The “last man standing” was the then Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos – lone survivor of the PDP South West electoral blitzkrieg of 2003. That swept away five of the six AD governors, leaving only Tinubu.
Now, the same Tinubu is president; and the all-conquering PDP of the Obasanjo era is distant history! But in Oyo’s Seyi Makinde, a sickly parallel presents itself. Gored by an intra-PDP power play – with a court-voided PDP national convention to boot! – Makinde, out of only two governors left in the PDP, now appears the last man sprawling!
How so? Well, before the Ibadan parley, the PDP still boasted eight governors. Just four months later, it’s down to two – one, North; the other, South: Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed and Oyo’s Seyi Makinde!
But while Governor Mohammed has quietly licked his wounds and is trying to reconcile himself to a self-brought political calamity, Governor Makinde still bluffs on a fictive high horse which has since bolted! He moans, groans and growls over an avoidable error of handing the PDP to the Nyesom Wike faction, from the stark stupidity of flouting court orders!
The last time both met, Mohammed was talking about reconciliation. Wise man! He knows he must do that to sniff any PDP platform for his allies to contest. Mohammed, as Makinde, is a second-term governor; and can only contest a fresh term in the Senate, if he so desires. Makinde too could choose the Senate path; but he seems too galled to think straight.
Perhaps he would rather “die” standing (forfeiting his future PDP prospects); than “live” sprawling: no cohabitation with the Wike camp, which now appears in full control of the party, reconciliation or not? Some sources claim Makinde is done with electoral politicking – not illegitimate. Politicians should give others a chance!
But how would calling electoral time even benefit Makinde’s many aides? Having used the Oyo PDP Bridge to two gubernatorial terms, would he not be fairly charged, by his followers, with burning down the bridge, after using it to personal glory, forgetting those coming behind him?
Makinde had better be schooled in the cold psychology of power. The moment he exits as “His Excellency”, the “hard” power he wields now is gone. No patronage, no grovelling aides! It’s what it is! So, his political future is the influence – “soft” power – he builds now. That starts – or ends – with how he tends the political future of his aides. Yes, not everyone would be grateful. But at least the grateful would stay true to him.
Makinde had better snap out of his grumbling, and pave the way for his aides – and on their preferred platforms too! His present stance lacks strategy. He may soon enough find his “Omitutun” drying up.
That would be a tragedy for someone that continued from where Abiola Ajimobi stopped to further modernize Oyo State.
Culled from The Nation
