Aketi: On the morning after sunset, By Doyin Odebowale

Rotimi Akeredolu Aketi

The Field Marshall sleeps... The fields gained through consistent resistant to policies and programmes designed to perpetuate anachronism have been ceded to greed and overweening arrogance. The combination of avarice, treachery and political illiteracy ensures that the new handlers of the unfortunate amalgam of ethnic nationalities adopt measures aimed at surrendering our sovereignty, ultimately, to the Caliphate, despite the dubious pretensions at emancipation.

It is a year since the gadfly transited. It has been a whole season of revelations. The suspicions of treacherous and lecherous leanings have been stamped with confirmatory deeds, culminating in utter denudation of masked hypocrites and traitors.

Yes, it has been a period which affords the people of Ondo State, nay Nigerians, the opportunity to examine the vile acts of political moths aspiring to the attainment of the same altitude with the Eagle in a flight of hubris. The Shakespearean admonition holds true; not even members of the great man’s family are immune to the affliction of the malady of treachery. “The nearer, the bloodier.” How else should unalloyed love be measured than the impatient, anxious anticipation of the passing of an erstwhile benefactor? Human nature remains essentially slippery and continually conditioned by existential exigencies.

This is perhaps another convenient moment for whimpering sycophancy, feigned ululations on the presumed loss of a pearl, a rare species among homo sapiens. This moment allows for the ostentatious display of hypocrisy. It is not unlikely that triumphalism will mount the podium. The vacuous postulations of duplicitous inanities will descend on an audience, mostly populated by the rabble, present only for political correctness and partaking in whatever measly spoils that treachery dispenses. Keen eyes and perceptive minds have since settled for equanimity, a noncommittal election of quietude, for the complete unravelling of quislings and mediocrities.   

This period has witnessed a marked lull in the country’s political firmament. There has been, without doubt, a resurgence of the onslaught on the much cherished democratic principles by the new power mongers at the centre. And unlike before, when reasoned opposition to the policies of the Federal Government came, consistently, from the Sunshine State, where the Spartacus, the ultimate galvaniser, presided as the people’s Chief Servant, increased allocations, ill-education and cluelessness seem to have quietened dissent.

Let all those who proclaim affinity with the great man search themselves. Vacuous avowals and infantile tantrums bordering on disgrace are a disservice to his memories. He was a successful legal practitioner. That fact is not debatable. He was a consummate Bar politician. Even his adversaries acknowledge this truth. He accommodated and promoted many undeserving felons, including some with acclaimed kinship. He was not a perfect human being. No mortal has attained that utopia. He lived and impacted simply as Aketi, the man with the heart of gold.

The Field Marshall sleeps. Amotekun is famished, humiliated and hobbled by the combined onslaughts of the inordinately ambitious mediocrities and the descendants of expansionist and dubious religionists, notorious for ingrained kleptocracy, fanaticism and genocide. The fields gained through consistent resistant to policies and programmes designed to perpetuate anachronism have been ceded to greed and overweening arrogance. The combination of avarice, treachery and political illiteracy ensures that the new handlers of the unfortunate amalgam of ethnic nationalities adopt measures aimed at surrendering our sovereignty, ultimately, to the Caliphate, despite the dubious pretensions at emancipation. Politically dangerous decisions, such as “local government autonomy”, “tax reforms” among others, are being bandied as redemptive panacea to our socio-economic woes. Let all those who still think in our immediate space speak out now or be damned. The current holders of the transient illusion confused as power will stop at nothing to dump us in the sea.

The continual amendments of the unitary Constitution to suit immediate greed and consolidate the current hold on power to support an emerging fiefdom would have been challenged by the man Aketi, the quintessential gentleman of the Bar. The duplicitous rabble-rousing, masked as activism, would not have escaped acerbic excoriation from the man reputed for fearlessness and honesty. Remembering him on the anniversary of his transition should not be limited to the ostentatious exhibition of grovelling sycophancy. No public talk can approximate the legacy of a man who dared when others chose to be politically correct.

Let all those who proclaim affinity with the great man search themselves. Vacuous avowals and infantile tantrums bordering on disgrace are a disservice to his memories. He was a successful legal practitioner. That fact is not debatable. He was a consummate Bar politician. Even his adversaries acknowledge this truth. He accommodated and promoted many undeserving felons, including some with acclaimed kinship. He was not a perfect human being. No mortal has attained that utopia. He lived and impacted simply as Aketi, the man with the heart of gold.

May he continue to maintain his space in the pantheon of our ancestors.   

‘Doyin Odebowale is the former SSA, Special Duties and Strategy to Aketi as the governor of Ondo State.