Pimper’s Paradise is a song on late Jamaican reggae star, Bob Marley’s vinyl. It talks about a hitherto promising young woman’s vulnerability as she leaves prudery to venture into the world, naive to the nature of men and gets caught up in the vortex of material and party life, drugs and “laughing when there ain’t no joke.” South West Nigeria savors the developmental milestones it inherited from its forebears. Obafemi Awolowo and his contemporaries of the Western Region fame left some bequeathals which, till today, no government has been able to lay claim to, at least in the region.
While Awolowo was sent to the Calabar prisons by his haters, however, the West exploded in fisticuffs and incandescence of immeasurable dimension. The parliament in Agodi became a bedlam and parliamentarians were thrown off the window with a finish that only pugilists and wrestlers can boast of. The fracas that ensued became the blemish on the magnificent transformation of the republic.
Between 2003 and 2011, however, the region lost many of the accolades that its offspring rode on its crest. Many of its states reverted to the Hobbesian state of nature where man was a whiff better than his ape ancestors. Of particular instance was Oyo State under Governors Rashidi Ladoja and his successor, Adebayo Alao-Akala. Ekiti too did not fare better as sectarian violence seized the jugular of the region in a particularly curious way, allegedly fanned by the State House.
Now comes the year 2011 and a new set of rulers took over the South West. I hate political partisanship and I tell people that there is virtually no difference between all the political parties. Some indices in current political permutations however defeat my belief that there is no difference in them all. In about four years now, the South West has reverted to its glory of peace and tranquil, until recent Ekiti that is. From Ekiti to Oyo, Ogun to Osun, South West is bristling under a peaceful and serene atmosphere that could be said, arguably, to be borne out of its current ideological nestle.
The current imbroglio in Ekiti between a government that is leaving office after spending four years reputed to be peaceful and one that had been there before which is trying to wean itself from the toga of violence can bear testimony to this. His Excellency, Ayo Fayose, got the people’s pass to come back to the Government House on the mantra that he was a changed man. He founded this on the holy writ’s injunction which says, old things had passed away. What are those old things?
Agreed, it could be defeatist to claim that a defiant man would continually manifest his traits of deviancy over and over again, the claim that if Yoruba returns to the hands of the same set of people who turned it into a volatile zone, it would return to its vomit, may have some epistemic truth in it afterall.
Take Oyo State as another example. From 2003 to 2011, it could be compared to Marley’s Pimper’s Paradise and the woman who savoured ‘coke’ and had an ego to feed. It was a typical state of unimaginable violence. Ibadan, the state capital, went from worse to hyper-horrible. Some members of the road transport union workers went gaga, making life very miserable for the people under the watches of the two governments that existed at the time. At a time, the violence was between an Ibadan political emperor and Governor Ladoja. Hundreds of people died in the melee. At a time, thugs invaded the House of Assembly, shooting sporadically at anyone and anyhow and smoking marijuana like a broken chimney. Within this period, Ladoja was illegally impeached and only regained his governorship from the courts.
Things didn’t get any better when his deputy, Alao-Akala, took over. The state of violence was such that many industries and investors left the state. It was difficult for any sane investor to stay on in a state where you woke up at dawn in one piece and needed extensive prayer to retain your body members at dusk. In all this, government was alleged to be abetting the conflagration, sponsoring one group at the detriment of the other. If Nigeria was a statistical country, figures of massacred victims within that period should have been a poster of how a people should not be governed.
But the tendency for forgetfulness by the people bothers this writer a lot. When Abiola Isiaka Ajimobi, current governor of the state, was coming into office, this writer was one of those who scoffed at his emergence. Handsome and mindful of his sartorial appraisal, I was not one of his crowd. The fruits of his governance have not ceased to thrill me, especially in the area of a peaceful Oyo State under his supervision. Oyo has ceased from being the state that visitors cringed to visit, to one that industries and other concerns are flying into. Night life is returning to the state as mirrored in the number of night clubs on even Ring Road alone.
If a governor’s sagacity could lead to this peace and tranquil as in Oyo State, the people have a choice whether they would be better in peace or in gangsters’ paradise and its nightmare. APC, PDP, Accord Party, Labour Party – I vote for peace.
http://www.tribune.com.ng/columns/inside/saturday-with-ayinla-mukaiba/item/18284-ajimobi-and-oyo-s-pimper-s-paradise
Oyo State Government Press Release
Support InfoStride News' Credible Journalism: Only credible journalism can guarantee a fair, accountable and transparent society, including democracy and government. It involves a lot of efforts and money. We need your support. Click here to Donate