Bola Ahmed Tinubu
Political victories fit into Arnold Toynbee’s figurative
description of a mighty, always-winning America, which the British
historian said is like a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every
time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
And it is almost like
America saying: ‘sorry, we do not go about with the intention of
knocking chairs; but whenever we go about, we can’t help it, some chairs
have to get knocked over!
And so, penultimate week, the political tail of the Jagaban had to
be wagged, in the land of the Omoluabi; and many heady, especially
mal-positioned chairs had to get knocked over. And the opposition,
little aware of the extent of our massive size, and the innocence of our
shifty tail, is crying ‘blue murder. And can Tinubu’s APC say: ‘sorry,
we do not go about with the intention of knocking chairs; but whenever
we go about, we can’t help it, some chairs have to get knocked over!
But I say that Tinubu is more like the cubs-tutoring mother
cheetah, which at once scotches the game half-dead and set it loose (so
her little ones can cut their teeth in the art of hunting). But the
cheetah is equally at once the ruthless instinctive killer, which will
quickly step in to take care of business if it appears the fangs of her
little cubs are failing to shut the windpipe of the scotched prey-game.
The political cub-cheetahs in my home state of Osun had almost let
the scotched impala regain its breath and its lost stamina, and it had
almost eluded the hunter’s strap-bag for good. The feeble teeth of the
kids at home had failed in the first grip to pierce the windpipe of the
enemy; and it had to require the intervention of the master, in a
last-minute encore to wrap up a near-tragic outing.
All the adrenalin we had to battle with to cope with the anxiety of
overcoming the political Goliath in 2015, it had now taken nearly as
much hormone to fight to avert the loss of Osun State. And it had
suddenly seemed that the battle was as exacting to win Nigeria as it had
turned out also to be, to secure just one of the many states in a
remote corner of the country. No thanks to underestimating the rigging
prowess of the enemy.
The stakes were no less high in Osun to keep a bird already at hand
than they were four years ago to wrest Nigeria from the grip of those
who had conquered to despoil it. Nor were the odds stacked against the
army of good any less recently, than they were four years ago to install
a progressive government into office.
The foot soldiers in Osun had not done their job well. By not
‘crushing the enemy totally, they had violated ‘law number 15’ of Robert
Greene’s and Joost Elffer’s book, The 48 Laws of Power. It warns: “If
one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will
eventually break out. More, it says is lost through stopping halfway
than through total annihilation: the enemy will recover, and seek
revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.
But the foot soldiers in Osun hadn’t been Machiavellian enough.
They had in fact first violated the most important rule of warfare: not
to ever underestimate the enemy! But as Shakespeare would say, to always
weigh the enemy mightier than he seems; so that the proportions of
defense are filled. They thought that a happy-go-lucky-dancer with bacon
fats where men have brains would pose no threat. They blushed at
killing a fly, with a sledge-hammer. Forgetting that all is fair in war
and that ‘ten-to-one should be no impeaching of valour.
But thanks to the Jagaban, a judicious use eventually was made of
Green’s second law of power, namely to ‘learn how to use enemies. SDP’s
Omisore could not have fit the role better. Said Greene: Hire a former
enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend because he has more to
prove. But in this case Omisore, in addition to proving something, also
has something to gain.
The army of good had fought a virtual Armageddon against an invincible insurgency of the devil.
We have survived again a political rigging machine adept at all the
electoral gerrymandering known to third world politics: from ballot box
snatching to vote buying; from intimidation of voters to disruption of
polling centres; from the stage-managing of victimhood to the
manipulation of the media.
Obasanjo was the one who once struck at the political fields of the
progressives in the Southwest, sending our feeble hapless sheep
scampering in all directions. But he had failed to scare the shepherd,
Tinubu, off the Greenfield. The Lagos stronghold of the Jagaban was a
fortress even the Ota farmer’s do-or-die politics could not penetrate.
And thanks to that standoff by the Jagaban, one after the other at last,
the scampered sheep of the wild, wild West are back home in safety.
The last frontier, Osun, has been re-possessed to seal the sheep
ranch; and the shepherd, Jagaban can now sing hosanna in the highest –
that he has at last, brought back home full numbers. All the lost sheep
of the house of Israel have now been found.
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