The fracas in Lagos on January 8, 2019 during the rally of the All Progressives Congress (APC) held at the Skypower Grounds, Ikeja Government Reservation Area has, once again, brought into grim reality how Nigerian politicians have overtime played upon the tripodal factors of illiteracy of members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, (NURTW) their naivety and the huge uncensored daily cash inflow in their hands to cause unmitigated political crises in many parts of the country. At that rally, the Lagos State Treasurer of the union, MC Oluomo, was stabbed while some other persons, including journalists, escaped death by the whiskers. Incidentally, in the Second Republic, that same Lagos birthed the transformation of the road transport union with the name of NURTW, into a deadly anvil in the hands of a sadistic political class, thus heralding its ascendancy as kingpin of politics. At the cusp of that Second Republic deployment of motor park irritants in unholy wedlock with politics, was an Ekiti State-born man called Adebayo Ogundare, ak.a. Bayo Success, a notorious member of the union whose knack for violence was legendary.
The road transport union had been a major contributor to the social harmony that Nigeria enjoyed in the informal sector. Indeed, there are heaps of scholarly works on the immense contributions of road transporters even in pre-colonial Nigeria and how the union impacted on the society and by that very fact, constituting an important segment of the Nigerian economy.
By 1934, Nigeria had begun to feel the union’s importance, especially with its formation that year, prompting it to have offices in many cities in the country. Not only did it defend the collective interests of its members within the colonial setting, in the 1930s, the NURTW was at the vanguard of the fight and resistance against attempts made by the colonial government to impose higher duties on vehicles. The colonial government had intended to use the high taxes to combat the challenge of vehicles competing with the railway.
During this period in Lagos, one leading transporter of renown was W.A. Dawodu. S.O. Ojo and Maiyegun operated from the Abeokuta sector. While transporters like Timothy Odutayo Kuti, known as Abusi Odumare, plied the Ijebu flank, one Dr. Orisadipe Obasa who resided in Ikeja gave the sector noticeable form in Lagos. Obasa, in company with his wife Olajumoke, a renowned and wealthy road transport owner, both owned buses operated in Lagos as early as 1915. The intrusion of John Holt and the Miller Brothers, who earlier operated from the Ijebu lagoon market called Ejinrin around 1917 (remember Ebenezer Obey’s evergreen vinyl and lyrics, b’okokan o r’Ejinrin, egbegberun e a lo? If a vehicle declines to ply the Ejinrin route, thousands others will) also gave transport business a lot of respect. In Ibadan, Salami Agbaje became a major motor transporter and so successful at it was he that the colonial government had to shut its own transport services in Southern Nigeria. During the 1937 general motor strike, Agbaje’s transport company was said to have actively participated in it.
By the Second Republic however, the NURTW had begun to morph into a bastion of violence and disorder. Around the 1970s, municipal buses had been taken over by danfos owned by private owners. As against the practice in the 1950s when local councils handled motor park management, parks were taken over by illiterate and hemp-smoking transporter union members and thus emerged the first manifestation of the albatross of violent and uncontrollable motor park warlords who were amenable to all forms of notoriety. This park politics led to schisms and antagonism and thus the transformation of parks into central hubs of political disorder. What helped to fuel this typecast was the politicization of parks.
With the contest for power by the National Party of Nigeria (NPN)-led federal government of President Shehu Shagari with its seat in Lagos and the Unity Party of Nigeria-led Lagos state government headed by Lateef Jakande, Lagos became a hot testing ground for the might of politics. The ruling NPN secured the gritty brawn of Bayo Success and gave him the task of winning to its side all motor parks in Lagos. This he did by mobilizing a huge clientele of motor park drivers, which was not secured without the multiple shed of human blood in the fracas that ensued at the parks. Bayo Success became a kingmaker and planted his acolytes as chairmen of parks in Lagos, with himself becoming the Oshodi branch chairman. MC Oluomo is also the chairman of the NURTW, Oshodi. So what is in Oshodi that breeds motor park hirelings of politicians who use them for political ends? Abetted by the federal government, so much cash and power resided in the hands of the leadership of NURTW of the time. Bayo Success died in October, 2002 at the age of 61 and was probably in his forties while he held sway. MC Oluomo is said to be 42 years old.
