By Mahmud Jega
24th September, 2007

I have heard many people expressing indignation at the reported remarks by the strongman of Ibadan politics, Alhaji Aribiyi Adedibu, when he received House of Representatives Speaker Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh last week. The Speaker was in Ibadan to condole family members of the slain House member Mr. Segun Oladimeji, and she also went to condole the departed man’s political godfather, Adedibu.

Referring to Madam Speaker’s ongoing troubles at the House over the award of a jumbo contract to renovate her official residence, Adedibu said, "Honourable Etteh is the only hope of the Yoruba in the Federal Government. Any attempt to remove her by members of the House would therefore mean removing Yoruba nation from the scheme of things in Nigeria. Let our lawmakers allow peace to grow in the nation. This is the Speaker we put there as our own. What concerns the Yoruba is peaceful coexistence. What they are saying about Etteh does not concern us. If you try Etteh, you are trying us. We will not submit. This is the only one we have in the West. The Yoruba people are now speaking with one voice by appealing to the members. The entire Yoruba race are speaking with one voice that what is on the ground is more than what they are talking about. Tell Yar’Adua that he should tell his men to stop probing Etteh. Yar’Adua is my son. We voted massively for him in Oyo state here. If it were Chief Obasanjo, would he set up an enquiry? We put Yar’Adua there because we voted massively for him. We don’t want the democracy enshrined by Chief Obasanjo to be truncated by anyone. I therefore call on the members of the Representatives that we have the Easterners and the Northerners here. So, this country belongs to all of us".

What I cannot understand is, why was anyone amazed by Alhaji Adedibu’s remarks? Look, this is the godfather of amala politics, a man who publicly defended his demand that the former Oyo State governor Rashidi Ladoja must give him N10 million a month, out of the N60 million monthly security vote that Ladoja allegedly collected. Alhaji Lamidi is one of the most straightforward men in Nigerian politics, a complete throwback to another era. Some years ago, in the course of an interview, a reporter asked him about his brand of amala politics. Alhaji Adedibu replied, "All I know is, whoever comes to this house, he must eat. And when he is going, I must give him money. Even you, when you finish this interview, I am going to give you money."
There are many people in Nigeria who have described Adedibu’s straightforward remarks as "gaffes", most clearly because they do not know what a gaffe is. Not only has Alhaji Adedibu said some straight forward things, but some straight forward things have been said about him as well. Remember the redoubtable old PDP chairman Dr. Ahmodu Ali, referred to in some Nigerian media quarters as the father of gaffes. Almost everything Ali said in the last three years had been categorised as a gaffe, notably his apt description of Adedibu as the "garrison commander" of Oyo State politics. Speaking about the Adedibu-Ladoja quarrel, Ali said Ladoja must obey Adedibu because in every place there is a garrison commander, and Alhaji Adedibu is Oyo State’s. Now, the media lurched on that statement and tried to crucify Ali. Where were the Igalas? Why didn’t they describe Ali as their last hope, and say attacking him was like marginalising the Igala from the scheme of things?

In fact, the Igala must learn many lessons from Ibadan, because this was not the first occasion when Dr. Ahmodu Ali came under severe attack. Last year, in the wake of the defeat of the Third Term bill, the PDP boss described distinguished senators as "yan iska", a Hausa term that has no equivalent in English. When the senators angrily summoned Ali to appear before them to explain, what were the Igala doing, not describing Ali as their last hope? Even in the 1970s, when Ali was embroiled in the Ali Must Go crisis, in comparison to which Etteh’s current troubles look like child’s play, why didn’t the Igala speak up?

Nor is Alhaji Adedibu the first man from Ibadan ever to call a spade a spade in Nigerian politics. Many years before him, there was another strongman of Ibadan politics, Alhaji Busari Adelakun. Adelakun started in the Second Republic as a staunch UPN man, but in 1982, he joined Chief Sunday Afolabi and others to rebel against Chief Awolowo’s "imposition" of Governor Bola Ige as UPN gubernatorial candidate for a second term. In one memorable newspaper interview, Adelabu said of Awolowo, "If him be thug, I be thug too!" Alhaji Busari even said UPN will not win Oyo State in 1983 because he was the one who rigged it to victory in 1979, and that with him gone, Awo had no way to rig Bola Ige in again in 1983. That year, some newspapers erroneously described Adelakun’s remarks as a gaffe, whereas he only set the tone for straight forward talk now upheld by Adedibu.
It’s not only Ibadan people who are straight forward. Even their next door neighbours, the Egbas, especially the Owus, have drunk from the same pot. Early into his presidential tenure in 1999, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo summarily retired 80 PPMC area and depot managers, allegedly because they formed a "syndicate" that perpetuated fuel scarcity. He was then asked during his media chat on live television why he just retired but failed to prosecute them. Obasanjo answered, "If you take them to court, the court will ask for evidence, then it will adjourn! It is better to leave the matter to God." That was not a gaffe at all; it was a true statement of fact.

After all, even the great people of Ife had learnt straight talk from the Ibadan godfathers, never mind their protracted quarrel when they were together in the old Oyo State. In 1990, the then national chairman of the SDP, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, visited the Oni’s ancient palace at Ile-Ife. The great Oba Okunade Sijuade Olubuse, while receiving the visitor, publicly appealed to the SDP to "please, please consider our sons" [namely Chiefs Olu Falae, Lai Balogun and Olabiyi Durojaiye] when choosing its presidential candidate. That year, many prolific Lagos-Ibadan axis media commentators commended the Oni’s wisdom, courage and his straight talk in openly campaigning for a Yoruba president. Compare that to what the elderly Emir of Gwandu, Alhaji Haruna Rasheed did in 1992, when General Shehu Yar’adua’s SDP presidential campaign train visited his palace at Birnin Kebbi. The delegation’s local organiser got up and asked the emir to pray for their candidate’s victory at the polls. The old Emir then sat up, raised his hands up and said, "Let us say prayers to Allah for peace in Nigeria". Was that not a sign that, unlike the Oni, he was not patriotically championing the cause for a Hausa president?

