The sagging consequence and worth of the name of Olusegun Mimiko, the former governor of Ondo State, received some boost in political discourse recently.
It was buoyed by the coming October governorship election of his Ondo home state. Since leaving office in 2016, Mimiko, the man who prided self as Iroko tree of Ondo politics, seemed to have been felled from reckoning and became the butt of jokes. You could summarize his tumble in a Yoruba wise-saying that ogbon a ma pa ologbon – at the juncture of fate, the Smart Alec will certainly meet their waterloo.
Mimiko received the push of destiny in his political sojourn, from being a commissioner, Secretary to the State Government, Minister of the Federal Republic, to an eight-year reign as governor. His was an unexampled case of an underdog disdained by the powers-that-be who upturned power equation in Ondo State and ran for, as well as won governorship on the platform of an unknown Labour Party. Thereafter, for eight years, he built a power base that he unfortunately wove round himself as the Fuhrer. A student of the power of symbolism, Mimiko appeared almost everywhere in austere adire attire, projecting the image of an ascetic who deliberately shunned wealth and the good things of life.
But that was just a façade! It covered Mimiko’s reification of self above every other consideration. A few months before the 2015 election, the Smart Alec jumped ship again, from the LP to the PDP. There was thus no wonder that almost immediately he left office, with no power grip, he suffered a huge casualty of erstwhile followers who made an about-turn from a Smart Alec who thought he was the only wisdom base of power. The icing on the case of his fall was when the Iroko ran for Senate and was thoroughly humiliated by a man who could not dare the majesty of his power as the Fuhrer.
Thereafter, Mimiko tumbled down politically and with resounding ignominy. His major cusp of fall was his decision to trade off the candidacy of his Attorney General for almost eight years, Eyitayo Jegede. Those in the know claimed that while Mimiko stood like an Iroko behind him by the day, he traded in the Jegede merchandize at night, smiling away with the booty of the barter. When the consignment was weighed down by the shenanigan of another merchant of politics, Jimoh Ibrahim, the former governor easily meshed into the midst of those who bore the pall of that dream. He only began to harvest the seeds of political Karma, post-office. Not only did followers migrate from him, the erstwhile Iroko became the sole inhabitant of a political party whose total membership could hardly fill a tiny living room. More instructively, all his harvests of office have vapourized into the hands of a band of smarter Smart Alecs and the Iroko is now as dry as a morsel swallowed without stew.
But, not to worry, political capital and reckoning are returning to the withered Iroko tree. A fellow political inhabitant of the hovel of the oldest profession in the world, who in less than a month, had traversed two political parties and is being careered into a third by an inordinate ambition that has no place for morality, wants to share political harlotry with the once famous Iroko. He is Agboola Ajayi, Ondo deputy governor, whose vaulting ambition is pushing to be the most notorious political harlot in recent time. And Mimiko’s solo political hovel – Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) – is the shack to harbor their co-habitation. Iroko’s political odyssey has over the years taken him on a merry-go-round from AD to PDP, to LP, PDP and to ZLP, barring any further political peregrination. He is likened now to a huge Iroko tree shunned of its Irokoness.
The ZLP misadventure of Agboola and Mimiko would be the last total withering of the Iroko tree. By the foot of the tree would be left this epitaph: Here are the ruins of a once domineering tree, withered by a personal belief that he is smarter than all.
- Dr Festus Adedayo, a popular columnist sent this in from Ibadan, the capital city of Oyo State
