“In keeping with the established internal policies of the Party and as we approach the Convention in a few days, therefore, I wish to solicit the reciprocity and support of the Governors and other stakeholders in picking my successor, who would fly the flag of our party for election into the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023.”
That was then-President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday May 31, 2022, soliciting APC governors to support his aspiration to anoint his successor, by handpicking the party’s presidential flagbearer for the 2023 poll. Speaking at the presidential villa where the governors were coralled into, the now-late Nigerian leader reasoned his personal agenda as a “compelling need for me to provide stronger leadership to the party under this transition process”, adding that, “Our objective must be the victory of our party and our choice of candidate must be someone who would give the Nigerian masses a sense of victory and confidence even before the elections.”
Like Samuel who had to secretly anoint David king of Israel for fear of retribution from the rejected King Saul, Buhari must have secretly anointed his pick, but his then-enforcer and national chairman of the party, Adamu Abdullahi, came out with his whole chest to identify the “oiled” one as then-senate president Ahmad Lawan. By the time the proverbial dust settled on the party’s nomination process on June 8, 2022, a week after Buhari’s request, the Lawan project had collapsed into the cliche of man proposes, God disposes. The saying is all about God’s superiority over man but I like the Yoruba offering; riro ni teniyan sise ni t’Oluwa, better. This vernacular version finds verisimilitude in Proverbs 16:1 which says “The plans of the heart belong to man but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord”. The plot/plan to retain power in Northern Nigeria after a Northerner in Buhari would have completed his eight years, failed spectacularly but it would not be for want of trying by the planners and executors. Facts available to me which may go into a book soon, showed they actually reached out to critical stakeholders, especially from Southern Nigeria, to make a pan-Nigerian optics of the project. They tried to build consensus in the South which many were clamoring for to have the number one seat after Buhari, for equity sake. Offers were made to southerners needed for the continuity project to succeed. A south eastern governor, controversially-installed by the Buhari kitchen cabinet, was listed for the VP slot. The agitating Yoruba of South West got Grade-A offers; including SGF and Minister of Finance; also expected to coordinate the economy. A united front was desperately sought in the then-National Working Committee of the party, headed by Adamu, to unanimously pronounce the president’s choice, as the party’s choice. Expected dissensions afterward were to be viciously contained. Aspirants who would not fall in line, risk the disloyalty tar and possible eviction. And an offer was made to the man they needed; Iyiola Omisore, then national scribe of the party. He got the right of first refusal to choose between being SGF and the country’s finance chief. He chose none for reason(s) best known to him and I won’t be mixing facts with fictions here. One question I would have loved to ask him though, is if he now regrets the decision made back then.
What is however known on record is that he wildly fought the consensus arrangement and insisted all aspirants must test their electoral strength within the party in the scheduled primaries in which many had projected Aspirant Tinubu to blow out the rest of the field. The Omisore “rebellion” forced Buhari to the field where his desired candidate got a paltry 152 votes, bringing the nomination process to somewhat of an anti-climax, considering the wide gap between the eventual winner and the rest. The forced contest proved Tinubu the biggest and best electoral asset of the ruling party and the outcome of the general election which he won, arguably made the “rebellion” a worthy cause. Strangely however, exactly 21 days after the inauguration of the Southern president which the “rebellion” produced, both NWC combatants, Omisore and Adamu, resigned their appointments as national chairman and secretary respectively under cloudy circumstances, bringing a dramatic ending to an extraordinary electoral process. Maybe days ahead will offer more insight.
Ahead of Osun gubernatorial poll nomination, sacked APC governor, Gboyega Oyetola is playing the Buhari card of a Samuel anointing a David among the horde of aspirants, seeking the party’s ticket. The “oiled” one is his protege, immediate past NIWA boss and the finance commissioner under his administration, Bola Oyebamiji. Like Buhari, the defeated governor who now mans the Marine ministry (sounds like marine spirit lolz), is allegedly seeking a softball process for the emergence of his anointed. No primaries. No contest. No open field demonstration of political capacity, to know the electorally-strongest aspirant within the party and the one with widest political reach to give the opposition party a chance against incumbent Governor Jackson Adeleke who is currently platform-challenged, though with decent performance record to renew mandate on.
Expectedly the Buhari-like move is fragmenting the party in the state, though the leadership is still upbeat about beating Adeleke. Somehow, Omisore who fought against the Buhari imposition plot to deny Tinubu, is now battling an alleged imposition plan to deny him a fighting chance for the ticket. He was able to fight for due process that benefitted Tinubu because he was a ranking insider at the national level of the party. The question is if there are insiders in the party today in Abuja and Osogbo who share his due process idealism. But pray, why should someone seeking to represent his family in a multi-family popularity contest, be afraid of testing his popularity first at home and among his own?. Yeah, a couple of dumb fellows have shown up on Steve Harvey’s Family Feud show, but for the most of the programme, families strive to bring their best forward. Does it make sense for a coach desperate for a redemptive win to keep his MVP on the bench, when injury-free? Maybe politics is different or someone is actually worried his “boy” might end up like Lawan in an open in-house contest.