I went into this short history to be able to explain the twine that connects the current NURTW crisis in Lagos with a cancerous blight which the NPN government sowed into the Lagos and by that very fact, Nigerian political equation, whose metastasis is beginning to society a lot of headaches. You will recall that in Oyo State, egged on by the chaotic mini-government ran by the enfant terrible of Oyo politics, Lamidi Adedibu, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)-led government of Adebayo Alao-Akala was advertised to the world as an exemplar of how not to subject politics or government to the machinations of touts in motor parks. Its apogee was the murder of Eleweomo, an NURTW kingpin, in broad daylight, in the undecipherable alliance between government, politicians and motor park touts.
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu picked the infamous gauntlet from where the NPN left it in Lagos and promoted it into a political art. A researcher, Laurent Fourchard, of the University of Bordeaux, had written in a journal article entitled Lagos, Koolhaas and partisan politics in Nigeria how, on April 20, 2007, in Ikeja, Lagos, then outgoing Governor Tinubu had assembled what she called “5000 strong militant crowd” of his party, then the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) apparently interspersed with NURTW kingpins and told them, “I am not happy with you. I gave for this electoral campaign five millions (sic) Naira and Lagosians did not come to vote en masse for the party” but the “militants” replied,“five million Naira! But it did not reach the grassroots!”
Even out of government, the NURTW is a potent weapon used by the Generalissimo of Lagos politics to sustain his hegemonic hold on Lagos politics. The motor park touts are very rich, sending their families abroad to live, are powerful, have access to the innermost recess of the political class’ dwelling places and are factored into every of their political scheming. They are the ones who are sent to silence political opponents, cause mayhem in places where law and order seem to be too sophisticated to penetrate and constitute the major weaponry deployed on Election Day. They snatch ballot boxes, scare electorate to their pants off the polling booths in places where opponents have major holds and are generally the brains behind violence that undergirds Nigerian politics. Thus, the violence that attended the stabbing of MC Oluomo is in consonance with the political culture that is the core of the roots of politics in Lagos of the Tinubu era.
The hegemony is further sustained by a vice hold on the other lawful arm of violence, the police. Nigerians were baffled last week when, within the spate of 24 hours, instruction and counter-instruction on postings of commissioner of police in charge of Lagos, emanating from the office of the Inspector General, though one departing and the other assuming office, jammed each other. The outgone IG had ordered Edgal Imohimi to leave Lagos on transfer and for a former police aide of Tinubu, Kayode Egbetokun, to take over. The new IG however ordered a reversal to status quo ante. What devious plan inhabits the mind of this clique? Or was it for love of country that a former police hireling was primed to be in charge of a state as delicate as Lagos, when elections are few weeks hence?
However, some other manifestations have emerged from Lagos which are worthy of examination, with grave implications for governance. From what is being filtered into the news-wave, it is apparent that Akinwunmi Ambode, the governor of Lagos, is once again in the belly of the Lagos political clique’s whale. The news is that the clique wants to use the MC Oluomo fracas to demonize the man whom the clique have incongruously stampeded off a second term in office and who has shown unusual fortitude in this regard. This attitude belies the public estimation of a Nigerian politician who, if he was in the shoes of Ambode, would have employed the Samson model of ensuring that the roof of the house caved in on the collective. Some even alleged that a plan to impeach Ambode is in the offing, using his alleged but obviously concocted romance with the opposition as a potent charge. The fortitude Ambode demonstrated in the iniquitous spiking of his bid for a second term by the Tinubu clique is said to be attributable to the fact that he is not a politician but has over the years cultivated a latent tendency to bow to process, steeped in his years of grooming in the civil service. The service is predicated on the belief that order is inherent in process and process, in order. Apparently unconvinced that Ambode could have given in to their machination without a fight, there are reports that the governor is being parceled to be fish-grilled by the imperial powers of the Tinubu group.
Aside his initial grump at having been that side-stepped for Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Ambode has since then demonstrated political traits alien to politicians. Not only has he openly identified with Sanwo-Olu, he has publicly urged Lagosians to vote for him in March. His political traducers however believe that he is double-dealing, maintaining that the fracas in Ikeja where MC Oluomo was stabbed was his handiwork. The logic of this reasoning is baffling. Shockingly un-politician-like, Ambode has recently been quoted to have said this of the man parceled to take over from him: “The qualities of Babajide Sanwo-Olu, a former banker, former cabinet member are very strong and he is also very strong in public sector management. When you compare his qualities to the qualities of other candidates, he is very competent and he is very reliable and I have no doubt that we will have him as the next Governor of Lagos State. So, come February 16, we will vote President Muhammadu Buhari and Professor Osinbajo and come March 2, we will vote Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Dr. Obafemi Hamzat.” Which, to me, drinks from the brooks of that wise-saying by the Yoruba, to wit that a grown up man who sings the panegyrics of a fellow man deserves our salute, for such a task is reserved for the valiant.
