THE Ó TÓ GE MANTRA

The animal farm is a story that captures succinctly how a society can reach a tipping point and then rebel against its primal master. George Orwell’s allegorical classic became personified in a Nigerian state in the North Central zone: Kwara State.

Kwara State like the farm described by Orwell has a lot of interesting characters and lived to fulfill the wishes and demands of a single family. The Saraki family had always held sway over the destinies and resources of the land and commandeering mass wealth within the nucleus of the home. In this story too there is an old mayor who lived larger than life and enthroned himself as the kingmaker, a political demigod that decided who rules and who breaths in the state.

The Baba Oloye of Kwara, Olusola Saraki, after his two terms as Governor decided to make his son, Bukola Saraki, his successor and then his daughter, Gbemisola Saraki, went to the Senate. Maybe the young doctor was not ready to climb the exalted throne in 1999, and so Baba Oloye allowed Mohammed Lawal be the interregna. But by 2003, the man was ready and his sister too. As with all crowned princes he took charge of the exalted throne and became paramount ruler in what was supposedly a democracy. The family had the state firmly held by the jugular and swayed it according to their whims and caprices. The State seemed to be renamed as Saraki’s State.

In the grand scheme of things, Baba Oloye had planned that when Bukola was done serving his two terms as Governor, he would move on to the Senate while his sister will take his place as Governor and become the first female governor in Nigeria. However, the young Saraki after eight years in office, had built his own clout, was not naive anymore. The young doctor engineered one of the classic manoeuvre of present history that would make Babaginda grin with green eyes, as he remembers his evil genius days.

Bukola Saraki trumped that by beating his father to his game, he moved against the family, made his friend Abdulfatah Ahmed succeed him instead of his sister. Baba Oloye was wroth and politically assassinated by the very kid he taught the game. He was left out in the cold and could only get frost bites to eat as regrets pervaded his soul. The demigod was no longer revered as “god” once he could be seen bleeding and bled he did into a stroke that would later claim the life of the sage of the Kwaran dynasty.

However, it was not before, as legend has it, Baba Oloye had the chance to curse his son for the humiliation that as he has publicly disgraced him so will he be disgraced at his highest climb. Though, the curse is largely alleged to have been pronounced by the senior Saraki on the younger, it is not a substantiated fact. But if recent events in the Kwaran political space is anything to go with then it might as well have been a prophecy or curse come to pass.

The “O to ge” campaign borrowed wisdom from the Obama’s “Yes we can” movement and rode against the norm of political campaigns of smear and name callings that fails in winning elections or unseating incumbent forces. The four young musketeers that run the Lekki based agency in Lagos, The Hook Creative Agency, conceived and executed the ‘Enough is enough’ campaign on the premise of the knowledge that election cannot be won on campaign of calumny, lousy talks, and name-calling; neither do these unseat a sitting president or any other elected official for that matter.

They researched intensively and extensively into the thirty four years rule of the Saraki’s political hegemony and yielded a harvest of information that graphically showed the people their years of political disillusionment, unhinged servitude and bondage in the hands of a family of their kind. The message was clear and simple; it is unsavoury to have just one nuclear family decide the fate of all for over thirty years. This then yielded the “we want it no more, enough is enough” movement. However, they needed to distill this idea into bits and pieces that the rural dwellers and educationally disadvantaged voters would understand and this need birthed the shorter, more premise and powerful “o to ge” message.

Likened to a Tsunami, it swept and mopped away every form of sympathy and apathy in the community. And when the results were announcement that the Senate President, Bukola Saraki lost his bid to a reelection into the red chamber, the entire state seem to erupt in pure ecstasy. There were dancings, celebrations and drinking and like the animals of Orwell’s allegorical construct, they had gotten rid of their former slave owner and oppressor. The visions and words of their old mayor had been fulfilled. However, it is left to time and chance to tell if the Kwara farm is free from the shackles and bonds or had only been traded into the hands of another slave handler, more terrible than the first. A case of soldier goes, another comes, barracks remain.

However whatever this mean for the Kwarans isn’t the main crux of this piece. An unprecedented feat has been achieved and so let’s rejoice as much as we can. But the most important contest of opinion here is if it can be extended to the gubernatorial elections of this weekend. There are quite a number of states that remain in the dark ages of one or few men still dictating the political fates of the state. And this is antidemocratic at the very modest.

The good news however is that like the Arab Spring, the ‘O to ge’ movement is sweeping across some states, especially in the south western region of Nigeria. The All Progressives Congress, APC, states of the South West are being fed with their own medicine. The ‘O to ge’ movement may have started as an APC movement to rid Kwara of the Saraki’s, but they don’t have monopoly over the monologue of such a powerful mantra. And this has seen the concept being adopted in their own states. Gboyega Nasir Isiaka (GNI), the gubernatorial candidate for Ogun State under the platform of African Democratic Congress, ADC, is running on the Otooge na nibi (It is enough over here too) mantra in anticipation of this Saturday’s polls. And if there were any chance for the two time contestant to win, then now is, especially when the ruling party, APC, in the state is having internal dispute.

Much more importantly, the O to ge mantra is beginning to take root in Lagos. The movement is against the alleged political dominance of the national leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu over the affairs of the state. This became much more apparent when he moved against the second term of the current governor, Akinwumi Ambode over a perceived personal falling out. It has become apparent that Tinubu singlehandedly decides who rules and who leaves in Lagos State, and the political elite of the opposition feels that indeed enough is enough here too.

As a matter of fact the Asiwaju has been accused of trying to set up his son to become governor of the state by 2023 and then litter the state’s political corridors with his relatives. This accusation is from a group called the Free Lagos Movement, under the employment of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, gubernatorial candidate for the state, Jimi Agbaje. If going by how Tinubu has always played the Lagos politics is to be reckoned with then this accusation may not be far from the truth. Considering that his wife is already firmly in enthroned in the national assembly after securing her third term recently.

Whether Gboyega Isiaka and Jimi Agbaje would be able to ride the storm of the ‘O to ge’ mantra and change the political climate of their respective states is largely left to time, chance and their ability to get major buy-ins of the people. However, it is noteworthy that the Hook Creative Agency’s O to ge stsrtegy is set to engineer another social phenomenon that leads a people to a defining socio-political awareness that brings about genuine change from the status quo.