Osiyemi: My Political Sojourn with Ex-CGS, Oladipo Diya

Bayo Osiyemi in this piece eulogises late former Chief of General Staff, Lt General Oladipo Diya (rtd), who was recently laid to rest in his home town, Odogbolu, in Ogun State.

Former Chief of General Staff during the General Sani Abacha administration, Lt General Donaldson Oladipo Diya (rtd), was penultimate Saturday committed to mother earth in his town of birth, Odogbolu in Ogun State.

I want to drop some few words as sign of tribute to the gentleman officer I knew very closely.

People say you don’t talk ill of the dead, but I disagree. A bad man is a bad man, dead or alive. Just as a good man remains good, whatever his circumstances, like Oladipo Diya.

General Oladipo Diya, the Asiwaju of Odogbolu, I initially knew casually in the early 1970s through his bosom friend and schoolmate, and a God- brother of mine, Dr Biodun Shobanjo at our Adebiyi Street abode in Okobiriki area of Alagomeji, Yaba.

But I became intimate with the General from the mid-90s when through another close friend of his, Senator Anthony Adefuye, he became my divine helper in facilitating my emergence as the Chairman of Old Mushin Local Government in Lagos State.

His expatriate instructor at the Nigerian Defence Academy named him Donaldson, which was said to mean “Son of power”; and through this thorough-bred and courageous  military officer, I got to know the import of what military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, meant when he declared in the height of his military glory that “we are not just in office, we are in power”.

Because I earned his trust and confidence, I became very close to Nigeria’s number two man at the time of my Chairmanship and referenced him not a little.

Of course, given my political upbringing from the Awolowo/Jakande school, I applied my mind totally to the job I had long prepared for, that there was no room for any distraction.

Through his administrator in Lagos, then Colonel Olagunsoye Oyinlola, I became noticed as a workaholic and a dependable ally in governance. Both Oyinlola and Diya trusted me with power which I exercised effectively but with the underlining realisation that I was after all a civilian, unlike them. They were initially sceptical whether I could hold Mushin, long reputed to be the hotbed of political activism, especially in the heady days of June 12, but when they became convinced that I knew my onions, they literally went to sleep in the firm belief that I was up to the task.

Oyinlola, got fond of me and called me “Munshine” ever since. But General Diya pushed his humanism and humility a notch further. In spite of his high status as Nigeria’s number two man at the time, he never, since our association started, called me by my name. To Diya, he preferred to call me Prince or The Chair. Such respect for a subordinate officer is not common in our clime; and his wives, Mummy Josephine and Mumsy Folasade, now deceased, emulated their husband and deferred to me with great courtesy. I can’t thank them enough for the honour.

General Diya, to me, exhibited honour and integrity and in my business dealings with him, in and out of office, and at no time did I regret my association with him.

In good times, we were together and when he ran into trouble with his boss, General Abacha, my commitment to him never wavered.

Suspecting that I might know more about him than could be imagined when he was in detention, secret agents went on my trail, like they must have done with other close friends and allies of the General.

Not a stranger to the cat and mouse game between secret agents and “suspects”, I bolted out of the country when I got tipped off that they were closing in on me, into temporary exile in the UK where I got to know that Dr Shobanjo had also become a fugitive from the goons of Abacha. I remained in exile until the Giver of life intervened to vindicate General Diya and prepared the way for my safe return back to the country.

General Diya meant a lot to me. He was a faithful brother and friend who participated actively in my eldest son’s wedding; just as I also travelled to Iju- itaogbolu, in Ondo state, for Sinmi, his first son’s traditional wedding in the 1990s; chaired my second wedding in London five years after I lost my wife to a road crash during the 1995 Christian pilgrimage to Israel and paid  occasional visits to my Castle Estates office at Rushey Green in Catford, London South East anytime he was in the UK between 2001 and 2007.

Let me in closing this piece, recall that he proved he was a tough, no-nonsense soldier when he was appointed the military governor of Ogun State in 1984. Being a highly disciplined and prudent officer, he clamped down on the ostentatious lifestyle of Ogun State citizens and prohibited holding of night parties in the state, among other measures aimed at choring up the low finances of the state and securing the lives of people.

Unfamiliar with that austere style, many in Ogun initially corrupted his name DIYA to KUNYA, meaning he had come to multiply their mystery. It was not long after, the citizens realised he was laying the foundation for a good economic base for which Ogun State has now earned appreciable recognition on the nation’s economic index.

The General who fought in the civil war to keep Nigeria one, who miraculously emerged from the jaws of man-induced death, has finally answered the call of God, the Omnipotent whom he committed himself to and worshipped with every fibre in him to the very end.

I want to believe that General Diya’s paradise is assured !

-Osiyemi writes from Lagos.