Ige's aristocratic and scholarly bearing, Jakande presented a thoroughness, native originality and sincere forbearance that were difficult to ignore. He was powerful enough then to 'experiment' what has now come into full relief. In the SDP gubernatorial race in Lagos in the Third Republic, Jakande's candidate, Femi Agbalajobi, who won the party primary had his election quashed by the Baba Gana Kingibe-led national executive. Then Kingibe's ward, Yomi Edu, was installed as the party's candidate. Jakande confirmed his supremacy in Lagos politics by ordering the people to vote for SDP candidates in the State House of Assembly elections and switch to the other side to vote for the NRC gubernatorial candidate, , who of course won. It was an experiment in how to vote against a candidate by voting for another, which you really do not support.

When Jakande emerged as presidential aspirant in the treacherous transition of IBB, he had given an indication to Ige that the battle was now set. Ige took notice but perhaps secretly celebrated the fact that Jakande had miscalculated in terms of timing. The battle was ahead. LKJ, as Jakande was affectionately dubbed, was to realise this later as the whole transition train collapsed. Then he quickly recovered by taking a vantage position beside , becoming one of the closest to Abiola and perhaps the most authoritative in Abiola's "war council".

Then Ige's 'chance' came. He was reportedly asked by Babangida to head the transition council. He was politically smart enough to know that it was a position that only a quisling could take and still live with himself thereafter. He knew better than seek advantage over LKJ at that point.

But when LJK had a similar opportunity to take advantage over Ige in the undeclared war for supremacy in Yoruba land, he went for it and became General 's Minister of Works. He set at his task with much enthusiasm, essaying to repeat Awo's genius as Minister of Finance under Gowon, which, though earned him the special opprobrium of the Igbo, sealed his competence as an efficient, modern administrator who ran a war economy without a loan. LKJ failed. One, Awo worked with a benignant, even if misdirected, soldier, . LKJ worked with a malignant, semi-evil, semi-criminal soldier who had no elaborate conception of public good, Sani Abacha. While Jakande prepared himself for national acclaim and subsequent political gains, his very laudable programme of National Housing was soon mired in controversy. He was later thrown out and then became, regrettably, a pariah among his people. Today, all that is left of the politics of Jakande is his whisk.

Thence came Ige's chance to confirm his ascendancy in Yoruba land and then, hopefully, clinch the presidential ticket of a party. The only one left among his rivals, Jakande, had been politically amputated. He did not contend with the new 'titular' head of the , Abraham Adesanya, and his sidekick, Ayo Adebanjo, who had never hidden his opposition to Ige's ascendancy, even at the state level in the early 1980s. The rest is not an ennobling history.

Before long, the new leadership in Yoruba land had come to cast politics as tied to 'fate', so that the average Yoruba was expected to vote for AD anyhow and stand with a 'Yoruba party' willy-nilly. They forgot that even Awo's ascendancy in Yoruba politics and widespread acceptance was a painstaking process that was ignited in 1966 and consolidated and validated only in 1979; it was never taken-for-granted by Awo, as he was eager to remind his lieutenants. But, Adesanya became an Oracle cursing his way through crisis, and creating an aristocracy-within-an-aristocracy that was to be dubbed the "Ijebu Four". It didn't take long before AD became an 'Alliance for Destruction'. The pillar collapsed.

Ige then arranged, ostensibly with Obasanjo's help, a make-shift pillar - Abdulkadir-led AD - while preparing to leave the cabinet and return home to build a solid party that will hold the West, wrest control from the "Ijebu Four", and perhaps give Obasanjo support for a second term or where there was the option, run for the most converted prize of his life - the

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presidency. Ige never made it home alive. He was assassinated in the comfort of his bedroom in in December 2001.

But, by the time Ige died, Yoruba politics of the AD hue, which was supposedly the dominant politics in the land, had been savaged and the results were soon to emerge. The fray seemed open for Ige's 'inside' adversaries, the Ijebu Four (one of the quartet has since died), and Afenifere with its ad-hoc, gadgetry politics that revolved around the quartet, and his 'outside' adversaries, the PDP in the West.

While the first soon realized that they had been solidly, politically disinherited in that bloody battle and that they were existing, mainly on the pages of newspaper, the latter were to coast home to a political victory that might eventually turn out to be pyrrhic. (As Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus -318-271 BC- from whom the word was derived said after his defeat of the Romans, "Another such victory and we are lost"!)

