Osinbajo: Sifting Facts from Lies
POLITICAL NOTES
The Vice-President and presidential hopeful, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, last week, took a bold step when he reviewed the story of how he was nominated as President Muhammadu Buhari’s running mate in 2015. This was not before the mob supporters of his now estranged former boss, Bola Tinubu, had descended and classified him, not just as a betrayer, but one in the category of Judas Iscariot.
Although before Osinbajo chose to unveil the masquerade during Iftar with the State House Press, he had also sent a subliminal message to the same ‘enemy quarters’ whilst on consultation tour to Ogun, his home state. He said to his people without equivocation that, he held no allegiance to anyone aside swearing a constitutional oath to Nigeria. The message, of course, resonated crystal clearly with the concerned.
This, ironically, is likely to come off as a revision of his own narrative, because Osinbajo had personally in 2016, when the controversy initially began, openly admitted to the fact that Tinubu nominated him to that position. But you can pardon Osinbajo. That was not an outright lie, but a conscious decision to “cover up the shame” of his erstwhile principal as an Omoluabi, when clearly, there was no need to throw him under the bus.
Indeed, he was not alone in this resolve. Many, if not all of those, who had worked with Tinubu in the past and secured appointment into Buhari’s cabinet, got the positions without a finger lifted by Tinubu, yet, they all either kept quiet or conceded the glory of their nominations to him, just so it could boost his ego, since that’s all he lives on as a political maker of men.
From Babatunde Fashola to Lai Mohammed, Sunday Dare, Rauf Aregbesola, Olorunimbe Mamora, Muiz Banire, Tunde Fowler, Ben Akabueze, Yemi Osinbajo and a host of others, those who understand the Villa power game knew Tinubu had no hand whatsoever in the emergence of anyone of them, yet, they looked away when his supporters lumped them as made and re-made by Tinubu. Osinbajo was a victim of this politics of decency, albeit by choice, until he was pushed to the point of saying the truth.
He openly told the media that all he could recall was that Aregbesola and a former governor of Ogun State, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, made his nomination possible, at least, from all that transpired to the best of his knowledge. That, without a doubt, shares nearly accurately with the true account of what really happened. He finally succeeded in separating the lies from the truth as he knew it. It doesn’t mean these mob supporters of Tinubu would stifle from their venomous politics though, with the truth out, that account of their mutilated narrative can now rest for good.
