How not to be an Aregbesola

By: Abdulwahab Tajudeen

It is by the grace of God that you have come this far. After many years as a loyal boy and many years in public service as a servant and a product of loyalty-market, I don’t need to tell you the importance of Thanksgiving. If you are a Muslim, build a small mosque inside your mansion, it does matter if you have built it off inflated contracts funds, diverted public funds or received kickbacks, employ one young Imam – elderly ones can be brutal with words – to lead your family in prayers; it matters less if you are always busy with political meetings, paying the loyalty price around the country. What matters is you giving thanks to Almighty God through the salary you’re paying the young Imam.

Or are you a born-again Christian? I thank God for your life. It’s not easy to lose track and find the right path again in this 21st century. Glory be to God, the highest! I want to guess you know the right way to Thanksgiving, yeah? Donations and tithes. You can hear me right; your best way to show your appreciation to the Almighty that has brought you this far in the murky waters of the loyal-market is through donations and payment of enormous and intimidating tithes to the Church’s purse in appreciation of God’s wonders in your life. Remember, many showers of rain have fallen that the ground has swallowed.

Please know that thanksgivings alone cannot keep you at the top of the ladder; you still need to overtly and covertly try not to be a dissenting voice. It’s important you avoid showing any displeasure in the presence of your leader for two main reasons. First, you don’t talk while eating. Remember how much your teachers in the primary school invested so much time in you ensuring you learn this fundamental lesson. Second, you will not want to be an Ogbeni Aregbesola.

It is only an Aregbesola that goes to the dinner table after many thanksgivings in his populist regalia and carnival-like manner with his personal DJ and shout at his leader with a large piece of chicken’s lap in his mouth. God forbid you to be like him! I pray that God guides and guard you from making such a grave mistake and allow small boys in the loyalty-market bring your eight years as a governor under scrutiny.

Because with you seated, on a mandate you should be standing on, your Ona Baba Ona, Opon Imon, education reform and state of Primary Health Care (PHC) under your government will now be regarded as bad things to happen after a public holiday that falls on Monday graced with fuel scarcity and no electricity. It will be painful. Very painful for one Elumelu that cannot fẹnu mẹ́nu (keep shut) to quiz you on how you have been eating the sumptuous money meals they have been serving you in the last two years.

What is their concern with the N165 billion you have used in printing holidays’ calendars and changing our Nigeria Prison Service (NPS) to Nigeria Correctional Service (NCS) without minding how many numbers of jailbreaks the country has experienced in recent time? Where does your offence lie, ehn? Is it not that you try to hold your leader accountable, trying to hold his hands while you have your own pound of flesh?

Like Aregbesola, you might foresee the aftermaths, so you must avoid being an Aregbesola like a plague. Learn from a wise fallen hero and know how not to be an Aregbesola. Hear me well and heed. Don’t just try to be atop of the situation every time; let the will of God (Ileri Oluwa) come to pass, even if it means your leader’s brother is getting on the wrong footing.

I, Abdulwahab Tajudeen, solemnly declare my intention to be a menace to all social vices, treat each with satire and stay committed to milk as a foundational milk lover; I say MILK!