By Debo Akinbami, PhD
“There is no such thing as a “self-made man”. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the makeup of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.” – George Matthew Adams.
In a man’s way to worth, power, influence or affluence, he looks up to another man- men and women who contributed brains or bricks; who risked fair words in one’s behalf. That is the way nature designed it. Every living organism, including man, relies on one other for survival. Just as plants produce oxygen for animals to breathe, animals return carbon dioxide that plants need for photosynthesis.
By the same fortuitous arrangement, a man rises through a man. And to play a role in a man’s rising is one of life’s rarest and finest privileges. It becomes burdensome however when and where a mortal who was simply tooled by providence to lift a finger rashly acts as though he moulded a destiny; which is how arrogance often strips its bearer of the right of place.
Politics presents more of these weird theatrics. It supplies droll acts. The arena unveils unlikely events; the sort of scenes that tempt a mean man to think a mortal is worth more than a fleeting figure. And when rolling drunk, a man seeks God’s robe to borrow; he slides into reverie and acts the drunken donkey, unmindful of his frailty and fragility; fitfully losing his sense of transience.
This may not mean to nudge a man to his limitations; it may not seek to necessarily feign knowledge of underhand facts or find the fault lines in veiled deals; but an innocuous effort to put issues in perspective. And this, unlike Mark Antony’s funeral oration in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, I do not come to bury, I come to praise Caeser. Shakespeare chose irony; the writer chose facts, for clarity, in public interest.
It is not unwonted to have haughty souls pontificate about the rising of a man whom fate has placed above peers, even so when unmindful of the place of fate. Fate, in Greece’s mythology, is conceptualised as an inescapable force, predestined and controlled by three goddesses known as the Moirai or the Fates- who spin, measure, and cut the thread of life, determining each person’s destiny from birth to death.
In Yoruba thought, ‘Kadara’ or ‘Ayanmo’ (predestination) is acknowledged as an individual’s preordained and unique fate. “lè s’ẹbọ, lè soògùn, bí a ti wáyé pé a ó rii làá rí”- a common expression in Yoruba culture that speaks to the concept of predestination or fate, regardless of later efforts in form of sacrifice or medicine.
The governor of Ondo State, Dr. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa, took the route of fate to destiny. The proud narratives about what could have been only expose a mortal’s idiocy in thinking he can overreach God in the affairs of men. No man or woman attains a rare height as being a governor of a state by sole effort. And that’s how putrefying it reads to hear clowns – who themselves are products of circumstances – arrogate credit to themselves.
Governor Aiyedatiwa is not unmindful of the route he took to power. He is not ungrateful for the events, characters, circumstances and dynamics that converge to define destiny through the rungs- the sweet and sour; but let no man or woman pretend to control the seismic force of nature; let no mortal dare to play God in order to score political points.
The good thing, regardless, is the fact that Aiyedatiwa talks less; yet he is not, in the least, distracted. As he daily welcomes patriotic minds to the tall task of building a more prosperous Ondo State, he busies himself with upscaling a state entrusted to his hands by the people; and, like the Greek myth of King Midas, whatever he touches turns to gold.
***Dr. Akinbami is the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor of Ondo State on Strategic Communication.
