Beggaring Opinion Thursday: A Wednesday Perspective on Oyetolarative Management -By Isaiah Adepoju

This happened to me yesterday, Wednesday, December 1st, 2021. Immediately after that rendezvous, I wrote this piece. It’s an essentiality, I suffice, that even the presumed intellectually retarded echelon of Nigeria brims with practicable, unkitschy-ed opinion on moving the Nation forward. Imperative that I question why Nigeria progresses backward—lack of funds? Dogma of mismanagement? Federal character, and ellipsis of paraclete mishmash? Or just sheer disobedience to even subjective moral tenets? Albeit, I won’t overbear on you, and will allow you to read through this beggaring Wednesdayly opinion, budgeted in induced, elusive hurriedness—plus, this iconic bridge in construction at the centre of Osogbo, Olaiya, is an epicenter, and, it has, for us whose opinion doesn’t matter, in a state where the citizen’s opinion do not escape into the purlieu of Govenor Gboyega Oyetola’s famous peoplecentric agenda, the insistence to complete the bridge, becomes sacrosanct. This is just another beggaring Opinion.

This beggar-woman, on a Wednesday afternoon, suddenly stopped in front of my shop, interlooking the bridge-in- construction, and so began her long, interesting advice. Putatively, I was not in best position to listen—as I have myself entrenched in Captain Blood’s trenchant antagonism with the ‘N-word’ — albeit, I did, forcibly I confess.

“Baba mi. What, for heavens’ sake, is this bridge doing here? In Abidjan, there are only bridges that leads to different towns,” she turned to demonstrate, with hands, the urgency of her inconsequential opinion “the left of the bridge turns to a town, the right another. And, unlike this bridge, those ones are built because of marshes underneath, too soft for lomotive passage. This bridge,” she pointed again, adjusted her sash —and an iborun dust-coated to pinpoint her experience point in the local mendicant-business “what does it serve? How should poor people cherish it? Around Ilesa Garage, there are seismic potholes that any motorcade that slumps into it eventually dies or develops fault. I swear, that road is very bad.

“I’m a beggar. I’ve been there more than once. The potholes swallow your knees. Even when I pass the route, I avoid the immediate cluttered road when I see a car approaching. Moreover, Olaiya is free enough.” By free, she meant permeable, decongested enough for motokas-pressing personages “and wouldn’t motokas pass through to the same Freedom park?”

I nodded in acquiescence. Subservient, the right word!

“You may think Nigeria does not concern you, but it does.” I was, at the moment, aknock-kneed under the current tutelage.

“You may say so,” she continued, “If you are in Lagos, Nigeria concerns you. You must not say because you’re a Lagosian, that you’re not Nigerian. When you become president, you must not only repair your town and leave other towns. There’s suffering in Nigeria.

“They wasted money on the bridge. But Olaiya road was good. Still they wasted money. That money, if they give you part, won’t you be happy? They stopped business at Olaiya. You could not sell well. Even now, how many people pass by here and ask what you sell? Weren’t you always happy when a car parks to buy something from you? That bride money can be used to do something else. Those old men who live in decimated house, the government can reach out to them, ask them if they have children —if they say Yes, then fine—move them into a rented apartment first, and help them build the decimated house they live. A month, it should be finished. Lease the house to them.

“They (the government, ostensively) won’t have to collect the money from them. The house would, however, be built with outhouse shops. As rentage. The monies from the rentage will be slashed, half goes to government’s purse, quarter to house reparation, and quarter to the old man for feeding. The money won’t be enough, but it would be something. If it would take five or ten years to refund the money, the government would just hand the papers to the old man or his children and say, ‘Baba, this is your house’ papers. We have collected our share from the rentage remunerations. You owe us nothing. We owe you nothing. Shikenan. Isn’t that good?’

“Now, imagine if they do something like that to every old dependent family in Osun State, and in Nigeria. But they won’t do it. They will lavish state funds building bridges poor people can’t climb, because, how many people have cars?”

Bro Kayode—who was a faithful Judas in objective moral grundnorms— had, as the beggar woman talked, been staring, skeptical the beggar was a ritualist or con woman of some kind—typical of Nigeria’s generation of iconoclasts and anti-chrislam. Of a redeemable truth, Bro Segun, another who hold same views with Bro Kayode, had stood immediately beside my stack of Galas, and had pocketed, I suppose, a fist of blows, ready—as are young insecure men—for sparring physiotherapy-session with the beggar-woman. He wanted to call me from the beggar’s attention, but I’d been overly attentive already. “Isaiah.” Bro Kayode summoned. I was in the knowing-positive; I turned a deaf ear at first. The beggar continued her patriotic chant. Beads of sweat broke on her forehead, rashes resurrect. Her Yoruba was feathery. I bet she came from Abidjan or she’s a Non-Yoruba. I loathed that they— Bro Kayode and Bro Segun, and other brothers at the roadside, Bro Musa, Bro Mathews, Bro Victor, etc., etc— regarded her a con woman. And, in that lax moment of novelty, if she had been, I would’ve fantasied being a new lamb-thing for whatever Orisha in her closet.