Maybe the Emir of Gwandu was lucky, because the same newspapers that praised the Oni for his straight talk turned around and lambasted those who so much as stated the case for their own people. Notable in this case was TELL magazine. In 1990, the Sarkin Sudan of Wurno Alhaji Shehu Malami said in an interview that Northern domination of the Nigerian presidency was understandable because, since Northerners constituted a majority in Nigeria, they would either rule themselves or they must support anyone else for him to rule. In its very first edition, TELL said Malami’s remarks contained "more than a whiff of tasteless arrogance". Not so, if it were the Oni or Adedibu.

Many other immaculate Nigerian political actors have been hit by the media for saying what was essentially the truth. In 1999, in the midst of the media lynching of National Assembly members for approving a N3 million per head furniture allowance for themselves, Senator Chuba Okadigbo spoke up on television. There was nothing wrong with the amount, he said, because as legislators, "we are here to alleviate poverty, not to spread it". Where are all the people who described redoubtable old Chuba’s remarks as a gaffe in those days?

Maybe, even in 1999, Okadigbo was being punished by the media for a remark he made 21 years earlier, in 1978. That year, as Second Republic politicking was taking off, UPN chairman and presidential candidate Chief Awolowo condemned the NPN’s policy of zoning political offices [now completely inherited by all political parties in Nigeria]. Okadigbo, then a young NPN partisan, responded on FRCN Kaduna’s Politics ‘78 program by saying, "I am surprised, because Chief Awolowo in fact is the chief zoner! He zoned the party chairmanship to himself. He zoned the presidential candidacy to himself. He zoned the party treasury to his wife, and he zoned a [Lagos] state assembly seat to his son! So Chief Awolowo in fact, is the chief zoner!"

Okadigbo’s case was not the first time in Nigeria that the media crucified some people for straight talk, while allowing others to get away scot free. Remember what happened in 1986, when Chief Moshood Abiola’s vehicle convoy was involved in an altercation with some Airforce men in Lagos. The well connected Abiola rushed to Airforce Headquarters and complained to then Air Commodore Nura Imam. To the business mogul’s surprise, the Commodore took sides with his men and allegedly said, "A soldier’s uniform is his badge of honour. When it is torn, he reacts like a mad dog". For the next one year at least, were the newspapers not awash with condemnations of old man Nura Imam, and with lavish descriptions of all soldiers as mad dogs? It was around the same time that police spokesman Alozie Ogugbuaja added fuel to the fire when he told the Justice Mustafa Akanbi panel probing the Ango Must Go riots of that year that "only a soldier can afford to drink pepper soup in the daytime." No one said Ogugbuaja’s remark was a gaffe; instead, the media celebrated him, and loudly protested when the police authorities posted him out to Maiduguri.

Not everyone is lucky to get away with gaffes, as selectively defined by the media. Early in 1986, with then FCT Minister Major General Mamman Vatsa and his colleagues facing execution for allegedly planning a foiled coup against the Babangida regime, pressmen were able to accost then Army Chief Major General Sani Abacha as he was about to board a plane in Lagos. The reporters wondered why Vatsa should be sentenced to death when the coup was uncovered before it was launched. Abacha, his eyes hidden in pitch dark goggles and stroking a Marshal’s baton in his hands, said, "Planning a coup and carrying out one, punishment is the same." The media went to town with condemnations of this "gaffe".

Some of the most celebrated "gaffes" in Nigerian politics are of dubious historical authenticity. For example, the one most celebrated by the media was the statement allegedly made by NPN chieftain Alhaji Umaru Dikko in 1983, who was said to have said that there was no hunger in Nigeria because he had not seen anyone eating out of dustbins. For more than a decade, this statement was cited by newspapers, academics, labour unionists and assorted researchers as the best example of NPN arrogance and insensitivity, but Dikko has repeatedly said that he never made such a statement, at least not in that context. Well, well.

Dikko’s old boss, Second Republic President Alhaji Shehu Shagari, also paid dearly in the media for a "gaffe" that he probably never made. In 1982, the whole world waited to see if the OAU’s planned Summit at Tripoli, Libya will hold because the American government had urged all African leaders to boycott it as punishment for Colonel Muammar Ghaddafi. Even as African leaders trickled into Tripoli, Shagari fuelled his presidential plane and kept it at the ready at Murtala Mohamed Airport in Lagos, saying he would leave for Tripoli "as soon as a quorum is formed." Media men lurched onto that statement and many asked Shagari, "If everyone stays at home, how will a quorum be formed?"

But of course the truth was more complicated than that. Shagari was not at Tripoli, but his Foreign Affairs Minister Professor Ishaya Audu was already there and Nigeria was among the 18-or-so countries that had officially registered for the Summit. Yet, the media went on for years about old man Shagari’s "gaffe".
You can’t get away with a controversial stance if you are not the Garrison Commander Adedibu, or at least a neighbour of his. Remember what the then FCT Minister Nasir el-Rufai said when the Senate Public Accounts Committee, then headed by Senator Mamman Bello Ali, asked him why he paid his personal aides a salary in US dollars. He said, "Silence is the best answer to a fool." Come to think of it, that "gaffe" was the best answer to all alleged gaffes in Nigerian politics.