By TONY OKORO
Over and over again, I have read the very strong words in “Rauf Aregbesola’s Perfidy”, recently widely published from ‘Mayor Akinpelu’s Diary’ and I cannot help but stalwartly disagree with Mayor’s conclusions.
Let me be clear that while I hold strong views about Nigeria’s leadership crisis, I do not belong to any of the camps in the bitter struggle to control Nigeria’s resources. I have never belonged to any political party and no politician of any color has contracted me to speak for him. Certainly, not Rauf Aregbesola.
I believe that I have only met Aregbesola once, in Oshogbo, while he was governor of Osun State. I had attended a PMAN Delegates’ Conference in the state and the governor came to speak with us. I have since had absolutely no interaction with him.
Please, before someone gets ready to publish an article with the heading, “Tony Okoroji and Mayor Akinpelu at War!”, I want to state that I consider Mayor Akinpelu to be my very good friend.
Let me give a few examples: Three months ago, Mayor had invited me to his flagship event, Global Excellence Recognition Awards ceremony in, Ikeja. I got to the venue early and asked for Mayor and I was alarmed to hear that he would not be attending his own event. Mayor was on admission in a hospital! I had some idea how important the Awards, an edition of which I had attended before, was to the gentleman we call Lord Mayor. He personally micro- manages the show. I could not imagine a successful Global Excellence Awards ceremony without Mayor.
I had initially planned to spend about 30 minutes at the event and go to other events I had been invited to, same day. Due to Mayor’s unplanned absence and my well-known experience with award events, I had to go backstage and work with Mayor’s team to coordinate the event. I personally presented a good percentage of the awards that evening and I want to believe that the guests had a good time.
A few weeks later, on May 30, a fully recovered Mayor was one of my distinguished guests at the COSON Green Ball. I was very happy to see him looking well.
I first met Mayor who was a young reporter while I was a young President of PMAN. Due to the hyper activities that always went on at PMAN, nearly all the showbiz and ‘celebrity’ journalists in Lagos gravitated towards my No. 1 Oremeji Street Ikeja office. Mayor’s partners in the defunct Fame Weekly magazine, Femi Akintunde Johnson (FAJ) and Kunle Bakare (KB), and their wives, have been my friends ever since. I believe that some of the discussions that led to the setting up of Fame Weekly took place in my office.
Mayor Akinpelu is an undoubtedly good journalist. His account in ‘Mayor Akinpelu’s Diary’ of the inner workings of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s political machine is a scoop and ought to form the script of a major documentary.
Unfortunately, Mayor’s “Rauf Aregbesola’s Perfidy” leaves me with the impression that leadership and governance in the Bola Tinubu orbit is a “paddy-paddy” thing in which servitude to him and biological relationships are far more important than competence and maybe, national interest. Mayor did not paint the picture of a democrat but that of an emperor to whom everybody must bow, or worse still, a mafia lord whom everybody must fear.
He states that his recollection of Rauf Aregbesola, a former
Commissioner for Works in Lagos State, two-time Governor of Osun State, former Minister of Interior and now, General Secretary of the newly formed coalition party, African Democratic Congress (ADC), is that of “a scruffy looking man, with his ‘tebliq’ trousers”.
He admitted, however, that Aregbesola had capacity as a significant grassroots mobilizer in Alimosho, the most populated local government in Lagos State which was the reason when Tinubu became governor, apart from appointing him Commissioner for Works, Tinubu made Aregbesola the arrowhead of a new party structure, independent of the Afenifere elders and made his office the vehicle to compensate party faithful.
In Mayor’s gospel, Aregbesola betrayed Tinubu by not only joining the ADC but holding a principal post as Secretary-General of a coalition whose objective is to stop Tinubu from getting a second term as President. Apart from using words like ‘perfidy’ and ‘betrayal’ to describe Aregbola’s conduct, Mayor paints Aregbesola with terms like ‘evil’, ‘traitor’, ‘gang-up’, etc. He concludes in the following words: “This is the same Aregbesola that Asiwaju Tinubu met as a struggling party man in 1999 and made a commissioner and later governor of Osun State. Now that Tinubu is president, should a man like Aregbesola be in a gang-up against his benefactor? Aregbesola is a religious man. He should know that no man can repay good with evil and get away with it”.
I wanted to ignore Mayor’s “Rauf Aregbesola’s Perfidy” but I could not, because of the huge underlying lessons in the piece.
There are two close associates of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that I would any day have comfortably cast my vote for as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I believe that they have the character and have gained the experience to lead a complex nation with a huge youth population like Nigeria. One is Babatunde Raji Fashola. The other is Yemi Osinbajo. They were both cut down in the prime of their political careers. My understanding is that if you are in Asiwaju’s political orbit, you are not allowed to dream big dreams, no matter how good you are.
Mayor may have told a one-sided story of Bola Tinubu being a kind benefactor of Rauf Aregbesola, for altruistic reasons. My reading of Mayor’s piece tells me that Bola Tinubu from day one, was building a political machine and needed men like Rauf Aregbesola to build that machine, not for their own sake, but for his own sake. In many ways, Rauf Aregbesola, Babatunde Raji Fashola, Lai Mohammed, Yemi Osinbajo and the many others in the Tinubu orbit, are really Tinubu’s benefactors. They erected the structure that took Tinubu to the presidency. Rauf, for instance, was behind much of what Tinubu shows off as his achievements in Lagos.
The emerging facts suggest that if you enter Tinubu’s orbit, a mark is placed on your head. You are not authorized to have independent thought or have independent ambition. You have become a prisoner, and your duty is to always answer “yes sir” to your “benefactor”.
Rauf Aregbesola’s “perfidy” is that he has tried to break free from the prison and think for himself.
Another thing that got me concerned is Mayor’s recollection of a meeting he had with Governor Tinubu. The governor had asked Aregbesola; “Rauf, have you ever given Mayor Akinpelu a contract?” to which Aregbesola replied, “Mayor does not need a contract” and the governor said, “what do you mean he doesn’t need a contract? These are the guys you should empower”. This conversation is an important revelation of how the Bola Tinubu political machine has been oiled and how every close supporter became a contractor. If it does not bother you, it bothers me. Thank you, Mayor for the great piece.
See you next week.
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