Guardian

MANY people have sought to understand why Abiola Ajimobi, a man who had turned down several chieftaincy titles from many respected monarchs, would accept the conferment of the Aare Atunluse of Ibadanland on him by the Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Samuel Odulana, Odugade 1. For a man who had, from inception, believed that such conferment often interferes with the smooth running of government, many atimes constituting a stumbling block on the way of good governance, why would he accept this chieftaincy title? Or put differently, how different is this from the rejected titles?

To understand why the Governor of Oyo State accepted the offer, you would need to take a shuttle into the unprecedented inroad he has made in the renewal of the city of Ibadan, the state capital, in the last two years. Inheriting an unplanned, widely considered dirtiest city in Nigeria as the state capital, Ajimobi expressed his plan from the outset to change the typecast of filth heaped on his kindred and the city of birth. So he embarked on an aggressive urban renewal and city beautification exercise that has left most skeptics stupefied about its transformation.

Themselves arrested by this transformation of the city and the unprecedented infrastructural revolution happening in the state, the opposition had sought to, not only belittle the efforts but cast aspersion on its raison-deter. Not only that, a leading light of this tar-brush-him politics and former governor of the state, had sought to hit Ajimobi’s head against the revered monarch of Ibadan by appealing to base and primordial sentiments, insinuating that the Olubadan was not happy with his son, the governor.

How does Ajimobi tell the world that this is not true? How does he verbalize his respect and appreciation for a king who, in spite of the gang-ups of the Sadducees and Pharisees who constitute the opposition parties of Oyo State, has overtly and covertly given kudos to the governor for a job well done? More fundamentally, how does Ajimobi tell the world without saying anything that these mudsling-him politicians, a kingpin among them himself a high-ranking Olubadan chief, have no consent of the revered monarch in their campaign of hate and calumny? How does he tell the world that as is his wont, the former governor had embarked on another journey to dreamland?

Being a human being composed of flesh and blood, how does Ajimobi receive feedback from an apparently appreciative Ibadan people whom the opposition had lied was unappreciative of the turn-around of their city from that of filth to a proper metropole?

If one can access the mind of the governor by telepathy, the need to answer the above questions must be the reasons for his accepting the offer of the highly respected monarch who has chosen to make him the Aare Atunluse (City Reformer) and his wife, Florence, Yeye Atunluse of Ibadanland.

But why would Kabiyesi make Ajimobi a City Reformer? Telepathy, again, would be our resort. Ibadan had courted a notorious renown as a very dirty and unplanned city. Visitors and residents of the state capital were besieged by a daily ritual of disregard for aesthetics in building of houses, mounting mountains of debris and a haphazard culture of street trading and erection of kiosks by the roadside. These all contributed to the unfavorable image of a dirty city that Ibadan had. These were further worsened by a culture of impunity that had grown hydra-headed over the years which was superintended over by many residents most of whom are not indigenes of the capital city.

Areas in the state capital like Beere, Oje, Iwo Road, Challenge, Dugbe, Ring Road, Sabo Suya Spot and many others, pre-May 2011, looked like mangers. Kioks and stalls littered the roadsides, many of them competing for space with asphalted road paths. And nobody seemed to be bothered. Because it was becoming a culture, it had dug deep into the people’s skins like leeches. It was apparent that anyone who attempted to rewrite this trend would court the people’s wrath.

To be fair to the last two Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors, they were not the harbingers of this unfortunate renown. They inherited it. Their only blame was that they lacked the vision to rebuild a house of debris into a palatial mansion, the kind of vision that gave birth to the current Ajimobi acclaim.

Please permit this revelation of state secret: When he first began the yeo-man campaign to beautify Ibadan, many of his executive council members were far from Ajimobi’s page. They thought he would be frightened off this against-method policy the moment he was confronted by decades-old filth establishment. And off Ajimobi went. True to their prediction, the establishment resisted it. One popular musician who built a magnificent complex on a setback was quoted to have confided in some people that no government would ever think of dualizing the complex’s road, not to talk of identifying its structural err. It took the Ajimobi government’s human kindness to meander an ongoing dualization of this same road from consuming the edifice.

Today, the hitherto mentioned filth hot-spots in Ibadan are as clean as London’s St. Charingcross. A culture of order now pervades Ibadan and obedience to Ajimobi’s evangelism of cleanliness seems the beginning of wisdom. Many elite who commend the governor today were themselves afraid when the painful revolution began. Many executive council members, who, like the biblical Peter, denied their Principal at inception, now preen themselves in identification with one of the most revolutionary governments in Oyo State history. This is why many who once lived in Ibadan and have the opportunity of visiting the city again go back with the testimony of a revitalization of a rejected city of filth. Indigenes of the city, who had endured years of denigration, today thump their chests that they hail from that reformed city.

The Olubadan, being the father of the people, and who collates different views of his populace on a daily basis, could thus not close his eyes to this uncommon transformation. As such, the conferment of Atunluse title on this uncommon reformer. As the traditional Akoko leaves are being stuck to Ajimobi and his wife’s ears, let us all hail the man who upturned the biblical observation that a prophet has no honour among his own people.

*Adedayo, PhD, is Special Adviser (Media) to Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State.