For the first time since Awo took over the leadership of the Yoruba in 1966, an 'opposition party' has taken over the heartland of Yoruba. And Obasanjo, who has done everything to castrate this power clan and obstruct the realization of the grand motif of the Yoruba in the Nigerian state, is the beneficiary of, at base, a dark and disappointing victory. The Yoruba wouldn't be unluckier.

With the almost complete erosion of the solid tradition that produced the second eleven, the process of choosing the third eleven, the current AD governors, was soiled not just by the absence of a commitment to getting the best, but more importantly, by the shameful absence of an ideology. And the leadership, being totally impervious to reason, did not brook any contestation of their style and tactics. They didn't realise that at some stage in every hegemonic dominance, it can be tightly organised only through dispersal and political mobility, and flexible responses to emergent realities in a political formation supervened by deft manoeuvrings. It was as if people were being beckoned to partake in a godhead. As it turned out, disaster, almost unmitigated, began masquerading as state governance in much of the West, with no strong party machinery to that could call the governors to order.

In Lamidi Adesina established a government that bested even that of , the Third Republic lack-lustre, ineffective governor of Oyo State, in incompetence. He sought to steal the memory of the people of his immediate past personal and familial economic trauma. (Recently, he reconstructed history and said he had always lived a live of comfort. Those who shared the free (newspapers) readers' stand with Lam and knew him well in the years preceding his time in office will soon have the courage to tell their stories of "desertion" by one of their own!) Before long, his wife and kids had given a lie to economic adversity and rode the streets of Ibadan like some newly-re-inherited beneficiaries of Darocha - the famed early 20th century Lagos moneyman, whose name became a metaphor in Yoruba land for illimitable riches. With virtually nothing at all to show for his ill-recommended swagger, Adesina, perhaps more than any other of the ill-fated AD governors, was a study in political cant. Yesterday's man of the people had become man of (only) some people - his wife, Saratu, and kids and probably the immodest SSG, Michael Koleosho, who was more of his superior than his subordinate. While Saratu swam in the cozy pool of executive largess, the political fortune of her hubby was sinking in the pit.

In Ondo, old man Adebayo Adefarati stumbled from scandal to scandal at almost 80 - as his political adversaries insist. The man acted as if he was preparing a treasure for a earthly heaven, while newsmagazines, especially TELL, sold their copies on the details of alleged septuagenarian greed. Even where the allegations were seriously denied by Adefarati, the gaps in the denials were too wide for the people to think he was not eating on their behalf. But, they never got a feedback!

In Ekiti, the young, handsome , hardly owed anyone much. With a background of active involvement in Abacha's disgraceful transition and a pedigree that stood him in good stead for office, his moustache smile would have been

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enough, or so he thought, to hoodwink a deeply disillusioned electorate. He was wrong.

In , the immoderate had come to imagine himself a viceroy, and having twice had the opportunity to be governor, thought a third term was a birthright. He did little campaign, pocketed the state party executive and dared people to challenge "God's candidate" - he. He lost.

In Lagos, , through a thoroughly cosmopolitan posing had forced out the Afenifere elders from the control of the AD in the state and recruited all and sundry to save his seriously savaged candidacy. In spite of the scandals that dog him and his limitations, Tinubu had some things he could point to in his four-year rule. While those would not constitute grand achievements compared with the LKJ era, they were major in the era of incompetence and inefficiency that we now live in.

It was only Bisi Akande of Osun state that clearly stood for something and did something tangible with the limited resources that he had. Most of his contemporaries not only lacked administrative competence, more importantly, they lacked vision. Akande was resolute about his Yorubaness and claimed that Nigeria was at best, only of secondary value to him. He had a clear commitment beyond his office. You might not agree with him, but you had something fundamental to disagree with him over. Other AD governors lacked this. They stood only for themselves and for not much else. Akande also can show concrete examples of frugal governance and even austere life. Not minding that he suffered from 'collateral damage', he ought to leave office with his head unbowed. He was the best among the lot, even though he exhibited terrible indiscretion in terms of human and public relations. In a few years, it is most likely that the people of Osun state will wish he never left office, as they experience the reign of the rodent that will replace him. Steeped in the buccaneer culture of late military rule and not subscribing to any ideals in governance, of the PDP, is most likely going to produce such a mess in Osun state that even Isiaka Adeleke, the profligate Babangida era governor of the state, will be bested in recklessness. For citizens of this singularly unlucky state, which serial raping since creation in 1991 was only halted by Akande, it might be better to take the state to the stock exchange.

