Aregbesola’s Outdated Story Line

BY BAMIDELE JOHNSON 

Rauf Aregbesola, whose wispy frame has always advertised austerity, does not seem to have noticed where political storytelling has gone. His claim that he owned no house throughout his eight years as governor says as much.

He said he squatted in a friend’s house for the entire period. That claim has about the same credibility as the old tale of Thunder Balogun ripping the stomach of a goalie with a shot. It was clearly meant to project simplicity, if not outright asceticism. The state provided a house for him as governor. I met him there thrice.

Politicians believe that voters cannot resist a candidate auditioning for the role of a Franciscan monk. The trick used to work. But it now belongs to the old political playbook, part of which has every aspirant emerging from a childhood of spectacular deprivation. It is a formula that has lost much of its sparkle.

For years, politicians competed over who had suffered the harder upbringing. Some of those stories might have been true. Others had clearly been marinated in generous quantities of creative licence. Many deserved shelving in the fiction section.d

That well now seems to have run dry. I doubt any serious presidential contender can still produce a hardship story capable of eclipsing Goodluck Jonathan’s famous barefoot-to-the-ballot-box narrative. A different genre appears to have taken over.

If tales of poverty no longer move the crowd, superhero stories seem to be the new currency. Peter Obi is the undisputed master of that genre.

A few days ago, I watched a video in which Obi narrated how, as governor, he dived into a body of water to rescue a man who wanted to drown himself after losing his business in a fire. It was the sort of scene that would sit comfortably in a Stan Lee comic.

Picture a sitting governor abandoning protocol to become an emergency rescue diver. If the story happened exactly as narrated, the state either had no emergency rescue service or everyone employed for that purpose had conveniently vanished. Neither possibility reflects particularly well on the administration.

Do I believe the story? No. My reaction is the same as it is to Aregbesola’s claim, another attempt to cast himself as a political special case. I have heard too many extraordinary tales from Obi, usually told by Obi himself.

There was the famous story about receiving problem-solving advice from a madman. Whether even his supporters believed it is another matter. Politics, much like romance, has a remarkable ability to suspend disbelief.

Then came the account of discovering waste in the Government House kitchen and personally measuring rice and beans for the cooks. Rice by the mudu. Beans by the De Rica tin. A governor with the responsibilities of a chief executive somehow found time to moonlight as chief storekeeper. One naturally wonders what became of the officials actually employed to run the kitchen.

Another story involved his driver. Obi said he eventually took over buying fuel because the driver was cheating him. That raises the obvious question of why a governor was personally taking over errands that exist precisely so other people can handle them. Public officers who neglect their duties can be disciplined or dismissed. Governors are not expected to be buying fuel.

He also claimed to have given students across Anambra State his personal telephone number so they could report erring teachers and principals. Such a remarkable initiative somehow left barely a ripple in the media at the time. That alone invites questions.

Then there was another rescue episode. An erosion disaster struck. Obi said he was at the scene by 2 a.m, after which he personally called President Olusegun Obasanjo. To do what? I have no idea.

Not long ago, he revealed that he still sweeps the floor in his house. I was only mildly disappointed he stopped there. At this rate, I expected to hear that he pounds akpu, stirs ogbono soup and occasionally skeletonises a cow before breakfast. He also once narrated cleaning the toilet on an aircraft after the airline staff went on recess like NASS. One almost expected him to pull a mop from the overhead locker.

This, perhaps, is where political storytelling is headed, not in Aregbesola’s direction. Perhaps he truly had no house as governor. Perhaps paying workers half salaries for months convinced him that squatting in another man’s house was the natural condition of public servants. I hope he managed to build one after becoming minister. I sincerely do.

One detail, however, refuses to cooperate. He was not living in Ikeja GRA before he became commissioner in Lagos. I interviewed him in that house at least twice during his years as governor. If eight years as commissioner could produce a house in one of Lagos’ toniest neighbourhoods, believing that eight years as governor could not produce even a modest three-bedroom flat requires a level of faith I simply do not possess.

Aregbesola spent years as governor saying he was carrying out financial engineering. He probably was, but the state’s finances were engineered to make mendicants of civil servants, bequeath a mile-long list of abandoned projects and the fraud-encrusted Opon Imo.

Sabarumo onirugbon sesere, Iro lo ma se e lese