By Ayinla Joseph
The Yoruba say, when a man forgets the ladder that took him to the top of the iroko tree, the fall that awaits him will be narrated as a proverb.
On Thursday, Ibadan stood still for its king. Oba Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja clocked 82. Not 82 years of mere age, but 82 years of bruises, battles, betrayals and benediction. A former Senator. A former Governor. An elder statesman who, like Oduduwa, returned as king. The following day, Friday, Oba Ladoja also clocked one year on the throne of his forefathers.
Ibadan celebrated him. Nigeria celebrated him. The Presidency sent greetings. Former governors knelt. Serving governors bowed. The Alaafin of Oyo paid tribute. The Soun of Ogbomoso poured libation of words. Even the Aseyin, far in Iseyin, bought a full page in a national daily to say: our father lives.
But in Agodi Government House, there was silence. Cold, deliberate, imperial silence.
Governor Seyi Makinde did not felicitate his king. No advert. No statement. No courtesy of any sort extended. Nothing. His protégé, Bimbo Adekanmbi, toed the same line of contempt. For 48 hours, Ibadan people waited for a word that never came, until shame forced a whisper.
We must ask: what manner of politics is this?
In 2019, it was this same Ladoja who held Makinde’s hand when Makinde had no hand to hold. It was Ladoja who coordinated the coalition, who gathered the angry, the broken and the hopeful, and stitched them into a garment called victory for a man who had never won anything before. Without Ladoja, there would have been no Omituntun in 2019. And the man knows it.
Philosophers call it the Paradox of Power. Machiavelli warned about it in “The Prince”: that power acquired through the mercy of others must be sustained by gratitude, otherwise it consumes itself. Plato called such rulers philosopher-kings who failed philosophy. Men who know how to win power but not how to carry it.
History is littered with them.
Emperor Nero of Rome who burnt the city that made him emperor. King Rehoboam in the Bible who told the elders who made him king: “My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s waist.” Emperor Commodus who thought Rome was his father’s farm and turned the palace into a circus until the circus swallowed him.
Seyi Makinde governs like them — as an emperor, not as an Omoluabi. A man who believes loyalty must flow upwards to him, but must never flow downwards from him. He rides on the shoulders of giants and then complains that the giants are too tall.
Today it is Ladoja he snubs. Yesterday it was the Alaafin. The day before, the Soun. Tomorrow, which Oba will taste his disdain? He has transferred his personal hatred for the Olubadan stool into a war against all royal stools in Oyo State. That is not politics. That is poison.
And what shall we say of Bimbo Adekanmbi, his political son, who has learnt this ignoble art of ingratitude so perfectly? The Yoruba say, “the child who says his mother will not sleep, he too will not sleep.” To watch a man seeking to be governor practise contempt for the throne he seeks to govern is a disaster foretold.
Oyo people know Omituntun 2.0 for what it is — a poisonous pill coated with sweet advertisement. If 2.0 can openly humiliate an 82-year-old first-class monarch who made him, what will Omituntun 3.0, headed by his anointed, do? It will be the unkindest cut of all. It will be the complete desecration of the Omoluabi ethos that Ibadan and Oyo hold sacred.
Seyi Makinde will be remembered. Not for the roads that crack before commissioning. Not for the parks that lead to nowhere. He will be remembered as the governor who rode on the backs of eminent men and made every one of them regret that they ever lent him their shoulders.
Ladoja at 82 needs no advert from Agodi to be great. The king’s greatness is not conferred by the governor. But the governor’s smallness is exposed by how he treats his king.
Oyo people, shine your eyes. This affliction must not rise a second time.
