SLA of Edo?

By Olakunle Abimbola

Remember Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), second Premier of the 1st Republic Western Region, from December 1959 to January 1966?

Godwin Obaseki, the Edo governor, appears an SLA-reincarnate. The SLA-Obaseki historical parallels, in this Obaseki-Oshiomhole titanic bust-up, are simply eerie!

SLA accused Awolowo, his predecessor and party leader, of stifling control, almost crippling his Premiership. Awo countered, slamming SLA with vaulting ambition and ultimate perfidy.

Between Obaseki and Oshiomhole, it is similar trading of mutual allegations, though Obaseki went one beyond SLA, rigging processes to oust his predecessor from his home ward, thus causing the APC national chair a severe heartache.

In 1962, SLA precipitated a crisis in the Western Parliament, foiling a session which could have guillotined him as Premier, replacing him with Alhaji Dauda Adegbenro.

In 2019 Obaseki, in a moonlight, midnight absurdist drama, inaugurated the minority of Edo Assembly-elects, shutting out the majority; for fear of impeachment, from Oshiomhole loyalists.

From 1963, SLA used strong-arm tactics to subdue a progressively restive partisan opponents, which eventually snowballed into the region-wide “wet-ie” near-anarchy.

From 2019, Obaseki has used suspect laws, harsh threats and sundry ploys, to game partisan foes, demolish rivals’ property, with Edo witnessing more political violence.

In 1962, SLA pressed into service, with his federal sponsors, the Coker Commission of Inquiry, to destroy Awo as a person; and the AG as a party, so much so that not a few were hooting the political obituary of both.

In 2019, Obaseki launched his own commission of inquiry that promptly “indicted” his predecessor; and is fishing for court orders to effect his arrest. As with Awo and AG, not a few are singing nunc dimittis for Oshiomhole, and a possible APC collapse.

In 1962 SLA, holding tight to the Premiership, turned his AG expulsion into a “glorious” desertion, joining forces with the rival NCNC western arm, to run a post-emergency regional government, and muscle the next election with disastrous consequences.

In 2020 Obaseki, holding tight to the governorship, turned his APC disqualification into a “glorious” defection into the rival PDP. But a key difference: SLA connived with the then “federal might”. Now, Obaseki is jumping under the federal opposition duvet.

By that, however, the governor echoes the tragic fate of Coriolanus, in the Shakespeare tragic play of that title, who teamed up with bitter enemies, Volscians, to attack his native Rome, found it a mission-impossible, and got smitten, for treachery, by his enraged new friends. Will Obaseki cut a different path? Time will tell.

But that is where the Obaseki-Oshiomhole brawl segues into the classics, from contemporary political history: for it bears all the mark of tragic drama, classical or modern; complete with what the Greeks call hamartia — the tragic flaw, which almost always turns fatal for the tragic hero.

Both Governor Obaseki (desperate, at all cost, to retain his governorship); and Adams Oshiomhole (equally determined to regain his Edo political base, aside from his APC national chair) come to the gripping, bruising tragic party with enough hamartia to spare.

A grand irony: Classicist Obaseki (he earned his first degree in Classical Studies at the University of Ibadan), falls pat into the mould of the tragic hero, with a surfeit of hubris, which doomed many a tragic hero: in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Antigone; in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and Macbeth; and in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus.

In all of these tragedies, sheer hubris pushed the tragic heroes to their doom — hubris, that penchant to go for broke, spurred by a tragic flaw that turned fatal.

The SLA-Obaseki parallel might be contemporary political history. But the setting, in SLA’s 1962 and Obaseki’s 2020, may well have been in Thebes or Corinth or Troy —immortal settings of great Greek tragedies. But are these ironies lost on the classicist governor-turned-financial whiz?

Oshiomhole, former Edo governor and Obaseki’s godfather-turned-god foe, comes with own rippling hubris too; and could well fit into the classical mould, if his estranged godson somehow pulls the Edo political rug from under his feet.

But no thanks to bitter propaganda exchanges, a picture, that immediately went viral, showed Oshiomhole as humble tailor of yore, receiving a plaque, as second best tailor in a guild contest, circa 1986!

A lowly tailor could cut Oshiomhole in the mould of Willy Loman, in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman — that pathos-filled, no less shattering fall of a low man, in modern tragedies!

But classical or modern, Oshiomhole boasts a grand irony all his own: the one that proclaimed himself the slayer of Edo godfathers, after he politically guillotined the likes of Tony “The Fixer” Anenih (of no especially sweet political memory!), risks being slain by a godson-successor he himself installed! It doesn’t get more grimly ironic!

Even more roiling: Philip Shuaibu, Oshiomhole’s once-upon-a-time comrade-protege from their Labour Union days, probably “planted” with Obaseki to “correct” moments like this, has spectacularly jumped ship, and become unfazed tormentor-in-chief! Poor Oshiomhole! He is finding out, the bitter way: one man’s slippery treachery, is another man’s solid loyalty!

Still, beyond tragedies and tragic heroes, the crux of this titanic battle on the Edo front is political mentorship gone awry; and its dire implication for the democratic polity, which soul is the political party. So, those that demonize “godfathers” miss the point.

The Awolowo-SLA tussle from 1962, and the SLA rebellion which peaked from 1963, destroyed the Action Group of Nigeria (AG). But the AG’s destruction also ship-wrecked the 1st Republic (1960 – 1966).

AG midwifed the most tremendous social transformation in Nigerian history, when it ran the Western Region, between 1952 and 1959. Imagine what the country could have gained, had AG survived and matured till now?

But the 1st Republic did not buckle because of AG’s collapse. It did, among other reasons, because democracy is a sham without vibrant political parties. So, party supremacy is a key success factor, for any democratic polity.

That is the solemn crux of the matter, despite the hysteria across the partisan aisle. Which is why every party must crush the current conceit of governors, who figure that once elected, they tower above their parties. That’s condemnable conceit!

It destroyed the AG in 1962. It destroyed the PDP in 2013. It is probably destroying the APC. That is why SLA, Obaseki and likes would always incur history’s blight.

But really, the loser, yet again, is the democratic polity, which needs a vibrant political party system, oiled by disciplined members.

But back to the dramatis personae in this gripping drama. Even if Oshiomhole loses, in the immediate sweepstakes, his hubris would be inflexibility — to solidify the party, he would claim; to game internal dissent, his foes would counter. Both, however, are no high dishonour.

But Obaseki? With nary any principle or grace, and a surfeit of petulance and strong arm tactics, he has proved the governor as a constitutional monster.

By betraying both his party and benefactor, he only reinforces the fatal flaw of an earlier Obaseki, that in 1897, betrayed Oba Ovonramwen, and the Bini people, to the invading British; and undermined Eweka II, Ovonramwen’s successor, from 1914. That is no consistent flaw to lug!

Even if he wins this one, he risks a Coriolanus, “slaughtered” in strange political territory. Still, time will tell!