Abimbola Adelakun
Over the weekend, alleged political activists in Alimosho, Lagos staged a mock funeral for Interior Minister, Rauf Aregbesola. To display the coffin of a man still alive is a poignant symbolism, one instinctually understood by witnesses embedded in the local culture as a severance of his connection to the society of the living. For a politician especially, a mock funeral ritual de-affirms their mandate. Politicians typically derive their legitimacy from popular support as much as from formal articles of power, and a mock funeral qualifies them as a persona non grata. Staging a mock funeral for a leader rescinds whatever moral authority previously ceded to them and which granted them the privilege to act on behalf of the collective.
Unfortunately, such civic actions should have been taken years ago when Aregbesola’s government was depleting the coffers of Osun State on frivolous projects and not just because he engaged in a contest of wills with a self-serving godfather. For these supposed activists and other commentators spilling gallons of ink to chide Aregbesola for “betraying” his lord and master, one wonders why a clash between two politicians (each of whom would have sold the other if the price was right) yield any more useful moral lessons than worthwhile issues of governance. What does it matter if one side wins this battle or not when their tension is not based on principles and the outcome of their contest will not improve the quality of anybody’s existence? The only betrayal worth noting here is the one that happened between Aregbesola and the people of Osun State who once gave him their mandate.
Spectacular as those anti-Aregbesola demonstrations seemed, they do not have useful political or even spiritual import. They are just a parody of what truly constitutes people’s power. Until that day comes when youths in Alimosho—or anywhere else—look at themselves critically and question if Nigeria’s administrative structures that empower these leaders have ever worked for them at all, those mock funerals are merely silly. Until all those who participated in them learn to reject subservience to the political masters, who have serially duped and impoverished them, all those outings are just high-grade nonsense—blunt weapons in the hands of mere pawns.
It also did not help Aregbesola’s fortunes that his candidate in last Saturday’s APC gubernatorial primaries lost the election spectacularly. The margin of victory was so vast that the candidate, Moshood Adeoti, would have been better off going at it alone than appending himself to Aregbesola’s deadweight. No thanks to overestimating his relevance, Aregbesola is now a publicly certified loser, a label that will define whatever is left of his political career. But make no mistake though, he can just as easily be resurrected if he approaches his master on his humbled knees. Nobody should get excited about his beatdown. This is Nigeria; all things are possible.
If there was ever a time that Aregbesola deserved to be buried politically, it was during his tenure as governor when he was expending good money on white elephant projects. From his so-called educational reforms to the witless ideas of changing Osun State to “State of Osun,” to the curious change of the 6-3-3-4 school format to 4-5-3-4, it was a tyranny of visionlessness. Ironically, much of the vacuous propaganda that allowed him to get away with the house of lies he was building at the time was dispensed through the same hacks now breaking his back through acerbic criticisms. If Nigeria were a place where performance in office counted for something, Aregbesola should have been declared dead after his governorship. Instead, he was made a federal cabinet official.
Today, much of what he passed off as educational reforms and for which he disrupted the social and academic lives of poor children in Osun State are in shambles. His successor could not salvage some of his most useless policies; they just had to reverse them. Just like that, all the efforts that went into the school reclassification exercises, singularised school uniforms, changed school names, and the abolition of single-sex schools, went down. Why would it be otherwise when Aregbesola was, at best, solving a problem that never existed?
He expended a substantial amount of money on “opon imo,” computer tablets distributed to school children when the focus should have been on guaranteeing quality education for them in more efficient and innovative ways. As it always turns out, the shiny electronic tablets serve the politicians who awarded the scandalous contracts far more than the school children and would be unsustainable in the long run. Then he built mega schools, another gaudily coated set of jewels. Some of those buildings he bequeathed his poor state at princely sums cannot pass an integrity test. So invested was he in proving he was the political scion of the late Obafemi Awolowo that he copied the Free Education policies of Action Group. What he did not admit to himself was that he lacked the discipline or managerial acumen to see such lofty ideas through, so he prioritised shine over substance.
Anytime the issue of Osun State’s debt profile is raised, Aregbesola’s e-hounds and meta trolls are always quick to jump out and howl, just to shield him from accountability. They love to pass the buck to his successor (who was also his associate while in office) while making it clear he will never take responsibility for the imprudent choices he made as governor. Still, it is quite curious that the House of Representatives recently launched a corruption probe to know how one of the agencies under his watch, the Nigerian Correctional Service, expended the sum of N165bn. Though the lawmakers insist the timing merely coincides with Aregbesola’s fallout with their paymaster, they still bear some responsibility. Were they not the ones who supposedly vetted him after he had been nominated for a ministerial appointment? Why did they not diligently question him over his reckless fiscal choices?
The man always pursued spectacular projects even if their conception had no bearing with extant realities, all the while spuriously evading what would have had potential transformative impacts. Maybe if the lawmakers had grilled him over the N69bn aircraft maintenance hub project he boasted would be a money-spinning investment for Osun State, they would not have needed the present probe. If they had prodded him to tell how he and his associates sat down to propose— of all things that could benefit Osun State, an aircraft maintenance business—they would have saved us his drama. If they had asked him to give an account of the garment factory he set up or the helicopter he bought while in office, maybe we would not be dealing with his menace.
Meanwhile, some of his so-called welfarist ideas such as O’MEAL, OYES and Conditional Cash Transfer schemes were replicated at the federal level. They also failed at that level too, thus consistently proving the lack of reason behind the execution of these ideas. There is only so far cheap propaganda can take anyone before reality defeats them. By the time he left office, Osun State had become so crippled to the point Aregbesola could not even pay full salaries anymore. It is unfortunate that some people only think of him as a monumental failure just because he overestimated the worth of his scant weight in a political arena. He should have been declared “dead” long before his disastrous Saturday outing.
