By Uthman Sodipe-Dosunmu
Let me first state firmly that the Lagos State Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Elders are now reconciled, working in lockstep unity. They are now re-asserting the bond, the friendship and the amity of the good old days. They are now fully united, strengthened in will and wisdom, to confront the ruling party.
There is no more division. There is no more feud. Peace is now in our midst. Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde worked seriously and graciously for the peace we are now enjoying.
We are also grateful to Chief Bode George, Dr Abimbola Ogunkelu, Chief Mrs Aduke Maina, Senator Kofo Bucknor-Akerele, Chief Mrs Onikepo Oshodi, Dr Remi Akitoye, and many other leaders, who contributed to this new dawn of peace. We thank God for this important breakthrough in Lagos State PDP.
The topic of discussion today is definitely not about our elders. It is agreed that Chief Bode George is the primus inter pares, first among equals. All our leaders have agreed to work in harmony and in renewed brotherhood.
Our concern about leadership today is borne out of the petty virulence of a reckless minority, who are unwilling to abide with the peaceful process and are determined to bring us back to the destructive days. This is no longer acceptable.
Now let me talk about leadership.
What exactly is leadership? What does it entail?
The classical definition of leadership is the sweeping surrender to the will of the people. It is the instinctive approbation of the progressive ideals, the cultivation of a greater vision far beyond the petty self interest or the withdrawal to crude sectional motivations.
The leader is not only to guide, but he is supposed to listen. He is not only to lead, he is supposed to seek counsel from the people. The leader cannot pretend to have absolute wisdom. He must be humble enough to appreciate that others have something to contribute.
Leadershp is not a purchasable commodity that can be bought in the market place. It is earned. It is worked for. It is achieved through established testimony of duty, honor, service, devotion to the higher ideals, which is stripped of personal acquisition.
The progressive leadership does not reside in temporary advantages. It does not resolve itself in narrow prejudicial benefits. No. It is predicated absolutely on the larger interest of the people, the salvaging welfare of the society. It is here the good leadership defines itself in firm, sweeping meritocracy.
There is no perfect leader anywhere in the world. All leaders have their failings too; because they are human. But what distinguishes a great leader invariably is the ability to recognize the flaws on the ground, acknowledge them, rectify the observable errors and move on. That is redeeming leadership.
However, great leaders are often misunderstood. They are subjected to abuse and calumny, trampled and scourged by political renegades, whose purpose is to overthrow the good order and impose themselves as the new arbiters of the realm.
Truly, the game of power is the constant hurrying in delicate and sometimes perilous places, the parrying of darts and cudgels from
friends and foes amid the frenzy to foist a new direction upon a party or the state.
It is never an easy task. For those who genuinely believe in the cause of the people, for those who are innately committed to improve the lives of their fellow citizens, it is impossible to escape the terrible concoctions from aggrieved characters, who simply want to displace the iconic emblem of the moment.
Daggers are drawn from unbelievable angles. Stories are brazenly fabricated to destroy well earned credibility. Innuendoes are spawned from dark prejudicial corners to destroy the innocent.
Friends are pitted against each other with the contrivance of fabled narratives. Nothing is sacred. All is fair in this brutal blood-letting.
Falsehoods are manufactured, hired hands are roused to distort the narratives. The man who whispers to you today as a trusted acolyte will be found tomorrow hobnobbing with your sworn enemy.
The landscape is often treacherous, blurred, dark, deep in the womb of uncertainties. Only the skillful, the even-tempered, the astute and the God-fearing can maneuver this unpredictable land mines without being consumed by the unseen forces of evil.
This much is going on now in a very narrow section of Lagos State PDP, where the truth is being harried into the wilderness, where malice pretends a grasp of leadership, where illiteracy arbitrates as knowledge, where third rate characters conspire in the shadows sowing discord and confusion.
In recent times, there has been a spate of vicious, cruel and vindictive vendetta waged against Chief Olabode George and Governor Makinde by some ill-masked, untidily veiled mercenaries, fulfilling the purpose of the other side.
Something is terribly wrong when a few chest-beating pseudo democrats within the fold of Lagos PDP are now the hired hands of the ruling party. They churn out unbelievable, cheap manufactured fables, insinuating very horrible, unsubstantiated stories in twisted libelous license against our leaders.
This is sad. This is sickening. And it is not right. And it is not fair. And it is ungodly. Those who will betray their party for a mess of porridge have disrobed themselves in the market place. They are equally declaring that everything can be negotiated for personal gains.
Indeed, there is a certain muddled odiousness about these agents of destabilization, and ruin who insist on bringing the roof down when the price is right. They say hosannah in the morning and shout crucify him in the darkness of the night .
These illicit activities are the preserve of vain, disused, desperate loafers, lacking in truth, devoid of decency, stampeded by a corrosive inner madness, which presently propels them to their own forfeiture. But we know they are the frustrated minority perched on the outpost of irrelevance.
