One wonders the needless fuss in some quarters in Osun State in the last 72 hours or thereabouts about the formal defection of former state commissioner for local government and chieftaincy affairs, Barrister Kolapo Alimi, from the self-styled non-conformist political tendency under the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), to the Pathfinder faction of the state Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
When the news of the defection came in during the weekend, a friend asked: “Was Barrier Kolapo Alimi in the APC before his announced defection which he had confirmed himself?
“My brother, let’s discuss another issue as Alimi was only physically in the APC in order to bring down the blocks of the party which he could not achieve by the grace of God. By his utterances against the state Governor Gboyega Oyetola; the state party chairman, Prince Gboyega Famodun and even to the presidential candidate of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, even a moron and scallywag could put two plus two together to submit and conclude that it was Alimi’s body that was in the APC until his announced movement while his soul was undoubtedly in the Ede country home faction of the PDP”.
Alimi’s defection from the APC is a monumental plus for the progressive party in Osun State as his definite political standing is no longer shrouded in any doubt or misery.
The Erin-Osun-born unrepentant apologist of the immediate-past governor of the state, now Interior Minister, Mr Rauf Aregbesola, is worthy of being made a case study as the most orally combative member of a party who would not stop at nothing to abuse a sitting governor and the party chairman, with reckless abandon.
The Osun APC, will no doubt, not miss him, as the loner decampee had never contributed any meaningful thing into the party for the past three years.
Rather, Alimi’s actions, inactions and prayers in cahoots with his belligerent bedfellows had been how the Osun State APC would die and subsequently be buried. But since Alimi is not God, his ulterior wishes and supplications against the party were not answered.
In any rumour, there may be elements of truth therein. It would be recalled that discerning minds had been accusing Alimi and his other cohorts in the infamous TOP of being in an unholy clandestine alliance with the state PDP which was copiously debunked.
Now that the alliance can no longer be a hidden game, the APC members can be said to have been vindicated by the development. Of what use would be a pseudo-member of a party who would be working with the opposition in the night and professes to be with the ruling party during the day?
There is no room for a flat character like the Aregbesola former local government commissioner to thrive in the APC.
Alimi’s defection into the factional PDP is a good riddance to bad rubbish.
When one is not cursed, how can a forward-looking politician leaves a rancorous tendency of a government in power for an apparently embattled faction of an opposition party? There’s more to the defection saga than meets the eyes!
Instead of Alimi who was more or less an errand lawyer in the law chambers of former Osun State Attorney-General, the Right Honourable Wale Afolabi, to be grateful to Allah for buttering his political bread early in life by being rewarded with a commissionership position when what he was initially scheming for was how to become the local government scribe of Ifon-Orolu Local Government Council Area of Osun State, he got swollen headed with his unmerited political office of a juicy commissioner.
It wasn’t for fun that within a twinkle of an eye, Lawyer Alimi whose initial trade mark mode of dressing was a weather-beaten and cockroach-infested suit, suddenly became the proud owner of a multi-storey glass house law firm along the eye-browed Station Road in Osogbo, a petrol-filling station along Okinni road with the state-of-the-art houses in Ibadan, Osogbo, Lagos and Erin-Osun, his country home.
It was partly the need for Alimi to maintain the hurriedly acquired ill-gotten wealth after he was transformed from a patent medicine seller and an obscured secondary school teacher, that necessitated his penchant to look outward for alternative means of survival.
The diminutive Erin-Osun-born emergency loquacious politician lacks the electoral value that could warrant the so much noise that the Pathfinder PDP group has been making over the defection.
Have the Senator Ademola Adeleke political strategists wondered why it has taken Alimi so long to cross over to their camp since after he has been hobnobbing with them? The answer is not far-fetched.
Alimi is a political commander without troops. Checks revealed that a sizeable number of the APC members from his town saw no sense in his defection and have therefore refused to do his bidding.
I sympathize with the Senator Ademola Adeleke faction of the PDP for rolling out the drums over Alimi’s defection into their camp as it won’t take much time before they know that their political catch is a mere metaphorical politically dead sparrow!
However, I am wishing Alimi a good luck in his new-found political tendency where there will be latitude for him to abuse, insult and call the bluff of those at the apex of authority in his new political Eldorado.
Let me, at this juncture, remind Alimi, the new political bride, to remember to pay back into the coffer of the Osun State Government the illegal salaries he drew from the state government for five years when he did a full-time LL.B programme at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and the one year he spent in the Law School at the same time he professed to be in a full-time appointment as a secondary school teacher in Osun State.
An indication of a leave of absence for the duration of the law programme is the only saving grace on the issue at stake.
Happy stay in your new party, Kolapo Alimi.
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*OLABISI is the Media Adviser to Osun State APC chairman, Prince Gboyega Famodun.
