My Participations
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Lonely Old Man
Recently when I think of Ayo Adebanjo, I remember Ernest Hemmingway’s novella, The Old Man and the Sea. It is a small but resonant epic. But it is a story that the Nobel Prize winner who died a suicide compels biographers to see as his self-portrait. When French hero and leader Charles De Gaulle stepped into his twilight, he recalled Hemmingway’s masterpiece and wondered whether he (de Gaulle) was not an old man who had only a skeleton to tell his sojourn on earth. I am beginning to view the old man of Yoruba politics in that light. Grouchy Adebanjo may be the old fisherman in the tale who caught…
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Akande on governance
My Participations: Bisi Akande on governance and financial management. “It is a bonus to be cherished that this life narrative of a frontline politician has emerged from the hands of a man whose moral integrity in governance, as in all spheres of responsibility, has remained undented”. -Professor Wole Soyinka, in his Forward to My Participations: An Autobiography, by Chief Bisi Akande, page xx. In this continuation of my serial review of Chief Bisi Akande’s book, I focus on two inter-related aspects of his political participations, namely, governance and financial management as revealed in the book. Akande devoted Chapters 9-13 to his service in Chief Bola Ige’s government (1979-1983), first as…
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How OBJ’s electoral massacre cost Akande, others second term – Buhari
President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, painted a graphic picture of how former Osun State governor, Chief Bisi Akande and his counterparts in the South west, with the exception of then Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu, were politically ambushed by former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, in the 2003 poll. He said the electoral ‘massacre’ masterminded by Obasanjo was what ended the second term ambition of Akande and others as incumbent governors of their various states. The president described Obasanjo’s tactic as diabolical double-cross. He revealed this at the public presentation of autobiography of Akande: “My Participations” at the Eko Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos. “It is common knowledge that Akande was the victim – along…
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Buhari: Akande Was Victim of Obasanjo’s Diabolical Political Double-cross
President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday reminisced on the failed bid by former Governor Bisi Akande to seek re-election in Osun State in 2003, and laid the blame squarely on the doorstep of the then president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. He also described Akande who served as the pioneer National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as a man of inflexible integrity and a perfect public officer that he can follow to the jungle. The president who spoke in Lagos, at the public presentation of ‘‘My Participations,” the autobiography of Chief Bisi Akande, reflected on the political history of the author, particularly his bid to seek a second term as Governor…
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Akande: Buhari Promised to Pick Tinubu as Running Mate in 2015, Then Reneged
Former Governor of Osun state and ex-interim Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, yesterday narrated how Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, as he then was, the presidential candidate of the party at the time, promised to pick Bola Tinubu as his running mate in the 2015 election. Chronicling the events that led to the eventual selection of Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Akande, in his autobiography, “My Participations”, published by Gaskia Media Limited, disclosed how Buhari who was then under pressure to drop the former Lagos governor, later reneged on the agreement. In the book which was launched in Lagos, the octogenarian also took a swipe at the trio of…