On the eve of elections and their imminent departure from office, Adesanya, who the governor had denounced and rejected - except perhaps, Adefarati, who had age as a common ground with the Ijebu Four - and who had in turn, at some point, rejected them too by conceding that the AD had put misfits in the Western state houses, was summoned, with Adebanjo, from political isolation, to campaign for them. In Oyo, Adesanya was not the most edifying of pictures in his attempt to salvage a sinking ambition - Lam's. All that Adesanya said no longer had the purchase it used to have. At the end of the day, he was left with asserting a ritual truth in circumstances in which it was seriously beleaguered. By the close of polls, the old man would have spent his days better having a deserved rest. Lam, who woke the older man up, himself would no longer be able to sleep. Deservedly.

What has happened however shows as much discontinuities as continuities. The fundamentals of Yoruba politics remain. What have changed are the dynamics and the ascendant personnel. The powerful point that was made by the elections in Yoruba land is that those who savage an heritage in which they were implicated are more hateful than those who savage the heritage that they never partook in. The issue has been resolved in Yoruba land that anyone in the mainstream who takes office will deliver the goods. Kicking out the AD governors therefore, except Akande, was a bold restatement of that fact. The votes cast in the gubernatorial elections were not votes for the PDP candidates, whose pedigree, at any rate, hardly recommended them. They were votes against betrayal by the AD governors.

The tragedy in Yoruba land today centres around the poverty of ideas, which even the support for Obasanjo, first by the leadership and then by the mass of the people, has shown. And the leadership must be blamed seriously for this. The leadership left the people with no option than to "adopt" their erstwhile political prodigal, Obasanjo, because, really, they were left with no option. There was no way they could countenance a support for the bigoted 'Shariah militariat'. And the leadership left them with no authentic candidate.

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When Afenifere leaders sought to ally with Obasanjo, they were making a move that they have since partly regretted because they were not backed by clear-cut, coldly calculating political moves with solid intellectual input. What were the grand principles that authorized the "alliance" or understanding with Obasanjo? What clear programmes, shareable across party divides, but which the AD essentialized, were to be executed by an Obasanjo presidency and therefore necessitating the "adoption"? Economic plan? Political programme centred around restructuring? Social welfare package? None! Now, they have lost all their venture and given political legitimacy through electoral victory to a man (Obasanjo) and a party (PDP, members of which Yoruba had always regarded as playing 'bastard politics') that do not align with the higher ideals that authorize Yoruba politics, if at all Obasanjo understands it. Adesanya is now torn between people who see him as a committed leader with dubious political interests, and those who regard him as a dubious leader but one with commitment to some political interests. Neither is a worthy description of one who had spent a better part of his life gallantly fighting worthy causes.

If indeed, as we argued earlier, Obasanjo lacks a rudimentary understanding of the need for a fundamental remake of the Nigerian Union, which is the most crucial goal of dominant Yoruba politics, how would the Yoruba not eventually regret their enthusiastic support for the man, even though, in reality, they had no option? As the Yoruba encounter the big mess that Obasanjo's second term and the governance in the West under PDP is likely to be, it is this task that the Afenifere leaders, if they still want to be relevant, must set themselves. But, given their pedigree, one can only hope that they will deservedly retire and allow fresh thinking to take over the cerebral politics that is the heritage of Yoruba land. Otherwise, by 2007, the Yoruba might again be submitting to the ecstasy of the barricades in an age without a march. And, Obasanjo, with his famed immoderacy in victory, at the end of his term, will write another book, gloating about his personal victories, particularly in Yoruba land, and perhaps, adding that even Awo never combined electoral victory in the West with national acceptance at any point in his life; a feat which he, Obasanjo, who was barefooted when Awo came to campaign in Abeokuta several years ago, has since achieved: Another first, added to the many first of his overstated personhood. He could call the book, even where his assumed people might have no 'will' left, "ALL MY WILL"!

May 2003

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