Mábajà, Òjórólayé and matters arising
By: Debo Akinbami
Before the lull descended on Ondo wing of the All Progressives Congress, its home was more convivial. Things have not remained the same for the broom’s party since it held its last gubernatorial party primary. Before the contest, her camp was beehived. While it last, publicists were at their best, deploying promotional ploys and allied communication strategies. Each of the – sixteen – aspirers strove to outdo one another in the fierce vying for the party’s flag.
The contest went the way it did and the quietude in the aftermath has literarily been deafening; the sort that leaves many a player and watchers confounded. While this intervention may not, under the prevailing circumstances, necessarily dwell on the ifs and buts, which, at closer sieve, may remain, as it were, an academic exercise, a attempt is herein made to review certain ideological debates around the outing.
Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa, the incumbent governor, has been declared winner of the civic outing. That is no news. It’s public knowledge that the party’s prized ticket was delivered to him amidst acerbic remonstration from other contestants; but something is more beguiling. Before the poll, there was the voguish Mábajà Mábabínó riff, a putatively benign rhyme admonishing folks to refrain from fraying a man propped by God- which Lucky Aiyedatiwa, in the campaigners’ thesis, personifies.
It was a vogue reminiscent of the traditional imbongi. And, coincidentally, the tune was even apposite for the season, so that it was adapted as a timeous remonstrate for Aiyedatiwa’s real and imagined political detractors in the twilight of the contest. In hindsight, however, the innocuous lyrical rendition was to represent a disarming veil to opposers while timid-looking Aiyedatiwa shored up his arsenal.
Lucky wears insipid visage as though he was leaving the fight to heavens to do in his behalf, yet he prepared with all his for the battle ahead of him. He even prepared for something more than a primary election, so that he would perpetuate himself beyond the February deadline of the fated Akeredolu-Aiyedatiwa mandate. To this extent, the Mábajà riff proved a ruse, a romantic subterfuge. Lucky did not wait on God to fight. He, instead, gets in the ring and pulled God in as referee.
Now the boils persist. Chickens of blurry pre-election blinkers are coming home to roost, with acute consequences. And, quite intriguingly, as the embers of Mábajà grudgingly fades, another escapist worldview, Òjórólayé seems to be supplanting it. As a theory, Òjórólayé supposes that, life, when weighed with care, reveals, albeit latent, certain epistemological truths, including the fact that life is a fraud, and that election rigging and brigandage, violence and election manipulation are elements of mortal pursuit of power.
The former Governor of Kano State and national chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, by entreating aggrieved aspirers to accept the party’s declaration of candidacy, irrespective, may unwittingly be adopting the Òjórólayé perspective. By telling Lucky’s opposers to, in the words of a critic, ‘pour all the nonsense in one cup and gulped at once’, the party is ostensibly espousing Òjórólayé. Even Aiyedatiwa’s acts, at a closer gauge, may have been inspired by this brutal life code.
The question arises nonetheless as to what extent the APC can run from this furious fork? The party truly needs to get its acts together. It needs to heal its arms as soon as it can in favour of the bigger picture. The strategies deployed for intra-party win may not be the same that inter-party requires. The next win would require more than the Mábajà Mábabínó songful bait and may be about Òjórólayé thesis but on a larger scale, in which it may be too early to predict who wins or looses.
Whatever happens, the party’s interest should lead. Compromise, laced with genuine conciliation should hasten the healing process. It may not be an easy trade for parties but it should not be all uphill if rightly regarded as a family contest that it is. The party can emerge stronger from its present lull if it resolves its rumbles smartly and early enough. The caveat, should however be that, where entreaties fail, after all, there will be nothing to share from a naught.
…..Written Debo Akinbami writes from Igboegunrin.
