Wokeism: Ogbomoso And The Case Of Hon. Olamijuwonlo Alao-Akala | Minkail Olaitan

Every society has its unique goodness and attributes that elevate the status of its people, a silent scent that follows them wherever they go. Ogbomoso is one such notable society with a brilliantly loving, industrious, and valiant people. In the words of a friend, “The last trail of communal glory is tangible in the land of valour.” Yet, in recent years, certain anomalies have been rearing into the scene in forms of wokeness, twisted elitism, and hardcore ignorance. The majority of these telltale signs are expressed in placid fervour, and it’s scary.

“Dark Age” was the period that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire. It was said to have been one of the many bleak consequences associated with the collapse of Western Europe. Several centuries later, Francesco Petrarca, an Italian philosopher, woven a string of sentiments in which he described as an era of devastating state of true intellectual engagement, cultural decline, and collapse of what was later known as “social awareness.” Petrarca believed the “Dark Age” is the phenomenon that happens when the quality of citizens tilts towards passivity and loses the ability to understand governance.

Ogbomoso in recent years has been slipping fast into a similar rut, not because there are no longer books to read, discourses to engage, questions to ask, or answers to give. Rather, because the system upon which genuine social interaction and constructive and factual engagement are attached is tumbling down rapidly. More than anyone else, the political office holders are both victims and to some degree beneficiaries. Victims, because regardless of spreading themselves thin in every direction to ensure their leadership is felt tangibly. They are met with shrugs, attacks and erroneous assumptions emanating from ill-constructed assumptions, which the public picks up and runs with without second thoughts. While many politicians benefit from the overflow of frivolous requests by followers.

Unfortunately, this is not a close-ended problem, especially when there are too many who haughtily call themselves “elites,” whereas they fit perfectly in the “intellect-selling business” – a form of clientelism, where they rarely choose the general good of the public. They come across as propagandists by practice and are directly from the order of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s right hand. They manipulate Ogbomoso people with doctored facts and half-witted perspectives without ever considering the implications associated with the decisions they are instigating the public to take.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago I bumped into a post on a long list of what Hon. Olamijuwonlo Alao-Akala has done since he was inaugurated. While the comment section of the post was a battlefield, one of the comments that stood out to me was from someone who claimed the honourable had received N1 billion naira allocated budget for the year meant for the Ogbomoso constituency. Fascinatingly, the person’s claim cannot be answered with yes or no, because it has a little element of truth but is largely false. First, no lawmaker received such an amount into their account. Secondly, the amount (N1 billion) claimed to have been released barely crosses into reality due to revenue shortages and fiscal constraints – hence the projected lawmaker allocation was slashed down to N500million. Thirdly, the fund is directed to ministries and the ability of a lawmaker to exhaust the allocation depends completely on a muddled chain of executive approvals, and bureaucratic procurements and, most importantly, political long-legs and association.

Public demanding of accountability is one of the last threads of democracy – it could be in the form of a dissenting voice and other constitutional ways. But when this last bastion, which the elites hold becomes uninterested in objectivity and constructive discourse, it denigrates into a cave for heinous public engineering. Ogbomoso has stopped demanding accountability; most of the elites, social media warriors have lost the ethos and ethics of elitism. Noam Chomsky left a quite brilliant remark on this: “The role of the intellectual is to challenge authority, not serve it.”

Another thing is the convolution of executive and legislative functions. Again, Olamijuwonlo Alao-Akala has been pulled by the hair to account for the consequence of the dysfunctional executive system and irresponsibility. Several times I have marvelled at how people spare the executive of their laxity and blame the legislature for their backdoor bridges that are barely holding up. It is like letting a hyena stroll untouched only to lodge fusillades of bullets at a lamb on the account of killing. Recently, a woman called on radio, “Hello, can you hear me? Please help us tell Hon. Olamijuwonlo that our road in…area is bad; he should please fix it for us. Accidents are becoming more frequent.” She said in Yoruba.

Also, some time ago Hon. Olamijuwonlo deployed boulders into a dilapidated Adiatu/FGC Road which has denigrated into a death trap for users. Rather than acknowledging the gesture as a way of bringing relief and active leadership pending when the necessary office will bring a permanent solution, many attack not only his intervention, but demand he fix the road solely. Neglecting, or rather “choosing” to expand his legislative cover to executive overnight without second thought or budgetary plan. This convolution of responsibilities and offices has festered into reality distortion; people are not interested in knowing how the underlying functions of federalism work.

Ignorance is another plaguing problem affecting the quality of citizens in Ogbomoso, but not just ignorance that has to do with innocence or lack of information. It’s what pre-Socrates philosophers like Heraclitus and Euripides called “Amathia”— “Intelligent stupidity.” This phenomenon has to do with unwillingness to learn more about what a person thinks he knows. The halting state of knowledge seeking. Many Ogbomoso active political actors and politicians barely understand the role of a local government chairman in comparison to a member of the state assembly. Many barely know the point at which these public offices converge to function effectively. Yet they refuse to revisit the basics of the O’level subject, “Government.”

It’s disheartening that this simple lack of interest to learn influences the public demands from the political office holder. The easy pointer of this is the uniformity of request across the political ladder. For the majority, the demands barely go beyond money, and when it’s not met – it simply means such a leader is irresponsible. Socio-political researches on developing countries showed that these countries do not only have responsible systems and leaders, but also conscious, quality citizens who understand the systems, and how to influence and make proper demands of the systems.

No doubt Ogbomoso North, South and Oriire constituency has a vibrant and quality representative who is bureaucratic savvy, who has institutional leverage and has interpersonal influence. He has what it takes to continue navigating complex political networks, interbranch diplomacy, influence strategic off-mandate project packaging and a hustling spirit to follow up. Yet, the question remains whether or not the public would desist from opaque, sentiment-ridden evaluation into a proper understanding of the three tiers of government and engage accordingly and unsparingly. Or we may slip swiftly into the “dark age.”