By Babajide Alex Adetunji
With profound respect to the late Playwright, Ola Rotimi, whose literary works have remained a legacy decades after his death, the name of former Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, should have been used as the main character in the play, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, instead of Major Lejoka Brown’s. Why? This is because the Afao-born politician does go into temporary insanity from time to time, losing a grip on reality.
While I know that Fayose is half-educated, half-literate and probably unlikely to have read the play, Fayose should be told that his behavioural patterns and tendencies have tilted more in the direction of an individual with a periodic psychiatric challenge. I may be wrong, but Mr Fayose does have a brain touch from time to time and I think it is time that his wife, a respectable and easy-going woman, had his brain checked, or better still, called him to order. If you disagree with me, you may be right to do so, but which normal person would go on live television to claim that the abduction of teachers and pupils in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State could have been orchestrated by the Oyo State Government? Which mentally-stable person would isolate the Oyo State incident from the scores of abductions and kidnappings that have enveloped the entire country just to score a cheap political point against the governor?
Within the last one month alone, over 100 Nigerians have been abducted across the country. In fact, on the same day that pupils and teachers were abducted in Ahoro Esinele and Yawota in Oriire Local Government, 50 children were kidnapped from the Mussa Central Primary School in Askira-Uba Local Government Area of Borno State. Days later, in one of the series of attacks in Kwara State, 10 people were also kidnapped in Yashikira community of Baruten Local Government in Kwara State, while bandits were also said to have ransacked Ilesha-Baruba, Lafiagi, Ori Oke Ajaiye, Isanlu Isin also in Kwara State, killing and abducting Nigerians.
So, if Fayose could accuse Oyo State Government and, particularly, Governor Makinde of orchestrating the abductions in Oriire Local Government for political gain, who orchestrated the ones in Kwara, Borno, Kaduna, Niger and other states? No be madness be that?
Though the politician in him made him say he might be wrong after making the insensitive allegation, or probably to avoid being sued for criminal defamation of character, his intentions were clear: he wanted to paint Makinde with a coal-tar to justify his pay for the month of May, I may be wrong (to use his own language). From the former governor’s actions and attacks against Makinde, he has sold himself out as a political contractor out to blackmail and/or destroy Makinde at all costs to feather the nests of either former Governor Nyesom Wike or President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
And, speaking of Wike, isn’t it time for the Department of State Security and all other security agencies to ask the former Rivers State Governor to explain what he meant by the statement that he would put fire into states where the governors dragged the PDP with him? The former governor, whose penchant for violence and aggression has never been hidden, dating back to his days as Chief of Staff to former Governor Rotimi Amaechi, should be explaining that indecorous statement. Wike promised to put fire into Oyo State and the state has begun to witness fire in a way it has never experienced before, with parents weeping over their abducted children, husbands and wives lamenting over their spouses, while fears of kidnapping continue to grow daily.
Are these the fires Wike promised or there are more to come? Will President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ask his Minister to explain his roles in these fires or we will continue to deceive one another? What is the link between the promised fire and attempt by Fayose to distract the Oyo State Government and the security agencies working round the clock to rescue the abducted teachers and children? These are the questions the DSS should be asking Fayose, but no one seems to care about the clue he dropped on live television.
For one, all Nigerians know the communion between Wike and Fayose on the one hand and between Fayose and Tinubu on the other; if that individual has come out to frivolously accuse a state government of orchestrating abductions, then someone should ask him for more information. Though the Oyo State Governor has said that Fayose deserves pity; I beg to disagree. What the former governor deserves is intensive grilling from security agencies so that he can tell the world what he knows about the Oriire abductions and the others happening across the country. Since he knows who might have orchestrated the ones in Oyo, he would know who is behind the nationwide siege and attacks on Nigerians, too. If he does not provide the answers, then my earlier statement about his madness will become unassailable. Then, we can all say; truly, Ekiti’s former governor has gone mad again!
Adetunji writes from Jankata, Ibadan.
