Bisi Akande at 70

* A study in ‘straight-and-narrow path’

WHAT does one make of the 70th birthday of Chief Adebisi Akande, the Action Congress (AC) national chairman and former Governor of Osun State?

The spartan Chief Akande is no ceremony buff. Even as governor, he turned the wedding of his children into a humble affair, when many in his position, with access to state funds, would have put on a wasteful show, and turned many a smart alee into instant millionaires. So, how come the former governor, as a private citizen, in spite of himself, got such a grand birthday bash?

As far as politics of power goes, Chief Akande, like Chíef Obafemi Awolowo, only had modest success. With his larger-than-life memory, many easily forget Awo won far fewer elections than his prodigious energy and awesome organizing power deserved.

But as an administrator and policy maker, Awo made the best of his rather slim opportunities. It took only a few years of free primary education under his care to push the old Western Region into a point of no return in rapid transformation.

So has it been with Chief Akande. As Governor of Osun State, he endured a bad and distracting press, even while putting in stellar service. That greatly eased the rigged election that pushed him out of power. But like Awo, he achieved so much within such a short time that his great achievements now mock the clear paralysis of his successors, after six straight years.

As deputy governor to the late Bola Ige for some months, after Sunday Afolabi, the original deputy, had defected to the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN), he endured being rigged out with his principal, by a conniving federal might and a treacherous former lieutenant. But what that government achieved today dwarfed its three-month successor, before the Muhammadu Buhari coup in December 1983 sacked the Second Republic.

Till today, many a former aide blames the former governor for literally throwing away power, when he ought to have nurtured it and given them a fair opportunity at licit empowerment. Many in the Osun Alliance for Democracy (AD) back then still talk sotto voce, about how Chief Akande’s tactlessness in power landed them in political Siberla and threw the state to the wolves.

Still, most of these same aides were boisterous in hailing Chief Akande at 70; and trooped in thousands to both Lagos and lla, his home town in Osun State, gracing the two-day events marking the epochal occasion – why?

Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the AC gubernatorial candidate for Ekiti State, in a tribute at Ila, described Chief Akande as a “political Bible recommended to Nigerians for a quick salvation of the polity.” That could sound a sweeping hyperbole, but there is something in its nugget to take home.

Babatunde Fashola, SAN, the Lagos State governor, earlier in Lagos, had described the celebrator as caring less for office but caring more for service. That appears spot on, for, how many of Nigeria’s current politicians would, with equanimity be rigged out of power and stoically resist the subversive overture of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to be made minister?

The fact is that Chief Akande symbolises the straight-and-narrow path so rare in contemporary Nigerian politics and governance. That would explain the great pull of his birthday; and the pomp and pageantry that it turned out to be.

“But the greatest tribute to Chief Akande at 70 would be to embrace the straight-and-narrow path he is so famous for. Let it be a way of public life, and not a mere pageant to be admired, before sliding into ruinous ways”

Source: The Nation Editorial/Opinion – Wednesday January 21 2009