Letter To Rauf Aregbesola

BY Tunde Fagbenle

December 08, 2010

My dear Comrade Rauf,

Mo yo fun o, mo yo fun’ra mi! Of course you know that’s the touching refrain of the eyo (the Lagos traditional masquerade) to those they are pleased with, celebrating life. It translates simply: I rejoice for you, I rejoice for myself.

Unlike the Ekiti judgment that caught us all napping, this time we had all ears and eyes open like an expectant father on the wife’s day in labour. Even as the four-hour long judgement (an hour for each stolen year?) of the Appeal Court was being tediously read, I kept exchanging texts with those in the court room (labour room) demanding to know of the outcome, if the “baby” had arrived! The responses: “judgment still being read”, “judgment still being read”; then suddenly came: “Rauf is governor!”

For a moment I was speechless. I did not jump excitedly. The moment was overwhelming. Tears welled in my eyes. Then that feeling, that eyo refrain: mo yo fun o Rauf, mo yo fun’ra mi. I surely was happy for me, I am happy for Osun peoples. And that feeling is not mine alone, it is one exuded by all Osun people I know, my friends. It’s a new dawn!

The euphoria is everywhere and with everyone. My friend, Dr. Wale Oloyede, a retired top civil servant in Abuja called and said he was now ready to go to Osun and work, and for FREE! Nothing better captures the feeling of liberation and of the urgency for concerted efforts to reclaim Osun. Of course you know my son, Kunle, the attorney in the United States. He called to congratulate me. I told him it was time for cake-baking, not cake-sharing. Time for all Osun people to work to turn Osun into the pacesetter state we dreamt of 19 years ago in 1991 when it was created.

I remember that occasion very clearly. I jumped into the plane and flew down to Nigeria. Everyone, everywhere, was excited. We all rolled up our sleeves and got down to work. Col Leo Ajiborisa was the Military Administrator of the new State. I got my company, Alfa Communications Ltd, supported by the new government, to organise a weeklong seminar that brought together all and sundry – from the academia, the professions, etc – to brainstorm and produce a “blueprint” for jumpstarting and propelling the new state to greatness. It was a wonderful moment.

Unfortunately, Ajiborisa’s kick-starting administration was soon over and that “blueprint” rested somewhere gathering dust with successive regimes; and downwards Osun spiralled.

Ours, not only in Osun but in the larger Yoruba nation, has been a history of repeated great hopes repeatedly greatly dashed. No time filled us as Yoruba peoples with collective fervour and loftier expectations than in 1998 as our struggle for June 12 and assertion of our rights to choose who governs us succeeded in forcing the military out and bringing the entire Yoruba nation under one political umbrella, the AD Party. Emerging from the ethnic torture and siege mentality wrought on us by the despotic General Sani Abacha, we were filled with a sense of urgency to move the Yoruba nation forward and rediscover the pace-setting force of the Awolowo years when the Western Region established so many First-in-Africa institutions and technological innovations.

We were not going to ‘leave’ Nigeria, but we were going to leave the rest of Nigeria behind.

Then what happened? Moment by moment, little by little, our ranks were infiltrated by recidivist mainstreamers whose notion of politics is “come and chop”, whose notion of federalism is what is in Abuja to share, and whose notion of governance is reducing their peoples to paupers and beggars. Little by little the people died or left these shores for better clime abroad, victims of leaders who knew nothing about progressive governance, of freeing the space for the people’s ingenuity and creative spirit to develop to raise internally generated revenue to such self-reliant level to make the Abuja monthly dole mere icing on the cake.

Rauf, I am writing to remind you, before you get swamped by officialdom and surrounded and cornered by the bastards in our midst – sycophants and thieves – to remember the history of why we are where we are today, and also to always remember your promises to your people and to your God. We shall hold you to them.

I am cheered by the knowledge of you as an intrepid and dogged fighter imbued with the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Obafemi Awolowo, and other great sages you have studiously followed. You are a young man but you have the wisdom of the ancient. You are also lucky to have cut your teeth under Asiwaju Bola Tinubu whose style of leadership has brought great advancement to Lagos State – especially through his successor, Babatunde Fashola – and also provided the sustenance for your torturous legal struggle to reclaim your mandate.

You will need all the support you can get, and once the people can trust you and see that your passion is matched by transparency, honesty, and fairness, they will file behind you. They will rally round to protect you against the evil machinations of the powerful traditional and political leaders who have disappointed them in the past, desecrating their hallowed stools through unwholesome deeds; leaders without any iota of integrity left, who have sold their people to Abuja in the past for personal gains. Nothing but crooked contractors themselves in whom it has been our collective misfortune to hand our cultural glory, they are in cahoot with the crooked and are quick to inveil them with honours of our patrimony. They are cog in the wheel of progress of the Yoruba nation. You will come to no harm as you serve them what they deserve in our forward march.

There is no greater proof that the judgment that brings you to power is righteous and reflects the people’s votes than the spontaneous and massive celebration that greeted it all over Osun and beyond, from Osogbo to Okuku, from Ilesha to Ile-Ife, from Ila to Igbajo!

And this is why I am joyous for Osun. By that judgment and the start of your first four years as governor, Osun State is suddenly relieved of the horrors that stared us in the face. Horrors of the prospect of even worse brigands and murderers coming to power in 2011 through whatever means they would have devised again to thwart the wishes of the electorate; horrors of murder, horrors of mayhem, horrors of unrest, horrors of continued underdevelopment. Now, they’ve all been sent packing, they and their godfathers with all their ill-gotten wealth. Now we can breathe. Thank goodness!

With Fashola in Lagos, Fayemi in Ekiti, Mimiko in Ondo and Oshiomhole in Edo, a fresh wind of change is blowing across the Yoruba nation that is bound to sweep Ogun and Oyo soon, and once again my spirit resurges with hope – hope that, though I am somewhat well in years, I may yet witness a region that fulfils the dream of Obafemi Awolowo of “freedom for all, life more abundant”, a region that becomes the pride of Black peoples all over the world in progressive governance, in technology, in the sciences, and in the arts.

Hafsat Abiola, that cerebral daughter of our martyrs of democracy, MKO and Kudirat Abiola, shares this hope with me as she reminds us of Lenin’s statement, that: “there are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen”, wondering, “could these events build enough momentum to swing the votes in April against PDP?”

It is a new dawn. Congratulations.

Fraternally yours,

TF

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