By EniOlorunda Michael
Character, say the Yoruba, is a flame. It cannot be hidden. Because appearances can be deceptive, the Yoruba say you cannot determine a person’s character from his looks – oju o se fi mo’wa eda – the same thought that the Bard of Avon expressed in Macbeth, where King Duncan, enquiring about the execution of a thane, says “there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”
If you have ever had to engage questions of the darkness of the human mind, like the British Nobel Laureate William does in the epochal novel Lord of the Flies, you cannot help but see how certain persons, in placing themselves on a pedestal above their peers, actually only succeed in hastening their own tragic fall. Which brings us to the ongoing drama of the absurd in Ogun State, where a serial blackmailer and turncoat, Wale Adedayo, is being hailed as a hero by certain pernicious individuals.
Adedayo, the chairman of Ijebu East Local Government and member of the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, pointedly accused the governor of Ogun State, Prince Dapo Abiodun, of diverting the funds meant for the running of local councils in the state without providing any evidence to back up his claims.
As it turned out, Adedayo only acted a script for which he has been known since the onset of the current republic in 1999. His stories made the front pages of the nation’s newspapers, given its salacious nature, but then, barely 12 hours later, he quickly rallied his colleague chairmen on a pleading mission to the same governor he had just branded a thief before the whole world. He quickly recanted, apparently knowing that the governor had legal options to defend his name and image.
Now, contrary to Adedayo’s claims, local governments in the state had actually been receiving their allocations, and in fact had shared N5.2 billion in the month of August, the same month during which he made his unsubstantiated allegations.
During the meeting, held at the Governor’s Office, at Oke-Mosan in Abeokuta and attended by 18 out of the 20 local government chairmen, the Chairman of Ijebu-Ode Local Government, who also doubles as the chairman of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria, ALGON, Mr Babatunde Gazal, acknowledged that in May, N4.5 billion was shared by the 20 council areas. First line charges, including primary school teachers’ salaries and check-off dues came to about N2 billion; payment of retired primary school teachers – about N1 billion, retired local government teachers and chairmen’s imprest, which is N60 million per month, among others.
In June, N4.4 billion was shared, while July also saw the sharing of N4.4 billion. In August, N5.2 billion was shared, out of which over N2 billion was devoted to the payment of teachers. Coming to Ijebu East Local Government specifically, a total sum of N1.547 billion was released to it in 2021. In 2022, the figure rose steadily N1.955 billion, a difference of N408 million. In the current year, as of August ending, the council has received a total of N1.257 billion. This is quite apart from the gratuities of local government workers that the state government paid on their behalf. Given these figures, how could Adedayo have made such transparently bogus claims?
In unpacking the ongoing macabre drama, a bit of context is necessary. Going by his antecedents, Adedayo is no stranger to character assassination and blatant falsehood. Just like the metaphorical leopard that never changes its spots, he is just living up to his history and image.
While working at The Punch, Adedayo was on several occasions accused of character assassination, blackmail and manipulation, and his unceremonious exit from the reputable media house was only a matter of time. For purely political reasons, the then Governor Gbenga Daniel accepted him, rehabilitated him and made him Chief Press Secretary, giving him all the freedom in the world, and an imprest far larger than a commissioner’s. But what did our man do? He allowed all those things to get to his head and came to see himself as being bigger than his boss.
And when he realized that he had played himself out of favour by squandering/diverting the money his boss gave him to do media work, he went on a character assassination overdrive, declaring that his boss was after his life. He would later go on to write a controversial book, where he maligned his boss and so many people. In the book, ‘Micro-seconds Away From Death,’ Adedayo wrote, “On 10 January 2009, six assassins engaged me in a shoot-out. I managed to kill three of them and barely escaped from the scene. Being Chief Press Secretary to the governor at the time, I knew it was my immediate boss, who arranged the failed assassination bid, given information at my disposal.”
In this fantastic narration, the super hero was driving with one hand and gunning down the two OPC assailants allegedly sent after him by former Governor Daniel with the other. He also claimed to have used the car to jump over the median along the expressway.
While pointedly accusing former Governor Daniel of maintaining a killer squad, he volunteered the unsolicited information that in his family, people usually died at a very young age, and that his father never attained the age of 40. He went on to add that his – Adedayo – attaining that milestone was due to the sacrifices he had offered to the gods. The people he maligned in the book also include the current Aare Onakankanfo, Iba Gani Adams, a man at whose wedding he had served as best man.
He claimed that Adams was collecting money across the South-West, and was one of the assassins sent against him. He said his friend, a former editor, failed a security test when he wanted to get him a job with the then Oyo State governor, late Chief Adebayo Alao-Akala, and that his former boss, Chief Abiola Ogundokun, must have slept with his wife when he was in detention!
The book, ‘Micro-seconds Away From Death,’ painted everyone else as a devil, providing ample evidence of a troubled soul, a man under heavy spell, and with a penchant for blackmailing anyone who tries to help him.
Is it any wonder, then, that the governor who chose to be magnanimous and made him consultant on media and later caretaker chairman of Ijebu East Local Government, at his own request, is now the target of his latest attacks? As caretaker chairman, Adedayo contested and won election with the support of the structure that Governor Abiodun had built. Curiously, however, even in his local government, information emerged that he had begun hobnobbing with the opposition and working against his own party. Given his political prostitution, it was no wonder that during the March 18 governorship election, the governor lost woefully in his local government.
When you look at Adedayo’s trajectory and character, the fact emerges that he is not somebody that can be trusted, or that you can say has a stable mind. He is only consistent with blackmail, with no trace of ‘omoluabi’ qualities, and the lesson for people like Governor Abiodun is that choosing to be magnanimous in politics can have terrible drawbacks. Interestingly, though, the professional accuser is now being accused by his own council legislators of perpetrating monumental fraud, and has been handed a three-month suspension. The council says the disgraced chairman withdrew millions from the local government account for empowerment in 2022, but no empowerment was done to date; wasted N2 million on August 20, 2022, on Isese festival; and N250,000 duty tour allowance in June 2023 and another N250,000 duty tour allowance for the chairman and other top officials’ engagement.
The list of allegations is long, and he is definitely entitled to the fair hearing he grants no one, but the fact is that people who try to set a state on fire with false allegations ought to be made to have their day in court.
Anywhere Wale Adedayo goes, a dark cloud follows him, and one can only hope it does not push him to an ignoble end.
