The Onslaught On Dapo Abiodun By Political Judases-By Funmi Branco

THERE is something common to all Judases: baying for the blood of their benefactors. On the political scene, that is incredibly easy to do once you have the cash. Hack and hired writers are ten a penny, ever ready to betray their heritage and family for a bottle of beer. Keep that in mind as you read the high-sounding but intellectually empty and pathetic piece titled “Dapo Abiodun, Gbenga Daniel, and Ogun State’s theatre of political deceit” by one ‘Toks Oguntuga, and you cannot but marvel at the sheer buffoonery of political revisionists. For a writer boasting his credentials as a “seasoned academic researcher, strategic communication expert, political analyst, and speechwriter,” you can be forgiven for expecting at least a modicum of logic. But what emerges from his Bolekaja offering is nothing but character assassination built on blatant falsehoods, innuendo, and diatribes against the Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, and false valorization and lionization of his master, Gbenga Daniel, the man under whose government the Gateway State was almost always in the news for the wrong reasons.

For a writer with vaunted credentials, Oguntuga’s piece is astoundingly banal. Setting up a binary dichotomy in which his lord and savior, Daniel, is an angel and in which anyone remotely opposed to him is the devil himself, Oguntuga invests every possible invective that he can muster on the Ogun State Governor, a man about whom he has nothing positive, even by implication, to say, and yet he expects reasonable people to take him seriously. It is clear that when these ruffians write, they lose every sense of objectivity, driven by their fawning obsession with the political pirates on whose behalf they throw reason out of the window, placing personal gain over reasoned debate.

In the ridiculous piece under reference, the writer fawningly robes his paymaster in the garb of “a calculating maestro of the past,” “a battle-tested political gladiator whose grassroots tentacles penetrate every village square and urban corner, whose cross-party goodwill spans many local government councils, whose Rolodex of loyalists reads like the guest list of political royalty across the entire state.” This is excessive demagoguery and hero worship that no one who claims sanity should be associated with, but we are dealing with a vainglorious clown. Even if Daniel is your liege lord, at least spare a thought for your family, for as the Yoruba say, “Bibi re o se f’wo ra.” (Good breeding cannot be bought with money). Why lie with such Luciferic recklessness, saying that Governor Abiodun’s election in 2019 was the handiwork of Daniel? Are we talking about the same Daniel who only joined APC a few days before the governorship election that saw Dapo Abiodun defeating Ibikunle Amosun and all the arsenal of the state ranged against him on all sides?

A bit of history for these history rewriters: in 2002, Abiodun and Daniel contested for the PDP ticket in Ogun State. Actually, it was Abiodun who was in PDP before Daniel was brought in through the instrumentality of the then powers. Once Daniel emerged as the party’s candidate, Abiodun handed over his structures to ensure his victory. He gave Daniel money, donated vehicles, and handed over his secretariats. Throughout the eight years of Daniel in office, the years in which Ogun State was notorious for violence and political assassinations, the years in which, as Nigerians would no doubt recall, photographs of state lawmakers taking an oath of allegiance to the governor in their birthday suits adorned the pages of newspapers, Abiodun never requested any kind of support from him. He was an oil mogul and simply faced his businesses. And, in any case, the then governor was notorious for his imperial rulership, which brooked no opposition.

If Oguntuga still had a bit of memory, he would have remembered that in 2019, Daniel was the coordinator of the PDP presidential campaign and joined APC only a few days before Abiodun’s election, knowing that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was certain to lose the presidential race. So when these clowns claim that he raised Dapo Abiodun’s hands and whatnot, it is clear that they are only dressing their god in the finery of falsehood. Nigerians are quite cognizant of the fact that throughout the eight years in which Ibikunle Amosun held sway at Oke Mosan, Gbenga Daniel was in political limbo, busy going in and out of EFCC offices. Indeed, Amosun, who gave him absolutely no quarter, was on the verge of demolishing his hotel in Abeokuta when Abiodun assumed office.

Daniel was rehabilitated and integrated into the Ogun APC fold, the same fold that Oguntuga and his ilk, in their worship of Daniel, say “has always resembled a magnificent but unstable mansion,” as if their god was forced to stay in the party. Sources say no sooner had Daniel been pulled out of political debris than he started seeing himself as all in all. Apparently, it was Amosun who understood how to deal with him, exterminating him from Ogun politics. The man rescued from political shipwreck started struggling with the state Governor, saying he had not consulted him before appointing commissioners! And yet, for all the falsehood perpetuated by his attack dogs, Abiodun actually accommodated Daniel’s men in his government. The list includes Hon. Lai Taiwo, Chairman of the House of Assembly Service Commission; Engnr. Akeem Adesina (S.A. Works), Otunba Fatai Sowemimo (Chairman, Water Corporation), Deji Kalejaye (SSA Inter-party), Ifekayode (SSA on Media), and Princess Ogunde (SA, Women Affairs, among several SAs). Daniel’s (wo)men are in Abiodun’s government, but he apparently wants the Governor, the same person that God used to bring him back to political reckoning after eight years in the wilderness, to be taking instructions from him.

As watchers of the Ogun political scene are no doubt aware, Senator Lekan Mustapha would have returned to the Red Chamber unopposed. He was a performing senator, but the Judases of our time lobbied the Awujale of Ijebuland and other monarchs, and the Ogun State Governor was prevailed upon to let him have the ticket of the party he had just joined. He got the ticket and was elected Ogun East senator but then teamed up with the PDP’s Ladi Adebutu to undercut Abiodun. It is a fact that all his boys worked against Abiodun, and that certain forces used their network in the North to sway the Election Petitions Tribunal against the Governor. Till today, Daniel’s so-called supporters are his PDP supporters.

A few days before the governorship election in 2023, he allegedly sent a note to his members asking them not to vote for Abiodun. Now, he reasons that the Governor, being from Ogun East, might contest the 2027 senatorial election, and has unleashed his attack dogs on him and his government. Amid his highfalutin offering, Oguntuga couldn’t help disclosing his boss’s morbid fear. Hear him: “Abiodun harbours ambitions that soar far beyond the confines of Oke-Mosan, with rumours swirling around about his burning desire for the very senatorial seat that OGD currently occupies.” Pray, is the Ogun East senatorial ticket Daniel’s birthright? Was the seat not occupied by someone before him? Assuming, but not conceding that Abiodun is intent on running for senator, why should that pose any threat to a man Oguntuga boasts is “a battle-tested political gladiator whose grassroots tentacles penetrate every village square and urban corner”?

Nigerians, expect more anti-Abiodun diatribes in the coming days as the political Judas prepares his return journey to political oblivion.