Fate they say plays a major role in enthroning and dethroning leadership. One might be lucky if fate brings the right leadership card, one might just be negatively lucky, to have had to deal with the wrong card. In a situation where one is not allowed to freely choose who rules, one might have to deal with the choice of fate until prayers are answered and the same fate that brought the same anarchical leader takes him or her away for peace and progress of the land.
Have you watched the video being circulated by His Transcendence, my lord the chairman of Ijumu LGA and his foot soldiers? If you haven’t, you might not be missing much. I have watched the video and was moved to tears. I was moved to tears, not for the major actor in the video but because Ijumu land who has a long list of Professors, an A-list of civil servants and professionals fell into this kind of unwholesome leadership melee.ย
While I was a teenager, one of the books that got my attention was a play written by Ola Rotimi, titled “Our husband has gone mad again”. It was a satire woven around politics and polygamy.ย
The lead actor, Major Rahman Taslim Lajoka-Brown was a man who went into politics to self seek not to serve his people. He was often referred to as mad by his harem of wives whenever he displayed his madness tendencies. I can’t really recollect what happened to him at the end of the day but I’ll recommend you read the book and draw your own comparison of our present-day Ijumu LGA and her leadership.ย
Where it not that I don’t disrespect constituted authorities no matter how they got to power, I would just have said, it appears that our local government chairman in his characteristic manner has gone mad again!ย
How do we explain those flippant and uncouth words coming out of the vocal cavity of a supposed honourable chairman at a public function? How do we rationalize the plethora of jumbles we’ve had to deal with rather than speak about live-changing projects and programmes for the local government.ย ย
Why can’t he draw strength and examples from people like Honourable Olumoko a one time chairman of the same local government with a phenomenal record of achievements?
What first caught my attention was how freely Mr chairman spoke and referred to someone as his concubine in public, this is a man with a retinue of wives and a cortage of hidden paramours.ย
In a saner clime, the people he governs would have demanded his immediate resignation for indecent behaviour and fouling the atmosphere but who dares do that here in Nigeria.ย
Another one that caught my curiosity was the way he spoke disdainfully and lowly of his fellow appointees and elected officers. He sounded the battle knell and subtly vowed to disarm them because they have gathered against their benefactor.ย
He played god! He was boastful about those he had enthroned and was sure he was the alfa and omega of their sinking ship, the APC.ย
According to him, he single-handedly enthroned all politicians in Ijumu land, he did likewise to produce the governor and will stop at nothing to make the governor the new president of Nigeria come 2023. Can he make anyone a ward councillor? Can he even control his immediate household? What a muffling hallucination.
Isn’t it baffling that while GYB is busy looking for more members to join the party, my lord chairman is sending party members the other way. While his boss and governor is uniting party stalwarts, ‘oga’ chairman is busy fanning the embers of discord.
If he can be so blessed by God to enthrone, why can’t he dethrone?ย
Let’s even take side by side his achievements with a few of those he mentioned because he alluded to the fact that he is more of a free spender than them. Names like Honourable Omofaiye and Kilani Olumo not to even mention Senator Smart Adeyemi which he brought into the issues would have been preferred to take charge of the affairs of a local government than this jamboree self eulogising fang.
Ade Omofaiye was a four-year(one term) assembly member of Ijumu constituency with enduring legacies and progressive feathers to his cap. I dare my lord the chairman, to bring out the list of his transformational projects and those donations he has done to communities, only then would I ask that Omofaiye makes available his projects and donations, lest we forget.ย
Honourable Omofaiye having passed the baton to Hon. Kilani a fine breed rancour-free gentleman who is empowering widows and youths and who is also blazing the trail in law-making at the states assembly.ย
Could Mr chairman reel out his achievements aside from buying motorcycles and cars for his sycophants and concubines, then I shall seek also to publish the silent but lasting legacies of these gentlemen amidst the tight and declining economic situations.ย
Why should an in house issue become a public discussion by someone who sees himself as the leader of a party at the grassroots when nobody sees him as one!ย ย
This and more became a burden in my mind after watching this show of shame being spread around like a song of victory by the leader of a nitwit group and his unreasoning cult followers.ย
When, just when shall Ijumu be free from this Goliath that held us bound?
– Obafemi Babajide, an indigene of Ijumu LGA, Kogi State.
