Former Vice Presidents Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Namadi Sambo visited Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola in his Ilesa country home en route to the coronation of the new Owa Obokun Adimula of Ijesaland, Oba Clement Adesuyi Haastrup, Ajimoko III, on Friday, May 23, 2025.
Since then, I have received a couple of opinion articles from the usual suspects, fulminating the lyrics of betrayal and ingratitude to a benefactor.
These were directed at Ogbeni Aregbesola as he’s being castigated for going to bed with Alhaji Abubakar, seen as the political opponent of President Bola Tinubu.
To be clear, the visit of Abubakar to Aregbesola was purely a courtesy call. It was not political. There was no talk of Aregbesola being in the coalition he’s building to unseat President Bola Tinubu. As is common in political circles, when politicians visit a community, they often make courtesy calls on the monarch and the political leader in the place.
When politicians hold such meetings, it is often secluded in Dubai or London, not in the full glare of the public.
More importantly, Alhaji Abubakar is not a stranger to any of them, as they have been political allies in and out, and often play political cat and mouse.
You will recall that during the second term of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, 2003–2007, Abubakar fell out with his principal, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo, and his strongest political ally then was Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos.
Abubakar was effectively muscled out of the PDP, and he found accommodation in the Action Congress (AC), which the Alliance for Democracy (AD) had morphed into. The plan then was for him to pair with Tinubu for the 2007 presidential election. It didn’t quite work out, as Atiku picked Ben Obi as his running mate. This was their first falling out, as Tinubu returned to Lagos to lick his wounds.
Abubakar became politically peripatetic, as he went back to the PDP and then again joined the APC and pulled forces with Tinubu to be part of the coalition that brought Muhammadu Buhari to power in 2015. Then, again, he went back to the PDP, under whose banner he contested the 2019 presidential election.
Alhaji Abubakar, therefore, is a mutual political ally.
But this is not about Abubakar. The hounds were out to get the scalp of Aregbesola for not walking on all fours to beg for a piece of the action since his falling out with President Tinubu, as most people in his shoes would have pragmatically done.
Aregbesola – many would swear that he was Tinubu’s right-hand man and most trusted ally. But given what we have seen now, these assumptions are false. It was a marriage of convenience and a mutually beneficial relationship. Both of them grew together politically and assisted themselves on the way to their present political heights.
Tinubu began as a neophyte in the politics of Lagos, after he left Mobil, to become Senator, Governor, and now President, while Aregbesola became a two-term commissioner, two-term governor, and served as minister.
The authors of these writeups projecting Aregbesola as ungrateful appear concerned and disturbed and feign acting in his best interest. But their message is the same: vilify Aregbesola and bring him to ridicule as an unfaithful person.
They use the same lines of argument, and their conclusions are the same. This is the classic media orchestration by ghostwriters whose names are unknown and unheard of. They are handed the same dossier, and their outlook is predictable.
First, Aregbesola did not betray anyone. Rather, he thought he was being loyal, only to find that the rug had been pulled from under his feet, as he was being simultaneously de-platformed in Lagos and Osun by his boss. That was his moment of epiphany.
Still, he struggled hard to salvage the situation, as he naively insisted there was no rift between him and his leader, even as Governor Oyetola, his successor, was busy dismantling his legacy in Osun, while his political structure and allies in Lagos were being pushed through the furnace.
Worse still, he was expelled by Osun APC four times before he called it quits with the party in 2024, while his leader did not lift a finger and spurned all the efforts to reconcile them.
This brings us to the second issue. If you had sent him out of your party, would it mean he can no longer participate in politics or choose new friends?
Assuming without conceding that his meeting with Atiku was political, on what legal, moral, or political basis would he be barred from associating with another politician if the cord between him and Tinubu has been severed, as it now is?
No matter how closely intertwined a couple might be, the moment they are divorced, they are free of any obligation towards each other. You can no longer determine for your ex-partner who not to befriend after your separation. You cannot even ask him or her not to date your sister or brother or best friend. It would be absurd to do so. Once you are separated, you are free to associate with anyone you want.
This is the cold truth about politics. It is easy to join and easy to exit. If you are afraid your political allies might join your opponent, then enlightened self-interest dictates that you should do everything possible to keep them. Once they are out of your grasp, you have lost any control over them.
It is clear the authors of this silly illogic are not acting in the interest of truth or reason, but their fallacy resonates with a sizeable number because, for the most part, we bring the logics of monarchy and fascism into democracy.
In a democracy, the president or political leader is not a king. He wields influence and exercises charismatic authority — nay, influence — but he’s not an absolute king. We are not in any way beholden to the president. We do not owe him to like him. What I owe the state is my civic obligations in obeying the law and being a good citizen. If he wants my love and loyalty, he would have to earn it, and I may not still give him, with his most strident effort.
These hack writers should therefore get off this silly horse of eternal political loyalty to those to whom you are no longer politically associated with.
Fasure, Aregbesola’s media aide, writes from Osogbo.