No one was a voodoo to the other, no one did any double talk; no mutual suspicion, no gulf of distrust, no face off, and no brushed or unanswered questions between the two. No one, at each other’s throat, never for once in a shouting match; no one begrudged the other, no one rebuffed overtures for understanding; and no one parried any heart broken lines or held any personal differences to shared heart to heart objectives. And no one waged war on the other, eye ball to eye ball, calling names, slinging mud or had any civilized rules of engagement violated to warrant a truce. Neither did any of the engagements, common to the two degenerate into a carnival of altercations nor were there any patchworks of dichotomy, hide and seek, woven into any fragile fabrics.
Indeed, the two weren’t in any rat race to outshine one another and no frosty, soured, thawed relationships to have pitted one against the other. Rather, the two, oft-times attended a flurry of political and religious gatherings together, pleasantly characterised by the exchanges of polite, heart warming words and clinging of glasses. But suddenly, one of the two died like a candle in the wind. And politicians, politicians’ boys, decked in pyromaniac, rabble-rouse, prejudice, treachery, subversion, turbulence, agitation and false claims as politics in Osun State, Nigeria, hurriedly dusted the rumour grimmer with rage or furry like in a mafia connection and swooped the death of one on the other.
And in a twinkle, the rumour mill first spewed fourth like a trickle, whispered around and almost in firing succession, the rumour went viral, an uproar, the howling momentum of a mighty river, with the agility too difficult to fathom. And like a thunderclap, the rumour hanged the sudden death of Senator Isiaka Adetunji Adeleke, the first Executive Governor of Osun on the then governing All Progressive Congress (APC), its Executive Governor Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola in the state.
The sting of the fussy rumour, akin to the spindles of Christmas tree lighting valves, that trailed the death was the uncanny twist to the death debacle that almost put Osun in the grip of a crisis with the elasticity of the state political space unduly strengthened. The foul of the unbridled rumour was such a disagreeable thing in the peaceful Osun as it were under APC. The rumour, a tempest sent the missiles of mud in the direction of a clean slate. Aregbesola was at the receiving end of the rumour tangle and its mud, dropped like a basket of rotten eggs splashed the rot with a velocity that left Osun awe -stricken. He looked tensed, straight, unruffled and postured to easy gait, cool mien, not one given to flippancy, and he had his countenance underlined his dignified silence and solid resolve that never asked the rumour splitters for a retraction or apology. And quickly, he muscled requisite political will that gave the rumour inventors a thumb down with a _Coroner Inquest_ to unravel how Senator Adeleke died if indeed his death was aided or natural. His demise was believed to carry the imprimatur of one death, too many.
In the place of stalling, Aregbesola, enamoured of knowing the cause of Senator’s death, quickly reconciled himself with the reality that the rumour, a serious allegation required disproof, and the _Inquest_ became the plank for the understanding of the routes to Adeleke’s death, not a cudgel in the hand to declare a manhunt after anybody. As though, the rumour infuriated the state, Aregbesola, unassumingly confident, took the case to the _Coroner_ as a way out of the quagmire. In politics, it’s folly to trust the rumour millers, the noisome magaphone especially the dissent detractors who acted with assumed naivete. Pity them! If you will.
The welter of the rumours that reflected the willy way of the rampaging, implausible and inflammatory politicians, politicians’ boys, is not moulded on the fly to sensibility or on the smooth rail of reasonability. Rumour in politics runs on its own peculiar steam and is dependent whimsically on its peddlers who have clever- by – half agenda of incendiary, intrigue, bickering, other negative connotations, on the fast track of dirty politics and politicking. Akin to commotion, figuratively a neighbour one would rather not wish to live with.
On the flip side, the deceased family dramatically “smell a rat,” somewhat, somehow, they distrusted the _Coroner’s Inquest_ and careered off into thinking that certain things did not add up well. They threw darts at the _Inquest_ to give it a drawback. The family crossed with the government and dismissed the _Inquest_ as political hype, sort of political frenzy, vicious enough to make the _Inquest_ a deadlock of the opposites. One is the insular, the family; and the other, the bridge builder, the Osun government then. Apparently, someone in his daredevilry, wild, weird, frivolous and mischievous, had in his warped mind, steeped in morbid hatred for the _Inquest_ , and placed quick bucks on the Adelekes that almost made them exhibit contrasting sensibility to impugn on the integrity, competence and public acceptability of the _Inquest_ .
A memorial piece on the late His Excellency, Senator Isiaka Adeleke who died, Sunday April 30, 2017 and buried, Monday, May 1, 2017 is for another day, soonest. But his death, currently being capitalized on after his brother, today’s Osun Governor Ademola Adeleke attended a federal government function in Ilesa last Tuesday, set the Osun APC’s certain fractional tongues, wagging on sinister motive though. It remains eternally irreconcilable, unthinkable to hang the demise of Senator Isiaka Adeleke on the then APC’s government. The rumour peddlers, then (and now) goofed around and goofed off as there’s no armour against death; it will come when it will. Sometimes, unheralded.
