Between Olumo and Aso – reminiscences from Ogun at 40

WHY?” demanded my argumentative friend, “is it always you people? “ Why do you make so much trouble? Always Ogun, Ogun, Ogun! – Are you the only state in the nation?” And he proceeded to reel off a number of names of notorious “trouble-makers”, dead and living, pinpointing their birthplaces in Ogun State.”  It was a teasing, rhetorical question, no answer expected. If one had been required, I would have volunteered, as a birthday present to Ogun:  Ise ab’ojumu. Sometimes Iwa ab’ojumu. A pursuit (or character) of what is right. Just conduct. The people of Osun articulate something close –  Omoluwabi.  Both, and a number of allied formulations hover around that basic foundation of all humane pursuits – Justice.  Perhaps we are simply more vocal, more persistent about it. The precedent body of this mixed birthday offering is contained in a lecture that I first delivered nearly a decade ago, in Abeokuta.  I shall resort to that lecture once or twice for purposes of invoking a comparative ‘state of the state’ – then and now – but only in the context of governance characterization that enables us to grasp the essence of ab’ojumu, not to make any invidious assessments. Memory is a crucial function of existence. There is much to recall, much that justifies breast-beating, but also much to lament, deplore, even repudiate!  Individuals make up nations. National anniversaries are not that much different from the individual, being, for some, not merely calendar notations for jubilation, but also pauses for recollection, reflection, and hopefully a positive surge of renewal, and progressive energy.  It was a very well attuned mind that fashioned out those words in the Ogun State Anthem:  Eyin omo Ogun, Ise Ya! (The task is just beginning – let us move!).  I like that. I urge it also on Ogun’s sister states who are co-celebrants of the day.

An even-handed assessment tempers uncritical euphoria, enabling us to place, on well-calibrated scales, triumphs side by side with defeats, solidarity beside betrayals, dedication, beside opportunism…. and so on, and on.  We must not be Killjoys, but we also should not be overly exultant. Ogun State has been very much put upon but, if only my colleague thought about this carefully, Ogun has also experienced the agony of putting a lot on herself, internally, as much as being put upon by others. For instance, between Olumo Rock and Aso Rock, the relationship is sometimes manifested as a tussle between Culture – that is, Democratic Culture – and Power, the centralized distortion of which remains dominant across the nation – sometimes at war within the same individuals who loved to play both ends of the axis. I would not like to estimate what, for the people of Ogun, would be an accurate tally of profit and loss.

In this brief, unabashedly partisan exercise, let me admit in advance that co-option of these two landmarks goes beyond, but is not unrelated to the obliging fact that, for better or worse, both – Aso and Olumo – are conjoined by some key Ogun state indigenes in a somewhat unusual fashion. I have focused on a triad that self-constructed gradually during a critical phase of the nation’s history. It was the wistful shadow of one of this threesome cast list – a now permanent absence at any celebrations, alas! – that flitted across my mind and provoked these reflections. All three are reference points for Ogun State on the pursuit, and the ironies of power, but one remains a spectre that haunts one’s memory. That spectre certainly loomed large as I watched Ogun State governor shepherd his Aso Rock guest – and eminent train – around ‘Olumo’ town.

The three figures defined a national crisis in vastly different, but interwoven ways. One enjoyed the harvest of that tussle. Another earned his place by dint of hard work, and against overwhelming odds. He was elected across the nation by undisputed popular acclaim, including belated affirmation by those who callously thwarted his deserving at the time. Thus it is that, today, it is only voices in chronic denial that still qualify their references to that 1993 election with the phrase, “presumed winner of…”  “generally presumed to have won”, and similar ignoble attempts at diluting an unassailable truth. The third of that triad was known as Fidi Hee  (Half-arsed incumbency).

Power bestowed, power betrayed, and – power derided. This nationally unique trilogy framed the political portrait of Ogun across two decades, and struck me only some days ago as I recalled past images from that crisis, the faces and comportment of some surviving principal actors, contributors to an entity whose character has undergone remarkable contortions and distortions, internally and externally, over the past four decades. The events produced both Ogun’s finest hour and, yet again, her most demeaning. Again, just a reminder: one, now departed – retains his position as Nigeria’s president that was never permitted to rule.  Another, a fellow indigene takes his place among the dubious handlers – some say undertakers – ending up as the eventual harvester, though not without his own dose of retributive fate – while the third governed at the behest of the most vicious and thieving dictator the nation has ever known. When that military dictator had had enough of his game of cat and mouse, he simply blew f’idi hee a kiss, which blew him away from the peaks of Aso back home to the foothills of Olumo.