We know those who are hiding in the darkness and pouring venom against the redeeming light. We know the ring leaders who have suddenly ratcheted up their campaign of hate, once they realized that the National Working Committee, NWC, of our great party is serious about resolving the impasse in Lagos.
In truth, the current campaign of enmity against the Atona Odua and Governor Makinde by well known perennial time-servers, is all about envy and the complex of the diminished man. It is about a virulent, aimless malignity encouraged by a distorted, scarred, verminous identity. But more importantly, the campaign of blackmail is also about money. There is no doubt about it.
The rabble rousers want to be placated yet again by easy money. They got away with in the recent past. They have come again with the same old song. We will not dance to the tune of cheap, dirty blackmail. Are you going to dance to that? No!
The awful, disjointed rantings of these little men would have been ignored and banished to the dust bin of history, had it not been for their destructive insistence, which would make silence itself a complicity.
When falsehood is persistent and unchecked, it may invariably give the veneer of truth. That must never happen. We are now prepared, poised and steadfast to grapple with the enemies within.
The tragedy in this invidious engagement belittles the party and definitely smear the little throng rented by the other side. It is a complicity that is so obvious that it screams to the high heavens.
The failed conspirators against Chief Bode George and Governor Makinde are often men of straw, inconsequential low-life, who hardly contribute anything meaningful to the enhancement and the growth of the party. They are often hangers’-on, casual paraders of the moment, always hunting for the gains of the hour.
Not for them the principled selflessness, the determined crusading zeal, the devotion to duty and honor that define the leadership of the Atona Odua.
Indeed they are invariably peripheral scavengers, without salvaging inner core, without tact, lacking in the necessary moral armor that define the Ọmọluabi identity of the Lagosian heritage.
Chief Bode George, the Atona Odua has demonstrated a sterling, progressive and democratic leadership in steering the rudder of the party since 1998. He occupies the highest totem in Lagos State, in the South-West and earns a national reckoning through hardwork, selflessness, devotion to duty and the honorable path. He remains an outstanding emblem of consistency and steadfastness in his contributions to the growth of the party.
The Atona continues to finance the party substantially by investing millions of his own personal funds to ensure that the party is solvent and positioned on a moral high ground as we grapple with the rot invested Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s fiefdom.
I have been part of Atona’s journey from the grim solitude of undeserved incarceration in the debasing wastes of Kirikiri to the exhaustive, prolonged intellectual exchange in the midnight hours of Lugard.
Where were they?
I saw his patriotic doggedness on the campaign trail from the furnace heat of Sokoto to the blistering savannah of Gombe and Katsina.
Where were they?
I saw his courage and the tenacity of spirit in the mangroves of Rivers, in the desolate asphaltic rot of Abia, on the lonely roads of Bayelsa, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, in the embracing hurrah of Enugu and in the final treachery of the conclaves of Abuja as he withdrew his aspiration from leading the party.
Where were they?
There is a certain mastery about the Atona in networking, in negotiating seemingly impossible deals. He is always unruffled, resolved, determined in ensuring that the truth prevails.
Yes, he is certainly human in his undertakings, like all of us. But he is quick to acknowledge a perceived error and rectify the wrongs. He is never detained by malice. He is never halted by anger. He moves on to the next call of duty with martial candor.
He is such a one like Ulysses. A man of “one equal temper of heroic heart, strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, but not to yield.”
It is rather awful that such an icon with that selflessness and vivid altruism will be dragged by some fifth columnists into a Samson’s syndrome engagement. Their fixation is to bring down the roof.
Democracy does not endure when we are all closeted in pursuit of narrow, selfish ambition. Democracy is about principled contribution to the enhancement of the realm. Genuine democrats bear no prejudice against alternative contributions. Disagreements must never dissolve into cheap vendetta. The pivot of democratic continuity is anchored upon plural contributions without the tinge of malice. A monolithic voice does not enrich the political space. The Atona accommodates all, regardless of genuine ideological differences.
This is the way it ought to be and never a slide to a primitive withdrawal into personal malicious feud. None will survive this path of destruction.
Competition and partisan differences must not, and should not, degenerate into deliberate, vindictive libelous slugfest.
Yes, let a thousand flowers bloom. Let all voices be heard. None should be silenced. But there must be decorum and civility in political discourse. There must never be a recourse to abusive, reckless, jaundiced cultivation. There must never be a primitive recourse to blackmail or venomous libel and defamation of character.
Those who throw stones today should beware that evil can circle.
Pray, let us begin anew. Let us heal the wounds of the past. Let us rectify the wrongs of old.
Let us start a new chapter on God’s holy path.
Moral: Isaiah 54 vs 15: Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by me: whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake.
It is well in His name. God bless you all.
•Prince Shodipe-Dosunmu, an author, essayist and veteran journalist, is the Oloriekun of Olowogbowo and the Special Adviser to Chief Bode George, writes from Lagos.
