Ladoja & The Play Of Assassins
My love for Engineer Rashidi Ladoja, the immediate past governor of Oyo State, is beyond my explanation. Those who have been following my write-ups would attest to this. My friends even accuse and antagonize me of always writing what they described as “indirect love letter” to an un-sitting governor who cannot fix me up into political position. But I have been writing about Ladoja even when he was a governor. Though, in as much as I like politics so much, could be why they say so. My writing about Ladoja was based on my principle as a practicing humanist, because there have been a crowd of inhumanity acts that were meted out on Ladoja when he was the no. 1 citizen of Oyo State.
The recent reportedly brazen attack on him by the yet to be identified gunmen or hoodlums or miscreants or assassins has docked sleep off my eyes. What has an un-sitting governor done now that he should deserve such an equivocal attack?
The attack on Ladoja shows the level and crude politics of Oyo State that do not meet the eyes, even when one keeps his or her eyes open. Because, according to media accounts, the hoodlums who descended on Ondo Street, Bodja residence of Ladoja in a multiple convoys were shouting around 1.23 am that the residents should not panic, that they were not criminals, but were on a mission to burn Ladoja’s house.
I don’t know what the Nigerian historians are still doing; the un-ending crisis of Oyo politics has reached a crescendo where the State’s history has to be opened for it to read, aligned with the name of a mischievous PAPA in Oyo State, so that the natives would know where the rain began to beat them.
Ndi-igbo, my beloved people say that a hated dog, no matter the good it might do after being hated, its owner gives it a bad name to kill it. So Ladoja’s traducers gave him a bad name when he was a governor, but they only succeeded in impeaching him. His integrity resonates for good no matter the ugly name his political demagogues tried to suffix to his name, and he was re-instated. Their stock in tread is to hamper the harmonious stability in Oyo State and the humble people of Oyo State.
I don’t know the type or kind of corruption the Obasanjo’s ex-rotwhiler Mallam Nuhu Ribadu and his EFCC said they are fighting in Nigeria, if some sect of politicians could wake-up in the morning, beat their chest, and vow to be henchmen in the mill of crisis brewing in Oyo State, are allowed to still be on their high horse. If there were any organization that awards an Opaque Award, EFCC would be recorded the first recipient.
The EFCC should cover its face in shame for being incapable to probe the immediate past alleged corrupt ex-governors. So it was incapable to nip the problem of Oyo politics in the bud when the PAPA was nursing it, but allowed that Judas Iscariot christened ‘garrison commander’ to be parading himself as the godfather of Oyo politics.
Is EFCC now quite because Obasanjo that was its backbone has bowed out of office? Before, EFCC was working with an ebullient spirit, but critics said that such spirit of was born only to witch hunt Obasanjo’s political foes.
Thank God that Eng. Ladoja is safe from any hurt, as reportedly the hoodlums that came to attack him shot sporadically. Bravo, the security men attached to Ladoja for disciplining three people out of the numerous hoodlums to death. I wish the death of the hoodlums would serve as a deterrent to any person who would allow himself or herself to be used for inimical political purposes.
Eng. Ladoja has done nothing evil in Oyo State, and should be left alone to enjoy himself, for Christ sake!
Odimegwu Onwumere, author and poet,
writes from Oyigbo, Rivers State, Nigeria.
