Finally, Dino Melaye, the loud, rambunctious former Senator from Kogi
West has fallen. He has been made to kiss the dust and has finally been
rusticated from the Senate which, at the peak of his career, when the
Senate was under the armpit of the equally-rusticated Bukola Saraki,
turned senatoring to one huge showmanship. Dino was so loud that he made
his vanity and its celebration look like his greatest achievement. When
he was not advertising his exotic cars, he was mounting a comedy show to
rub it on his opponents that he was relevant. But the stubborn spirits
got angry with him and went to work on his case.
In tune with the many strange odds in our national politics, Dino Melaye
just happened on the stage. He came from nowhere to find his way to the
House of Representatives. There, he posed as an anti-corruption fighter
who captured the minds of many Nigerians that were sold to the pursuit
of social justice in the cobbled Nigerian political space. With the gift
of showmanship, Dino was able to capture the klieg lights as he made a
show of his concern with the rampaging acts of corruption that were
going on when he was at the house. But then, his life was a huge
contradiction to what he professed. His strange passion to fight
corruption was tempered by the brazen display of wealth and his
inability to explain the source of his strange wealth cast a huge slur
on his pretension to fight corruption.
But Dino relished the klieg lights and was entrapped in its glow. He
struggled so hard to keep himself on the national space, often through
controversial acts that extended to even messy relational issues.
Knowing how to rant to capture his audience on very many issues, Dino
was a recurrent decimal on our national discourse; either for good or
ill. He poked and taunted his political enemies and was often to call
them to a fight, which many saw as an effort to hug the limelight. But
then, this provoked the stubborn spirits more and they grew determined
to lift the rug off his political feet.
As time went on, Dino fell out with his PDP hierarchs and belching so
much loud profession of populism, he found his way into the converging
anti-PDP sentiment that birthed the APC in 2014 and clinched the party’s
senatorial ticket in the 2015 election. As was the fad with that time,
Dino was easily elected into the Senate; cruising on the wings of the
victorious APC and the Muhammadu Buhari whirlwind that swept PDP to the
dungeons in 2015. With his friend and soulmate, Saraki, Dino was soon to
revolt against his party in the choice of National Assembly leadership
and with the connivance of his erstwhile party, stole in a leadership of
the National Assembly that worked on cross purpose with his party, the
APC. Dino featured prominently in the many desperate acts of the Saraki
leadership of the senate to keep its stranglehold on the National
Assembly leadership. This often put him on warring paths with the APC.
While at the senate and with his annoying petulance, Dino was to
encounter a scrutiny of his academic credentials in a move led by
Saharareporters. Though he survived this inquest, he was vicariously
bruised as the revelation of deep holes and gashes on his academic
claims subdued and tamed him to a great extent.
Dino Melaye was to clash with his local Kogi APC leadership and the
state government who abhorred his sabotage role and were bent on
withdrawing him from the Senate. An extensive recall process was
initiated against him and he scratched through a last minute survival
that really shook the foundation of his boisterous political life.
As the 2019 general elections approached. Dino, Saraki and a cache of 14
other senators executed a plot against the APC where they planned and
defected to the PDP with the hope of enacting the kind of revolutionary
effect the APC wrought in 2015 when a faction of PDP leaders and
officials defected to the APC and contributed greatly to the ouster of
the PDP. As Dino and his cohorts jumped ship into the PDP, they and the
generality of PDP rank and file celebrated that act as an bankable sign
that they will rout President Buhari and APC from power in the on-coming
2019 election.
In the election proper, Dino was the only senator among the 16 senators
that survived a phenomenal routing that saw the remaining 15 senators,
including Saraki lose their seat and gain a humiliating retirement from
the senate and from politics. It was obvious that by being the only one
that survived this routing, Dino must have fathomed that he bore a
charmed life that is unconquerable by any living mortal. Though his
party lost badly in both the presidential and National Assembly
elections which somehow, subdued and humbled Dino in his public
carriage, he felt invincible and believed that his political life was
above human destruction.
But the hunting spirits were not tired of Dino’s case. So when the APC
candidate whom he defeated in the 2019 senatorial election, Senator
Smart Adeyemi proceeded to the election tribunal to challenge his
victory, he must have laughed it off as another wild goose chase. But
that was where the spirits laid in wait for Dino. His election was
nullified at the tribunal on reasons of grand manipulation. He waved off
the tribunal loss and boasted that he would emerge triumphant in the
decisive appeal tribunal where he went to seek relief against the
adverse tribunal judgment. The appeal tribunal ruled and affirmed the
ruling of the lower tribunal, while ordering for fresh election thus
marking the end of Dino in the Nigerian Senate. With sparse courage left
in him after this devastating ruling, Dino boasted that Adeyemi is like
his wife and that he had mastered the art of defeating Adeyemi in
elections.
Before then, Dino had joined the contest for the PDP governorship ticket
in Kogi and just garnered a paltry 70 votes in the primary to come a
distant fourth. He railed and ranted that he was rigged out of the
contest and refused entreaties by his party men to work for the victory
of their candidate in the ensuing gubernatorial election.
Come Saturday, November 16, the day the re-run election was fixed and
Dino was seeing ghosts all over. Relishing his discontent and
apprehension of imminent defeat, the spirits closed in and tightened the
nots. Falling on the same date a governorship election that was to
determine the fate of his bitter political rival, Governor Yahaya Bello,
Dino knew there was rea trouble for him at the polls. The thought of
defeat was enough to scare the living daylight out of Dino as his
courage deserted him and he was turned to a scare-monger that saw ghosts
in every direction. He went to town with specious tales of plots to rig
the election against him and his PDP. On election day, he became a full
comedian, hawking stories of grand rigging plots against him. In one
instance, he tweeted that APC deployed helicopters to bomb him and his
supporters on election day but knowing him for who he is, no one paid
him heed. When results started coming in and he was being trounced, he
did everything to discredit the results. The final tally of the results
saw him trailing Adeyemi by over 20,000 votes but because the cancelled
votes exceeded that margin of victory, the Returning Officer ordered a
supplementary election.
Knowing that there was no way he could offset the deficit he was having
against Adeyemi, Dino went full circle in fangling diverse scenarios to
stop the make-up election. He produced many videos alleging electoral
manipulation and cajoled INEC to stop the supplementary elections but
all ended up in smokes. Even as he threatened to boycott the election,
Dino turned up and voted on election day and when results were
announced, he heavily lost to Adeyemi thereby widening the deficit that
trailed him going to the supplementary election. With the announcement
of the final results and Dino trashed, the ghosts that saw him survive
many plots to shoo him off the senate finally got him thereby ending his
loud, controversial span in the senate. Some have opined that given his
penchant to revel on the national scale, that Dino should join the local
film industry, Nollywood but time will tell where he will continue his
parody. Certainly not in the senate where many have seen his ouster by
recalcitrant stubborn spirits, as good riddance to bad rubbish.
Peter Claver Oparah
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mil: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com