Those who are big on historicism won’t also have a good news for those into the “anointing” business in the build-up to the December 13 nomination. No governor, incumbent or excumbent (my coinage) in the state political arena, dead or alive, has been able to break the jinx. The closest to a godfather installing a godson was the Rauf Aregbesola transition to Oyetola, when their party won a contentious supplementary governorship election in 2018, coincidentally aided by the same Omisore, who cast what would amount to a tie-breaker, to swing victory in Oyetola’s way against Adeleke. Oyetola and Tinubu have not publicly disavowed their reported filiality. For the one who has helped them both to their aspirations, they are now too overtly grudging towards his, not to morally appear as ingrates, except there are things not yet known. God forbid it runs in the family.
When Oyetola moved from being Aregbesola’s Chief of Staff to succeeding him as governor, he wasn’t the preferred choice of his then-boss. Incidentally, Oyebamiji, who was also Aregbesola’s finance commissioner and now the anointed of Oyetola, was. But while Osun wannabe-godfathers have never succeeded in installing their preferred choice, Tinubu, even as a mere political tactician, has remained the external pressure setting and resetting the political temperature of the state, since he unfurled Aregbesola in the build-up to the 2007 poll. The consensus of opinions is that now as president, the undisputed national leader of the party and with his “brother” seeking the local godfather role, Villa’s current landlord, is going to be the final voice to direct on December 13. Aspirants can only pray for the oracle to speak well.
But the president would have to thread with caution if his party would stand any chance against the incumbent despite his (Adeleke’s) own hassle of trying to work out being a lawful candidate next year. Aside the disputed judicial victory of 2010, arising from the 2007 poll initially won by Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola of PDP, the only gubernatorial election the president’s party has won in Osun with acclaim was Aregbesola’s 2014 surprise re-election victory over Omisore, then of PDP. The 2018 victory of Oyetola over Adeleke was widely seen as tainted, not even when then-President Buhari cast a pall on it.
Pitching his re-election bid to Osun traditional rulers led by Ooni of Ife in Osogbo 27 January, 2019, Buhari said, “I know how much trouble we had in the last election (Oyetola’s election) here. I know by remote control through so many sources how we managed to maintain the party (APC) in power in this state.”
In 2022, remote control couldn’t sustain Oyetola in power. Adeleke returned with a vengeance and worked the margin wide this time in a way no digital “control” could cost him. With this in mind, many have been querying the resurgent and surging confidence of Oyetola that he could successfully prosecute a proxy rubber match against his 2022 conqueror using Oyebamiji when he, as the incumbent, fumbled a sitter three years ago. Could it be the Abuja factor, considering that Adeleke, without the platform headache, could be taken to be cruising.
Since the scramble for the APC ticket in the state began, wild theories have coloured the stratosphere. There have been talks of someone setting someone up to fail to justify his own failure. That must be the height of it, for infamy and dirty politics, if true. I have also heard that a big masquerade is scheming a soft-landing for a “son” not sheltered in his “home” by working as the “unseen” but steady hand propping a “lazy youth” his “adopted” son can easily crush. An old hand skippering a new team in town is also reportedly setting a trap for a “wandering” fellow with a good chance to win the main race. But he is currently kind of stranded and the wily hand, supposedly an ally, is said to be planning to do the fellow a strong thing if and when approached for help. May we not be constrained to eat enemy’s meal.
History can be funny when repeating itself. The current situation in Osun APC is as if the party is travelling back in time to 2022, when 23 whopping aspirants sought its presidential ticket but with one being the clear favourite. Without doubt, Omisore is the biggest political name in the race for the ticket, just like Asiwaju was, over three years ago. Infact, he is so eclipsing that a lot of outsiders can barely recognise any other aspirants out of the sparring multitude. A distant second to him in name-recognition would be his successor at APC national secretariat, Ajibola Bashiru, though Oyebamiji is gradually building momentum, despite being practically non-existent in the media space all through his time at NIWA.
As providence would have it, in 2022, Tinubu’s fate, humanly speaking, was in Omisore’s hands. In 2025, Omisore’s fate is now, realistically speaking, in Tinubu’s hands. Wonderful God.
A Senior Advocate told me of his encounter with a former South West governor, who he had done good and was expecting reciprocity in his bid to succeed the governor who was rounding off his tenure. Things got heated when it became clear the governor was going to hang him out to dry. He said he had to do what Yoruba will call iregun (reminding someone of your good deeds to them which is culturally not acceptable to the Yoruba race)), telling him (the governor) how he used the law to sustain him in office. What he got from the governor who was volubly volatile was a shocker. According to him, the governor said yes, you did me a lot of good but not bound by any kind of compulsion to repay. He confounded further with a theory about the three ways you can repay a good deed; one, repay it with a good deed, two, not repaying at all and thirdly, repaying it with evil! The governor said he chose to go with the third option. The Senior Advocate was stunned. Infact, I could still sense his disbelief while relaying the episode to me. He however confessed that when he recovered from the shock, he exchanged plenty abusive and cuss words with the governor.
What if those Omisore has assisted are favouring the third option? Well, I’m sure he has been around long enough, politically and even in calendar count, to know how to negotiate slippery slopes, navigate treacherous terrains and dodge venomous embraces, which are norms in Nigerian politics. My only concern is Proverbs 17:13.
End.
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