The calculation of the Tinubu clique is that, when he is out of the governorship seat, Ambode may soar higher at the federal if APC retains the presidency, going by ostensible general sympathy for his being illogically sacrifice by the Tinubu camp, in spite of his apparent loyalty and sterling performance in Lagos; that he may become another “rebel against the order of Lagos hegemony” like Babatunde Fashola.
The Tinubu group seems to have unlearnt all the ills of the First Republic. You will recall that musicians were also employed in the service of the political hegemony of the time. While Hubert Ogunde sang the ideals of the Action Group, Dadakuada music exponent, Odolaye Aremu, sang for NNDP, a.k.a. Demon. The haughty Wasiu Ayinde Marshal currently serves the Tinubu hegemony in that regard. His song was said to have began the shootings and stabbings which, but for providence, would have cost MC Oluomo’s life. The Tinubu group’s intellectual brain box however revs up its consolidation of the base of power and daily ups its ante by consolidating its hold on the power of coercion, using the NURTW as the marionette. The good news is however that empires fall and emperors crash. Humanity will live forever.
Buhari as Ade Love’s Iya Ibeji begging for alms
Two political events of last week must have proved very damaging to the candidature of President Muhammadu Buhari. On the reverse, last week was akin to a staker’s boom to the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and ex-Vice President, Atiku Abubakar. Of all the criticisms that Buhari had been subjected to on account of his capability, capacity, or lack of, to administer Nigeria beyond 2019, none has had the force of facts and potency of an eyewitness’ narrative as those momentous events. At a town hall meeting projected live by the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) during the week, Buhari manifested clearly to the people of Nigeria by unwittingly letting off his guard and showing Nigerians his unmistakable and unambiguous current state of self. That same week, at the ceremonial handing-over of flag to the Delta State gubernatorial candidate of the APC, Great Ogboru, Buhari revealed to those who doubted the fears of his critics about his current state of health and his mental capability to continue to administer Nigeria, that the president’s situation could be far worse than we all imagined.
Abubakar, who carried two fundamental baggage into this presidential contest, had one of them boldly relieved him, again to the consternation of those who had earlier seen him as unworthy to mount the presidential podium. Incidentally, this writer belonged to the latter school. In an earlier piece, I had canvassed the unworthiness of Atiku Abubakar to be the next president of Nigeria on two prongs. The first is the widespread perception of his corruptibility. My argument was and still is, an Abubakar, with such unmitigated stain – either real or imagined – would run a government that is of same hue with Jacob Zuma’s. On the score of a president who might not be allowed entry into the United States, I reasoned that we might be on the way of having as president a Nigerian version of Noriega of Panama, who was arrested and jailed by America for drug trading. With Abubakar in the States and no feather whooshing, in spite of the earlier volcano raised on his indictment in the Jefferson bribery scandal, commentators like us who had earlier denigrated him may have to eat the humble pie.
The details of Buhari’s drama at those functions are in the public domain and as such need not detain the reader further. At both the Abuja and Delta events, we were confronted with the image of a Nigerian president who needed the empathy of all of us, without us playing politics with it at all. So many other issues came into clearer focus. One is that those who had been alleging, since the illness which necessitated the president’s unceremonious medical travel to the United Kingdom in 2017, that an underhand manipulation by a cabal in the administration of Nigeria might not be wrong after all. If Buhari exhibited such absence of synchrony between his body and mind as he was shown at those events, with a vacant mind and inability to process simple messages, how can he process the complex messages of Nigeria? Indeed, how has he been processing issues Nigeriana, myriad, confusing and in need of an utmost presence of mind, such that is the lot of a president of Nigeria? How can such a man who needed to be interpreted to every simple word, comprehend the bills that are sent to him by the National Assembly for assent, for example? It goes without saying that memos worth billions of Naira must have been signed by him without him comprehending what they meant. No wonder all those exhibition of lack of knowledge of very consequential issues that affect Nigeria by the president. Beyond trying to mock a man’s existential battle since all of us have or will battle our own issues of existence as Karl Jasper and other existential philosophers say, the president, at those events, demonstrated a mirthless presence that is beneath the office of the President of Nigeria. It speaks to his earlier demand to excuse himself from the campaign exercise.
