To the Ogun State pugilists, a message

Wednesday, September 7, 2022 9:42 am

Kayode Samuel

By Kayode Samuel

The House of Assembly crisis that was to ultimately consume the administration of Otunba Gbenga Daniel started as a trade dispute in the Chambers. Many have not properly referenced the role of the economic downturn and the stock market crash of early 2008 in the whole House of Assembly crisis that reached a head with the removal of Titi Oseni on 18 May 2008. I also stumbled on that insight by accident. But that is a story for another day.

Members of the House had come under increasing pressure to service their obligation to the financial institutions – obligations which many of them had entered into at the time to participate in the bazaar of shares-buying then in fashion. As the pressures grew, so did their awareness of the financial goings-on around them become more acute. The accusation that the then Speaker was receiving monies from the Governor that were not percolating downwards to the Members had always been there. It was the meltdown that was to bring it to the fore.

At that stage, it was still a simple matter that could easily have been squelched through negotiations as trade disputes almost always are. To press home their point, they removed Titi Oseni as Speaker of the House. What was to transform a trade dispute into a political quarrel and eventually an uncontrollable storm was the Governor’s insistence that Oseni be restored to her seat as a condition for negotiations. Thus, a dispute initially localised in the House became a whole-of-Government crisis that was to eventually consume the entire state. The rest, as they say, is history…

The feelers I get on the present crisis is that it all started as a local quarrel in Ijebu North Local Government between a top official of the administration and the former Deputy Speaker. Ijebu North had historically been one of Ogun’s more tempestuous LGAs. The top official, said to be a member of the Governor’s kitchen cabinet, I’m told, had enlisted his principal’s support in seeing off his local rival.

The now embattled Speaker was purely a collateral damage as the implementor of the Governor’s alleged directive that the irritant erstwhile Deputy Speaker be removed. To ease that process, the enemies of the sacked Deputy Speaker have now reincarnated him as an opponent of the Governor’s second term ambition. Again, the rest is fast becoming history.

A governor desirous of a second term falls under all manner of pressure from friends and foes alike. Gov. Daniel was lucky to have been confronted with a House of Assembly rebellion well into his second term.

Before the hidden persuaders step in to further widen what is fast becoming a circle of damage, common sense should prevail. When things go awry, all the people now egging on a fight and threatening to destroy the former Deputy Speaker, ostensibly on behalf of the Governor, will disappear from the Governor’s entourage only to re-emerge behind a new principal. No one can say where the former Deputy Speaker may turn to to seek support if he reckons that his life and political career may be in jeopardy.

A word, they say, is enough for the wise…

*Mr Kayode Samuel, a former Information Commissioner, Ogun State, writes from Lagos