By Dr. Abdulfatai Dare Magobon
Two events, different scenes, same actresses. As they acted, they sang and cursed. One would have thought such scenes could only be found in Yoruba Nollywood, especially with the Iya Osogbo kind of role the persona played. But it happened live in the full glare of the public.
The location was the Dr. Bukola-built metropolitan Square, long left to weeds and rodents by their script writer, but suddenly found appropriate for their melodrama.
Swiftly, the actresses mounted the stage, brandishing bunches of broom, the insignia of the party they represent. Next, they began utilizing the broom for its traditional purpose of sweeping. A purpose their Party jettisoned for close to 4 years, thus leaving the state to filths. Their cameramen ensured the shots were sharp as the sweepers cursed in song. And what did they claim their sweeping symbolizes? Cleaning off Bukola’s footprints and those of the mammoth crowd at the North Central flag off of the PDP presidential rally, that was held at the square. Quite laughable !!! But sadly, that is the lowest ebb to which governance has been reduced in Kwara. Act one, scene one ended there.
Scene Two: same actresses and perhaps, same camera crew. But the location changed. Here, it was the Asadam River, the major source of potable water for the teeming masses of Kwara. A water source, so significant to the lives of the people that successive Governments spend colossal millions of Naira for its maintenance. That was what the APC Government, in their mediocrity, considered worthy of desecration in the name of playing gutter politics.
The same Iya Osogbos in scene one, are now seen lined in a row by the river bank, each carrying separate plate of filth, purportedly raked from metropolitan square. First, they reeled out incartations, in favour and disfavour of AbdulRahman and Dr. Bukola respectively, and then empty their filth-filled plates into the river, in a manner replica of real life witches pouring libations. Asadam fa!. Our water source for that matter fa!! and in Ilorin for that matter fa!!! What manner of government can one say this is?
Perhaps, one would have just hand wave it as a non-issue, afterall the hired women are unlettered traditional musicians, gullible enough to be hoodwinked with few naira notes. But the thought of such occultic act seeming to assume a trend with the personalities in this Government make it worth noting. This recent dramaturgy seems a subtle gradual resurgence of the real occultic Egungun/Sango that was paraded along Gegele area in 2019, few days to the elections, just as now.
Recall too that Mallam Salihu Mustapha, the APC candidate for the Kwara Central Senatorial District, just few weeks ago, publicly bombshelled the electorates, saying: “Olomo kilo fun omo re, eni a ro” (parents, warn your children, danger is on the offing). So, with all these antecedents, needn’t we worry, especially considering the Yoruba wise counsel: “E tibi ishana kie s’oogun” (Beware: a mere match stick could destroy just as charms).
Also, shouldnt it be a worry that each time the APC was ready to exhibit its penchant for mysticism, its usually at choice areas that are significant to the lives of Kwarans and ancestrial to Ilorin? For the recent one, it was Asadam River, and for the Sango/Egugun parade of 2019, it was Gegele, a place in very close proximity to both the Emir if Ilorin’s Palace and the Ilorin Central Jummah mosque. Pray, why? Why will a party being led by a full blooded Ilorite allow occultism on the soil of Ilorin, a sacred city with the cognomen: “Ilu to yi ko leegue…”
As all these were being witnessed in the central, the southern and northern axis of the state got their own doses.
For the south, it was the state-backed marking of PDP candidates’ faces on billboards with black paint crosses, reminiscent of the pirates in their shrines. A deliberate well- orchestrated act of what the Yoruba spiritualists call “aroko”.
Not done yet, the charlatans staged the Northern axis version by ambushing and descending on the campaign train of the PDP Gubernatorial candidate at Shao Town the in Moro Local Government Area of the state.
Now, let’s fast backward to the Iya Osogbo sweepers and River bank libators. Agreed, the women involved are gullible and their actions can be overlooked. Also, since the Government has tacitly agreed to its own mediocrity, it can also be less bashed for this another grave mis-step. But, by what language other than “charlatanism” can one describe the vituperation of
Mallam Musa Yeketi, being a holder of the Higher National Diploma in Civil Engineering and an active participant in ALL the 16 years impactful administrations of Dr. Bukola and Dr. Abdulfatai? Uncle sure left so much to be desired. What morality is there in one who only Rahmanised few months ago to begin to talk ill of a dynasty which Allah had divinely used as the major source of all material goodness that life could offer, since the return to civilian rule in 1999?
Uncle ought to have acted better than he did in his recent Ilorin Grammar School Abegi outing.
For a graduate of the Saraki University of political Science, to have himself dwarfed to being assigned a role, reminiscent of Mogaji Feyikogbon, in the famous TV soap opera of the 90’s is to say the least, demeaning. The Saraki camp should justifiably be crossed with you. Not for decamping and pitching tent with its rival, but for displaying deficient political sagacity and sophistry that it thought you to have possessed.
Pray, who in Saraki camp is losing sleep over the defection of the duo of Hassan Gegele and Kale Ajanaku since they don’t offer public condemnation, to their decades long benefactor.
I have not the slightest doubt that not withstanding its publicly acclaimed mediocrity, the thought of likely betrayal from Engr. Yeketi must be looming largely in the mind of this Government. The same betrayal likelihood to which our highly reverred Mufty alluded may be brewing in Mallam Salihu Mustapha for Gegele and Ajanaku.
Given all these and more instances of hooligans and charlatanism, one is tempted to ask, are these what it takes to win elections?
*Magobon writes from Ilorin.
