by Akin Osuntokun

Now what do we make of this? Am I being condemned because PDP was defeated by the APC in the Osun State election and the result was so declared? 

On the occasion of the celebration of my 50th birthday over a year ago, former President Olusegun Obasanjo gave me this salutation “I am happy to note that all through these years, you have sustained my attestation to your credibility, resourcefulness, versatility, industry, deep thinking, integrity and competence, even to the admiration of your peers, who hold you in high esteem. I feel gratified to acknowledge those qualities and talents that have made you an unusual one among your friends and peers. But what even makes you stand out in the pack is how you have put your knowledge and expertise to enrich public administration and governance”.

He wasn’t done yet “The nation has certainly gained from the choice you have made to move from your chosen profession of journalism to the wider socio-political space where you have been rendering invaluable contributions to the nation. I must say, I had the pleasure of having you around during my administration as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, first as Director of Media and Publicity (Presidential Campaign) in 2002/2003, then as Managing Director of News Agency of Nigeria, and later as Special Adviser on Political Matters, where you distinguished yourself creditably well and rendered your remarkable services to the nation. All of these not only make your life truly worthy of celebration but also for the good fortune of having your life spared by the Almighty God till this moment! I feel confident that you will continue to be a shining example of a compatriot of excellence and probity”.
If you are moved to rise and give me a standing applause, I urge you to stay action because there is a contrasting opinion albeit by an individual of considerably lower esteem. In my private and public life I try to operate by the principle of full disclosure and before all else I am unsparing in being self-critical. And above all others I hold myself accountable to God and my conscience and I wholly subscribe to the Obama dictum that what you do when no one is watching is more important than what you do when others are watching.

These are pretty high standards to which we can only aspire but I think it is sufficient to hold them as beacons and guiding light that guide our steps and towards which we strive. The advantages are compelling. Can anyone quantify the advantage of being at peace with one’s God and conscience? People sometimes characterise me as bold and brave but I don’t see myself as such-at least not in the sense of the dare devil soldier’s fortitude. I think it is more appropriate to see myself as aiming to be front-out honest and sincere-confident in the belief that these virtues by themselves are the greatest rampart and shield anyone can have.

‘Seek ye the truth and the truth shall set you free’ ‘Do unto others as you wish done unto you’ are among my favourite scriptures from which I seek and find solace, comfort and inspiration. My understanding of marital fidelity, I used to tell my wife, is not as a favour to either spouse, but an obligation to our Christian conscience. By the same token I endeavour to do the right-as God gives us to know the right, not to impress anybody but because it is right before God and man. The reason I tend to be moody is because I have a very active conscience that demands remorse and penance for my wrongdoings which are as frequent as my imperfections.

Any interested Nigerian who, by now, is not conversant with my personal political history cannot blame me for withdrawing vital information from the public. I will quote the most recent and representative of such disclosures “I suppose am now the most politically active member of our family and I tend towards the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). I’m a card carrying member… My dad took sides with Akintola and stoically grappled with the negative fall outs attendant on this choice all his life. To give you an idea of the kind of person my father was, he was one of the two ministers in the Akintola government cleared and exonerated by the late Justice Kayode Esho of any financial impropriety in public office”.

“Henceforth it became inevitable that the political inclination of my dad marked him out as an ‘enemy’ of Awolowo and his camp followers. My father’s junior brother and Akinjide’s senior brother, the world famous medical scientist, Olukayode Osuntokun, was at the precise period of this political enmity, the personal doctor to Awolowo. It says a lot of Chief Awolowo that he could practically entrust his life to the brother of an ‘enemy’. The dialectics progresses further. At the time his senior brother was ministering to the health of Awolowo, and when there was Yoruba tribal censure of any positive portrayal of Akintola, the junior brother defiantly opted to bring his intellectual prowess to the unsolicited service of the late Premier and authored a first class and sympathetic biography of the Akintola: ‘the life and times of SL Akintola’.”