“Isaiah, come I want to see you.” Bro Kayode repeated.

I hesitatedly stood. I had been holding Wole Soyinka’s ‘Beyond Aesthetics’, so I fiddled with it—still in abhorrence of abrupt repudiation. The beggar sensed I would leave.

“I pray God help us in this Nigeria.” She said, begged few prospective apologists for money, then turned into Union Baptist Church street.

*

It is characteristical of Nigeria and his—forgive my usage of the pronoun to stereotype Nigeria’s patriarchal brashness—sentiment to dismiss this beggar’s opinion as idealist, impracticable in national matters, where debts have exponentially risen to an apogee, and continuous mismanagement of ‘public’ funds have festered, among other Iwa Ibaje. Albeit, that eludes the purpose of this writing, to a fault, that it’s apposite to state that the government that replaces itself, since when? — since the Ayaba of Bruton hesitatedly absconded from Nigeria’s promontory— are concerned with public good that meets unilateral purposes. That is given, a fact. And, of recent, I’ve come across a gerrymandered show-offs channeled to obviate parties’—winning, losing, political— propaganda come 2023. It is imminent that 2023 is come upon us, and we, young youths, eighteen-year olds, a bit older, have acquired PVCs, intent to ‘vote out’ the less corrupt party, but the politicalness of Nigeria’s ‘ruling’ parties, and it’s Philistine agendas, are already, also, at work.

For the Thomases, the EndSars panel report is still evident, a cleavage (albeit, it’s self-reenactment doubting before the ‘23), and the outing of some political figures—FFK, our most honorable in exempli—and quite inimical bodies in Nigeria, by which I mean the names ‘bandits’, the Boko Haramic agenda —note the haramic— and all forms of tyranny in religious, political, and some Benthamic institutions.

Now to diverge on Governor Gboyega Oyetola and his quite iconic—in every context!— bridge and what that iconic bridge mean for the people of Osun State, the coming-year election, and the political reposition of his more formidable opposite, Ademola Adeleke. It is essential, this digression, to whet your appetite that the people of Osun State were intentionally apparatchik, in the believe that continuity of a political party in a given political position is intrinsic with the idiosyncrasies of a political person. Currently, it is a diabolical escapade, we know. On the one hand, we confused the person of Aregbesola— however dexterous and political— to Oyetola whose election into office is argued by many Adeleke apologists or sentimentalists as dubious, somewhat. On the other hand, since APC sits in presidential wheelchair, it’s quite natural to fall along the ruling epoch of the nation.

This is Adeleke’s political advantage. Or will be if Oyetola’s campaign crew is stoic, stagnant. Among other things, the changing of School Uniforms, names, structure— which many, and I included, see as politics of sentiment between Oyetola’s predecessor and him— under the auspices of ‘public good’—for political advantage in the ministry?— the leader-grassroot deficiency —that his predecessor willed with his adze— the embrace of infrastructure over food, and quite seismic in his repertory is now the ‘iconic’ bridge which hinders smooth running of local businesses, gulped on the state’s budget, and which Peculiar Construction Company — the company in charge of construction— is now taking forever to complete.

As we criminalize the blade, the scabbard must not be left out, as the Yoruba say, “we tell a knock-kneed the load on his head is skewed, and he says it starts from the base.”

What base, ehn? What does the Oyetola-administrative mean for us all? What does it insinuate or interpret to anyway, for APC, for opposition, in the prolongment of EndSars panel’s cataclysmic tendencies? What does Oyetola’s stoichiometric strategy—if it is, at all— mean for Nigeria’s politics — whilst, you must not refuse Uganda’s airport’s glaring image— and Africa’s politics, its policy with the Americas, Caribbaeus, etc., etc? How really strategic is Davido’s recent ‘philanthropic’ move a motif for his uncle—Ademola Adeleke— prospective term in office? What does CNN’s reference of Davido as ‘Nigerian/American’—Eureka! even his interview with Trevor Noah—mean for Adeleke’s political career—seing that Adeleke insists on Nigerian citizenship, is a certified criminologist (kindly throw his accidental politick out the window), whose family name is a compound name (who throws religion in the mix—to appeal religious fanatics?), who already will enjoy youth support if, at improbable luck he were to run for presidency?

Loose ends are bound to suffuse, and, suffice to say that the Oyetola ‘regime’— junta, please— are playing an undertoning, geisha-like politics— in other words, a politics that is underhanded, and public irreverent showcase, which, in the long run, is to sway the gullible and the faint of heart. Whether it will fail or not is not as immediate as opinions every well-meaning citizen of Osun State—even the beggarly— hold against the present administration of the governor!

Isaiah Adepoju writes from Osun State, and can be reached via adepojuisaiahgbenga@gmail.com