Three unwise men

n the comedy of politics, the last man on stage is not the hero. He is the  clown, playing the buffoon. In Nigeria, comedies hardly happen on the political stage. When it seems funny, it ends up often in blood and death, in destruction on a large scale rippling with pain. Our politicians of today don’t know comedy 101. Not since the days of K.O. Mbadiwe.

It would have been mere comedy, for instance, that in the 2007 governor election in Osun State, cotton wool passed for fingerprints at the ballot. Or that, in 

Ondo State, Mike Tyson voted for Agagu in the sweepstakes for the state’s top prize. Or that in Ekiti, an expiring grandmother appealed to a Christian 

conscience only to run away for cover under those who mocked that holy sanctum of her soul.

In these three circumstances, friendships were lost, buildings burned, bodies battered, lives lost, our values vanished. The cottons were funny, the Mike Tyson tale rip-roaring, the expiring mother like a stand-up comedian, an Ali Baba in iro and buba. But the story is no longer funny, because nothing is funny if people die, if guns go off and if streets crawl with the lies and sacrilege of murderers. 

That is the kind of comedy the three men who either sparked or relished those comedies are doing again. It all began with an advertorial from Omisore. He authored a piece in which he accused the judges that removed his friend and rival, Oyinlola, from the throne of Osun State. He penned an inelegant prose, the penmanship of desperation, with innuendoes, and arguments that chopped and violated the haloed patterns of logic.

He was unhappy that, while he was preparing to run for governor to succeed Oyinlola, the courts gave the right authority to the man who earned it, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. He fought a tireless turf war with potentate Oyinlola who turned Osun State into a fiefdom of fear.

He was not alone. In Ekiti State, the man with the phony Awo cap, with a rhetoric lame and presence without charisma, decided to show strength. He claims the verdict from the appeal court that removed him was distorted, and that he actually won the election rerun in the state. 

The other person is Agagu, who was tossed out of the government house without his shoes on when the verdict rang out. He now has gone to the courts with a lame and ineffectual prayer for the verdict against Agagu to be reviewed and jettisoned. The man with the phony Awo cap has done the same. Since no court ruled against him directly, Omisore has taken his febrile and ineffectual prayer to the limp Nigerian Judicial Council.

Are these all coincidence, that the three are seeking to upturn what the law, constitution, reason and thinking lawyers know are irreversible? Of course not. 

We must locate these acts of desperate recklessness in the fight between Ayo Salami and Aloysius Katsina-Alu. The wheel horses of the PDP who did not like their ouster had plotted this script. The first thing was to discredit Justice Salami. They tried with that ill-conceived, feverishly false and shallow advertorial from Omisore. That triggered a man like Segun Oni to start capering about his deprived mandate, and Agagu to break his silence after a long and agonized humiliation.

After discrediting him, they could then remove him, and then plant their men in the various offices of the courts, and get their judgments. This is the “democratic” equivalent of a military coup. The military is still too much with us after 12 years of democracy. 

They were not dealing with morons. The nation was on to them, as Americans would say. We saw their steps even before their hip muscles moved. 

So we can situate the plots of these men, the PDP men with clear connivance with the PDP hierarchy to plot the impossible. So when Katsina-Alu promoted Salami in what was really a demotion, it was not because Katsina-Alu did not know that Katsina-Alu was being a bad chief justice. It was because he was part of a scheme. Was he not the person who did the impossible by stopping a court of appeal verdict when the justices were ready to deliver their decisions in court? 

Had that sort of thing been done before anywhere else? Not a chance. He just did not want Governor Wammako to stay away from a stolen throne. Philosopher Pliny noted that new things would always happen in Africa.

It is in the context that these three desperate souls are looking to get back into reckoning in their states. Apart from the illegality of their pursuits, let us look at how the verdicts of these three men were greeted in their states when the courts upturned false victories of Oni, Oyinlola and Agagu. It was an eerie silence in Akure and Ondo when INEC returned Agagu. 

No drum rolls, no fierce joy, but the closet celebrations of robbers. When Mimiko emerged, the streets throbbed with knowing relief and acclaim. In the case of Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Ado-Ekiti bounced and laughed, all over town you were not in any doubt where the hearts of the people lay. In Osun, no one could really climb up the stage, people teemed everywhere. The people pined and thirsted to see and touch their authentic leader. And when Ogbeni Aregbesola emerged, it was the crowd who lifted him on the stage. Oni’s case was pathetic. When he stole the victory, he partied indoors with Governor Daniel, Oyinlola and Oyato  Alao-Akala, three executive renegades and cowboys in agbada, popping champagne for lips frothing with counterfeit glee. They were afraid of their people. So they could not go outside. The streets were forlorn and desolate. His so-called victory was the abomination that made the state desolate.

This is a case of three unwise men seeking to snatch a throne by the back door. They are like the yahoo boys who would dupe people of money they did not work for. Or exam cheats who want to pass exams when they should fail. That is the only logic that works for them. So they cannot yield to a legitimate route to success. 

For Oni, it is a story of a man who never had a chance at the big stage, but who got it by stealth and injustice. He never really won the primaries, but Obasanjo rigged him in. He has thus learnt to profit and prosper on lies and cheating. 

Oscar Wilde warned that one should never make one’s debut with a scandal. If you do that, what would you leave for your old age? Oni’s debut is with a scandal, and he is desperate to continue on that path of questionable morality. Agagu and Omisore, already graying at the temple, preserved scandal for their twilight years. Nothing noble in their stories. 

Better is the end of the story than the beginning thereof, says Solomon in the Ecclesiastes. Agagu and Omisore, with murder charges overhanging his name, upend the story. They prefer the story to end in infamy. On the other hand, Oni prefers wayward beginnings.