BOOK OF THE YEAR: A FRONT ROW PARTICIPANT’S ACCOUNT
It is a series of words as pinprick. It began as a book presentation, and the bigwigs of the Nigerian political firmament gathered, especially of the APC hue. The president, Muhammadu Buhari, in his full light-blue babaringa and loosed-limbed with humour, was accompanied by a raft of governors. That day drew praise for the book, from all sides. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu called him a hero. The president draped him as a rare specimen of integrity. Ogbonnaya Onu, Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, regarded him as a political icon. The book reviewer and this newspaper’s Editor-at-Large, Segun Ayobolu, pronounced what was to come. He called it a bomb.
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So it has been, a work of barely over 500 pages has been a detonation from denotations. Titled My Participations, former governor of Osun State and former chairman of unprecedented four political parties, Chief Bisi Akande, weaves a skein of his life, but in a larger context it is the political yarn of his generation.
But he trades tackles with his bare but direct style. There have been quite a few persons uncomfortable with his narratives. Some have so far been quiet, especially former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The retired general and a perennial figure in Nigeria’s contemporary history, comes out of Akande’s telling as a crafty subvert. He is always on the malevolent side of the narrative and Nigeria’s history.
Another person he overwhelmed with his ire was his deputy as governor of Osun State. He tracked how he fell for the deceptions of a wily man. He became a major stud and matador of retrogression. He eventually became the one who lost his job rather than Akande who was first marked for eviction from the State House. The Ife titan has remained mum.
But others have squalled in protest. One of them is a chieftain of Yoruba politics, Ayo Adebanjo, who emerges as an undercutting work horse for the obstructions of the Yoruba march forward. He is a follower of Awo who even in Awo’s lifetime was painted in unflattering light with his friend and fellow traveller Olaniwun Ajayi during the fraught era of military overthrow when Akande, Bola Ige and others spent years in Buhari’s gaol. What he has been loud about though is Akande’s reporting that he obtained a certificate of occupancy for a plot at Lekki Phase one from former Lagos State Governor Tinubu who also helped build the house in which he currently lives.
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Also, in an outburst is the former army officer and Akande’s successor as governor, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, who railed about his reporting of graft and lack of faith concerning the construction and siting of a government house.
Both Oyinlola and Adebanjo belong to countervailing signposts in Southwest politics. Many do not expect them to look at the world from the same lens.
It has drawn flak from the Presidency about how the vice president was nominated. The vice president who has said his bit long ago has been quiet but others have taken the bait. A newspaper supposedly quoting sources close to the president claimed there was no agreement between the then candidate Buhari and Tinubu to pair the former governor as his running mate. They claimed it was a partnership, and they implied that both agreed on vague terms of engagement.
The book is not just about these men. Chief Akande reflected a political atmosphere that was marked by shysters as heroes. He took Awolowo for his hero and ensign, and the track light for the west.
No book has generated thus far this sort of flap since one of his targets, Obasanjo, penned a war memoir that he alone seems to be participant and witness to.
Akande’s My Participations will shake and echo in the political world for a long time. It is courage in penmanship. For telling a story that has spun a spool stories, My Participations is our book of the year.
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(THE NATION)
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