Writing in the Nation newspaper of the 14th of August and widely circulated all over the web, Jide Oluwajuyitan wrote “As I watched Femi Fani-Kayode, and Akin Osuntokun swear by the name of Iyiola Omisore and PDP during a press briefing supervised by Musiliu Obanikoro, the minister of defence, to round-off PDP campaign for their candidate, in Osogbo last Thursday, the memories of yesterday brought the past to pain. It was like history repeating itself all over again… According to Akin Osuntokun, “many of the NNDP candidates were returned unopposed because the candidatures of their opponents were invalidated fraudulently. Everyone knew that Akintola had stolen the election”.

He went on “Oduola Osuntokun was brilliant and honest, a man of character, like most of his Ekiti compatriots of his day. He was the apple of Awo’s eyes. He was a trusted minister saddled with supervising the building of Bodija and Ikeja GRAs, the task he carried out without blemish. But in 1962, he betrayed his party and Awo. He teamed up with Akintola who Akin admitted in the above quote as having stolen the people’s mandate. He chose to take sides with injustice, a vice abhorred by his Ekiti people who according to Akin ended up burning the Osuntokun family houses in Okemesi. Welcome. First Republic, lost through the perfidy of illustrious fathers, swept away for choosing to swim against the tide. It is a new dawn for their illustrious scions who think they can repeat the same day, history repeats itself”.

Now what do we make of this? Am I being condemned because PDP was defeated by the APC in the Osun State election and the result was so declared? If the crime of Akintola was stealing the Western regional elections of 1965-how does proclaiming APC winner and PDP as loser amount to taking sides with injustice and repeating the destruction of the First Republic? If my crime is swearing by Omisore, don’t I have the right to choose my friends-so long as I don’t impose them on anybody? So long as I don’t rig elections for them? Is the interest of the Nigerian public better served by whom I choose as friends rather than the delivery of a free, fair and credible election? Rather than being vilified I would have thought that my transparent partisan consistency-since 2002, come rain or sunshine, should be commended as germane to the development of Nigeria’s political system.

I did participate in a press conference called by the Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, in Osogbo on Tuesday not Thursday preceding the governorship election. And the sum of my swearing by Omisore was no more than argue in favour of replicating the measures that made the Ekiti State governorship election successful.

Barring one or two sadistic fictions, there was no information Oluwajuyitan purports to reveal about me and my legacy that I had not disclosed over and over again. From whom I was named after, Akintola; to my father’s political association with him; the circumstances and the crisis that attended the association; to how every member of our family is self-accounting.

If the content of “his father betrayed his party and Awo and teamed up with Akintola” is the fact that my father left the Action Group (AG), teamed up with Akintola and merged with the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC) to form the Nigeria National Democratic Party, (NNDP/NNA), how is this materially a worse crime than the ongoing love affair between the South-west faction of the APC and the descendants of NPC? And this in a situation where Senator Femi Okunronmu and others ceaselessly inform of the categorical divergence between the Yoruba vision of Nigeria and that of the core North. For that matter how do we characterise the age-old rebellion of the South-west APC leaders against the Afenifere leadership-that originally sponsored them for office-betrayal? freedom of association?

And here comes the sadistic fiction. I mean the man actually plucked a quote from the thin air and put it in the mouth of Akin to bolster his narrative of ‘perfidy’. Oluwajuyitan wrote- According to Akin Osuntokun, “many of the NNDP candidates were returned unopposed because the candidatures of their opponents were invalidated fraudulently. Everyone knew that Akintola had stolen the election”.  How blatantly fraudulent can anyone get in demonising others?

Even if I was self-hating, I wouldn’t use such strong language to derogate the memory of my godfather. If I felt the obligation to be critical of Akintola, there would have been no need to go beyond describing his actions as wrong-not call him a thief! If anybody merits the ascription of criminality, crookedness and perfidy, it is those dark souls who brazenly conjure quotes from the pit of hell and attribute it to an innocent man.

I have staked a rather strong and visible position and preference on the direction Nigeria should go-in the home run to the 2015 general election. It comes with a cost and perhaps I should not complain-if you cannot stand the heat, don’t get into the kitchen. Given the various questions and scurrilous inquisitions that had been raised on me-my calculations, motivations, agenda and of late, the tendency to be a true son of my father, in numerous media outlets, I needed to enter clarifications and rejoinder. Such needful rejoinder doesn’t come any better than the witness borne in my honour (in the opening paragraphs) by, perhaps, the foremost living authority figure in Africa, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.

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