Aketi, Get On Your Feet Now And Walk! -By Festus Adedayo

In the last few weeks, the grapevine, especially the one in Ondo State, has flourished tremendously. Their lawyer governor – Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, popularly known as Aketi – is said to have escaped from the radar of governance. Teaching Nigerian political elite behind the driver’s seat some cogent and instructive lesson, he was said to have transmitted power to his deputy. However, tongues have wagged unstoppably that Aketi is unwell. This has become a weapon for his political enemies to go to town with, in very inhuman celebration, while his own political commune is either neutralizing this narrative of the governor’s un-wellness by dissolving it or providing another narrative that it does not matter. Or even claim that it was a machination of enemies.

The truth is, we lionize political office occupiers and make God of them when we reason in this abstruse manner. Aketi is like the fellow next door. He is composed of flesh and blood, is capable of falling ill, prone to human existential travails, is capable of falling into our kind of foibles, can be well and at the same time, unwell and thus is not a god who cannot have such unpleasant manifestations of existence. Like you and I, he sh-ts and his poopoo smells, so why will anyone want to make a god of him by believing that he cannot fall ill?

I think political officer holders are the architects of this mindset. The way they carry themselves, you would think they live in Uranus and are mummified from human feelings. This is why, every time, I keep referring to the Muhammadu Buhari example who his aides Godified – pardon this coinage – while he went abroad for treatment but who came back to tell Nigerians that he was indeed ill and had received blood transfusion. At that stage, it became very easy for Nigerians to connect with him as mirroring the imperfections that they themselves have. Unless you are evil and your heart made of steel, at this intersection, you cannot but pray for the president, or the governor in this case, to overcome his own human portion of existential travails.

So, if Aketi is still on his sick bed, let him at this moment tell Ondo people that he is ill. Anyone who makes politics out of this natural consequence of his humanity will certainly receive the back of the tongue of Ondo people who I know aren’t evil. Pardon me as I mimic hawkers of religious remedies: I command you, Mr. Governor, get on your feet and walk now. Now!