Ademola Adeleke as governor was the official host and special guest with Aregbesola, Minister of Interior at the commissioning of the Ilesa Passport Front Office & Production Centre of Nigeria Immigration Service. In the aftermath of the event, the Osun APC’s intra opposition elementals have taken to the rehearsals of the old banalities and polemics, old shams and sallies, old jibes and babblings, and old yelps and subterfuges, aimed at re- annexing Alhaji Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola and former Executive Governor, Alhaji Isiaka Gboyega Oyetola into continued cold war with debilitating, weak and infirm consequences of recorded electoral misses, a colossal strategic error of a divided party. Unhooded. Unshroulded. Unmasked.
The two Alhajis, of matching Osun progressive party; and both of one and the same religion. One, the Qu’ran cyclopedia, studious, well versed; and the other, with hereditary antecedence in the Qu’ran concordance, well informed, knowledgeable. Like the writer, also entrenched in the Qu’ran, attended Nawar-U-Deen Primary School, Ikirun and his late mother, a Moslem by birth, Christian by marriage was buried a Moslem by her wish. But where’s the two Alhajis’ religious piety or piousness, internalized or inherited, for application to get the Osun APC armisticed, or ceasefire, erring members disciplined and reconciled for the party’s utilitarian growth and development? Truth is sacred. Ever green.
But Oyetola’s peace advocacy in the state will, after the Supreme Court judgement, hoped to be favourable to Osun APC, cause the party’s reconciliation on less sly delivery, to the apolitical acknowledgement of public applause. The speed of the adaptability of the party insiders and party bystanders into a cohesive animated APC in the state will also get increased, with no one having further recourse to any parallel conduct. The peace advocacy, underscored, lends credence to the maxim: “In Peace lies Unity. In Unity lies Strength.” The axiom is seductive for its non- intuitive value and germane exigencies in the face of the party’s legal battle with PDP over governorship.
Regrettably, the Osun APC’s intra elemental oppositions, restive, restless have re- subjected the two Alhajis into further political convulsions, stoked in combustible quietness, disquiet or both. The elementals do this by re engagement in more intriguing and more disgusting job, toiling, moiling with prodigious efforts, the stock, the noise of a rattle by singing war to the Alhajis on social media, the _Cosa Nosta_ , mafia style, that does no honour to the well known dignity and simplicity of the departed Senator Isiaka Adeleke: non abrasive, meek and good natured political leader from Ede, whose works across the state will continue to speak volumes of his personae.
Operationally, the war songs by the Osun APC intra opposition elementals haven’t made the elementals any strategists in utility sense. The elementals are not savvy, and too glued to abrasive maneuverings of the two Alhajis, contrasted sharply to maintaining peaceful exterior, strategically needed in multiparty politics with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government prying eye ajar but pretentiously looking away.
I remember that at the last Ogbeni Till Day – Break, the Governor- Public Interactive Forum in Osogbo, state capital, Aregbesola in a huff, made titanic efforts that explained in brevity why and how he hadn’t any privy to the Senator’s death. The audience hung on his lips in studied attention as he spoke visibly at pain. And the triad of the family’s furrow of worries, Aregbesola’s pains and the haze-the heat- the hurt of the rumour in Osun further pined away, going by the vital testimonies of the fundamental witnesses at the _Inquest_
The _Inquest_ never reveled in anybody kowtowed before it that could have harboured any ulterior ambition or pooh poohed as false witness. The _Coroner_ was the arbiter , the midwife with an understanding of justice in the context, derived from his sense of purity and gumption and so acted without fear, favour, affection, ill will, or personal bias of all kinds.
And between the rumour and quest to disproof the rumour was the _Coroner_ , the correcting fluid, the ‘tipex’ of the riddles, the Osun people were spared of the nightmare of the rumour by the outcome of the _Inquest_ :nobody was declared innocent or guilty to be prosecuted at all, in the open court. Reason? One, the _Inquest_ into Adeleke’s death, was simply a court of opinion, not a process for punishment. No testimony before it could be said to be so weighty to wreck any damages on the witnesses. And two, the _Inquest_ was simply a moral lobby aimed at clarifying any perceived wrongs done, if any, to the Adelekes.
Globally, the _Inquest_ wherever it’s instituted, checkmates any provocation, stirring, capable of attracting any worthless socio – political attention. Not a way of avenging any wrong. _Coroner Inquest_ also reverses societal losses, removes penchants for indignation and checks any tendencies to lord it over anybody. The _Inquest_ in the particular focus here, was the most singular protection of Adeleke’s family right that enabled them know the cause of his death, and it’s civil-legal instrument that decriminalized the cause of the death. Indeed, his death was legitimized by the findings of the _Coroner_ .
In the final analysis, justice to the rumour, justice to the controversial death was done. The cause of the death of Isiaka Adeleke, initially shroulded in a pall of secrecy was made public. “There were no tracks of poison in the system of the late Senator. The deceased had administration of overdose of sedative and analgesic on him by intravenous means which action hasten by the presence of alcohol in the system,” the _Coroner_ findings stated. The _Inquest_ removed the heavy, clumsy and superfluous lid on Osun as the rumour, its maze and pain burst asunder, with
Osun government of the progressives got a pat on the back for its bold step that unmasked how the Senator died.
And that makes superfluous, needless, the exhumed brouhaha, hullabaloo, uproar, confused narration, and disjointed self justification, or self indictment in the “rumour” press, called WhatsApp, Facebook, the like.
But you, I mean you! Speak peace to Osun APC and truth to the party’s stakeholders.
OLUSESI writes via [email protected]
