Ogun 2015: Between politics and progress The Sun News BY RASHEED OLOKODE Sporadic gunshots are rampaging. Fierce fury flying and crossfires crisscrossing the caves and camps. An enclave of the gate that leads to socioeconomic and political sophistication is turning a theatre of the absurd. No thanks to the ongoing witless war weaved and waged by politics against progress in Ogun State, as the clock ticks towards 2015. A war that gives a prize of truth to Richard McKay Rorty’s pragmatic advocacy that crushed the absolutism and timelessness of truth. When the American professor of Philosophy opined that there was no ahistorical truth, that the truthfulness or falsity, validity or invalidity, of an idea, principle, value or worldview depends on changing times and changing peoples of varied orientations, minds and motives, no direct or subtle thoughts of politics in Nigeria, let alone Ogun State, motivated his reasoning. But, the seeming contextual differences in the mental images conveyed by the eight-lettered word, politics, so far, in what come across as two worlds apart of same state suggests that the famed postanalytic epistemologist had Nigeria, specifically, Ogun State politics, in mind. Erstwhile domain of dynamic politics now seems a den of mediocrity, which holds progress and development in bitter contempt. When the crime of a governor is his ‘effrontery’ to embark on massive infrastructure development; when the pitfall of a governor is his ‘wicked’ judicious use of the public wealth; when the undoing of a governor is his ‘foolish’ faithfulness to his electoral promises to the people; when the ‘suicide’ of a governor is his refusal to play the self-appointed godfather’s puppet-in-power, definitely, meaning has metamorphosed. Good no longer good and bad no longer bad because foul is the fair weapon now being deployed by political foes – enemies-within, enemies-without – against the incumbent governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, in the current battle for the Ogun soul. If anything, politics of conscience, rather than politics of combat, had defined the past of Ogun State. The shape and colour of governance under the late Chief Olabisi Onabanjo was good not just because it heralded progress and development in all spheres, but particularly because politics and progress were then synonyms. Those were the nostalgic days of yore. When the meaning of politics had a single, unified real life reference in the legendary Obafemi Awolowo. A public trust that entailed nothing but services that created the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of the people at every point in time. Similarly, politics meant Ogun progress in 1993. To think that the people veered off their accustomed tradition of choice by merit to massively queue behind MKO during the June 12 saga, simply due to his being a son of the soil or his ever agape fat purse, is to delude none but oneself. The underlying motive has never been perfection of leadership by a people in an endless quest for excellence, which seems the surname of the average indigene, be it in the laboratory, on the football pitch, in courtrooms, chalk holding or in pen pushing. In fact, it was pen pushing that groomed and garbed the iconic journalist of all times, Chief Segun Osoba, in an exotic bridal gown laced with magnetic accessories. Alas! The same thirst for excellence that made the journalist a two-time Ogun CEO eventually made him an ‘ex’ till date. The next inheritor of the Ibara baton came with sparkling ‘ingenuity’ that set it apart in a world of its own. Most mouths soon turned minstrels singing the panegyrics of the new helmsman whose trademarks were the automated smiles. Every day became a festival of celebration. Celebration of invisible giant strides aesthetically projected by day-by-day billboards, attention-arresting jingles, future-picturing calendars and truth-twisting image-makers. Impunity beget impunity as cosmetic development spread across the state, heralding peripheral happiness and contentment in nearly everybody. A couple’s clash climaxed as the ageless marriage between politics and progress in the Nobel Laureate’s State got dissolved. Hence, politics served the powers, severed the people to stagnancy and sent progress and development on exile, only to be heard of in the nearby state of the lagoons. Horror became a regular match played on the Kuto turfs. Stadium that was an irony of its revered title. Place of play turned place of pain. Pain unleashed by horror of daily human rituals. Sporadic and rampant, the Ita Oshin wars were but pet drama of daylight bloodsheds at the central motor park that added up to naked horrors on the bridge. The long bridge! Where cautious driving killed retired Brigadier General Sylvester Iruh and countless others wasted by armed robbers for daring to stop and fix their coughing cars, in defiance of robbers, perpetually on rampage. 2011! When the skyscraper-cap sauntered into the centre for a fight against the anointed heir of Governor Daniel, not a few saw it as yet another of the Bola Ige’s conceived five fingers of a leprous hand. The challenger was, after all, another typical Nigerian politician, who, once upon a time, dined and wined with friends-turned-foes. But! Alas! Amosun has ‘disappointed’ the vast majority. A man hitherto underrated as incapable of making a makeshift hut that ends up erecting a palatial mansion. Within a twinkle of an eye, Abeokuta, Ijebu Ode, Sagamu, Ota and virtually every other erstwhile village-like city started evincing the glitz of genuine modernity that have now spread like wildfires. The Owu-born started out with ravaging caterpillars and bulldozers that discriminated not. Caterpillars which fuel and power was the people’s approving smiles. Smiles that melted people’s pain into pleasure and morphed sours into songs. Not the consolatory cash, but inborn spirit of excellence pacified the enlightened mass. Kings and commoners, princes and paupers, the mighty and the meagre turned workforce of Amosun the future builder, through their crucifixion of good of the self for the resurrection of the good of all. Together, they succeeded in recalling progress from exile, at a time the hibernating assailants and expellers of progress never expected. Over their dead body! Never again must the shadows of progress reflect on the Ogun River, let alone its reincarnation on the land, air and sea via massive, never-seen-before state-wide roads, listless bridges, modern schools, markets, and, above all, snoring sleeps of the masses that murdered their own sleep! Here lies the provocation of the stinging bees on the prowl. Attacking to defend selfish political interests appears the lonely and veiled logic beneath the current propaganda, deceit and manipulation that tie people’s prosperity to the inglorious, future-destroying chop-make- I-chop politics of yesterday. The ultimate victims and vanquished would ever be the all-time vendors of deceit in a market of wise people that now know better. Wise and intelligent people that are sure that nurturing humans like hens with sumptuous meals ahead of slaughtering is an antic of the wicked.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 06:28:29 +0000
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