It is also apparent that the quest for Buhari to continue in office beyond May isn’t his and if it is, is not in his advantage at all. Those to be held responsible for this infraction are his wife, Aisha, his children and his family members. They should be charged for an attempted murder of an ailing man. While it is human to ail, it is inhuman to spite your ailing body by subjecting it to manifest and unnecessary rigour. It is apparent that the benefits that will be accruable to some inscrutable persons in Buhari staying in office beyond 2019 are the reason why there is a frenetic jostle to keep him in office and the calamity, Nigeria’s. Posterity will never forgive those behind this covert operation. At his advanced age and with the lustering attainments he has made in life, it is obvious that Buhari would go to his grave as a man who has successfully and meritoriously undertaken the voyage of life. Many fell by the waysides. How many of his classmates are alive today? How many of them, if alive, are tending their cattle in idyllic Daura? It is obvious that it is not in the financial and power interest of some persons for Buhari to have his deserved rest and by that, extend his days on earth; they are using him as an object of sustenance of their material wealth acquisitions and retention of their power base.
It reminds me of this age long traditional practice among Yoruba of subjecting their twin kids to the vagaries of alms soliciting. The picture that burrows into my mind is one of the films of renowned film-maker, late Adeyemi Afolayan (Ade Love); Kadara, I guess. As an aside in the film, a woman always went out every morning, backing his twin children with whom she begged for alms, on the pretext of this traditional practice. She employed the services of a drummer who pepped her chants of e ta ibeji l’ore o…(please, gift my twins alms). By evening, they both retired into a corner, counted the alms and shared the money accordingly. Her retort as the drummer proceeded to leave, with the metal fripperies decorating the neck of his drum jangling, fascinates me. She told the man, aa mon r’ode lo o (may we always be blessed in this alms voyage).
I am of the opinion that Buhari is just like those helpless kid twins who is being deployed and commodified by the so-called cabal, for their selfish purposes. He has been reduced to a commodity around which their sustenance is woven and as such, the battle to retain him in office is the battle of their lives.
Yet, but for the fact that Nigeria does not exist in our individual minds, Nigeria should have propelled every Nigerian who watched that NTA event or listened to Buhari’s apparent manifestation of acute dementia in Delta State to resolve collectively, in the interest of Nigeria and in the interest of the long life of Buhari himself, to ask him to go back to Daura. Every minute they foist that man on the presidential seat, they are shrinking his days on earth. Same cabal killed Umaru Yar’dua prematurely. I have read sad and very saddening commentaries on the social media and comments by those who should know, sauced in the brew of politics, ethnicity and religion, urging Buhari to carry on nevertheless. Some even said that, per adventure his effigy is what is retained in office from 2019 to 2023, they bother less. The truth however is, no matter the so-called sparkling performance Buhari has made in the last years of his government, that man the whole world came into contact with last week deserves rest and not governance.
Those who understand the trait say that, from their reading of those interfaces Buhari had last week, he is very likely to be suffering from dementia. They said Buhari’s disconnected look, sudden prolonged silence mid-sentence, the tangential answers to questions that demanded straight-laced answers, are symptoms of dementia. An anonymous respondent on the social media, who said his father, said to be down with Alzheimer’s, manifests virtually all those traits seen in Buhari last week. He raised posers on how Buhari sat with a disconnected look and how, while making his very perfunctory speech, “he pointed to the far left (while mentioning Ogboru’s name) while the man (Ogboru) was standing next to him on his right.” You must have heard of his waffle of calling Ogboru presidential, senatorial and governatorial candidate.
Dementia, from my reading up the illness, is “an umbrella term used to describe a range of progressive neurological disorders, that is, conditions affecting the brain. There are many different types of dementia, of which Alzheimer’s disease is the most common. Some people may have a combination of types of dementia... Symptoms of dementia can include memory problems (having) problems retaining new information. They might get lost in previously familiar places and may struggle with names.” Apparently aware of these embarrassing manifestations, journalists who cover the Presidential Villa are said to have long been screened off the normal and usual process of inviting them to cover visits of guests of the president. The media aides of the president rather cover the events and send the story to the reporters.
In the absence of the presidency’s full disclosure of what ails our president, we may not be wrong to hanker guesses about the true state of his health. The honest truth is, we will all suffer for every action or inaction we take to spite this country. The question I have posed ever since watching those events’ clips is, if that character waffling helplessly at those events were to apply to manage our individual concerns, would we avail him? We are not bothered because Nigeria is a remote construct that does not have any bearing or meaning to us. It does not exist in our minds. And slowly but surely, we are leading this country on the path of doom and apocalypse.
