In my article: “Odeyemi: The Chief Hypocritical Sycophant in Oyo State”, I lamented the steady retrogression of Odeyemi, the Special Adviser to Oyo State governor Alao-Akala on Special Duties, from social critic to lapdog and messenger, sometimes of death. Odeyemi, again, without pause or remorse, wrote a rejoinder which was published a few days after mine. Before I read his stuff (which I am sure somebody wrote for him, or at least edited), numerous readers had written to me, asking me to ignore it and not join him in the gutter. Here, I have no intentions of joining him in that lowest abyss of social decay and decorum. It is an old antic of incorrigible entities to change the topic when they are unable to comprehend the depth of the dialogue.

In this piece, therefore, I will strive to bring Odeyemi back to the issues. I can play the personal attack card too, but this is neither the place, nor is it the time for it. And quite frankly, there is no personality in Odeyemi for me to attack. Nigeria, and indeed Oyo State in particular, need people who are not beholden to godfathers and special interest groups to tell things as they are. I have long decided that I will be one of those truth-to-authority guys. Besides, I have too much respect, as a part-time “pen-pusher,” for the publishers of this website, who do not know many of us personally, yet provide this forum without charge. Also, I do not want to subject serious readers to inane and trite reading.

I admit that when I wrote the article in question, I intentionally did not place many of my assertions in easily discernible contexts, either because I assumed that many people already knew, or because there was no need for lurid facts to back up some of my points. The main point, which ONLY Odeyemi (out of the more than 300 readers that responded to it) failed to understand, being the fact that he did not care about the people of Oyo State either because he is not from there (he is from Ilesha in Osun State), or he has sold his soul to the highest bidder in the corruption-infested Oyo State politics, or both.

I now see that there is need for further elucidation because Odeyemi’s perceptive impairment has left him clearly in the lurch about what I talked about in the piece. Many in Nigeria and abroad, who know both of us, will now know who is playing to the gallery. Below are some issues to which Odeyemi should respond if he dares - this time though, straight to the issues, no infantile name-calling. 

Issue #1: Corruption.

As I sat across Odeyemi’s desk at the Governor’s Office when Alao-Akala first became governor, 3 men came in, carrying a brand new video-recorder. Two of the men represented the company that wanted to sell the recorder to the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS), while the third was the Chairman, Board of Directors of the BCOS. Obviously, the deal had been discussed prior to that day and the men came to show the equipment to Odeyemi. The men offered the equipment to the State for N700, 000 each. Odeyemi told the Chairman that government would purchase 2 recorders at N10m (ten million naira!) each, grossly inflating the contract. I flinched and recoiled from the computer that I was using. But none of these men noticed my reaction. They were all engrossed in the haggling. And while the two dealers were still there, Odeyemi negotiated his cut of the deal with the Chairman! When the three left, I asked my friend: Was that a joke? His response: “O o se maa wo ni ti e? Bi a ti n se e ni’bi ni’yen.” Meaning: “Why don’t you just keep watching? This is how we do things here.”

If Odeyemi wants to deny it or feign memory lapse, let me put it in a proper perspective: Alao-Akala was out of town that day and the BCOS claimed it did not have enough cameras to film his up-coming chieftaincy ceremony at Obasanjo’s Owu, in Ogun State. Essentially, the cameras were for that ceremony. Odeyemi told me that his regret was that he had to make deals with “riff-raffs” (his word) like that Chairman, who was one of Adedibu’s men “imposed” on Alao-Akala. He would rather do away with the middleman and deal with the camera dealers directly.

My other question to him that day was why it became the responsibility of the Special Adviser of Communications (or even the Chairman, Board of Directors) to negotiate and purchase equipment for the BCOS. Were there not Procurement/Purchasing and Finance units at the BCOS? He dismissed my question with a wave of the hand.

If Odeyemi denies that the incident ever happened, I am sure that somebody at the BCOS will remember.

Issue #2: Corruption and Supine Principles.

When I made reference to Odeyemi’s new job (as Special Adviser on Special Duties), running Ghana-Must-Go bag errands for Adedibu and Alao-Akala, I did not make the remark lightly. Odeyemi told me himself that on one occasion just before we met in Nigeria in 2007, he was angry at Alao-Akala for telling him to deliver a bag of N25m to Adedibu’s Molete residence. The money was kickback for a contract. Odeyemi was angry because, according to him, he “worked on making the contract go through too” and thought he deserved a cut. He said Alao-Akala told him that there was “more where that came from, take your time.”

If Odeyemi denies that the incident ever happened, Alao-Akala will remember holding that conversation with Odeyemi and will know that I will not be privy to such details unless I was told by somebody. The other possibility is if Odeyemi told the story to amplify his self-importance.

Issue #3: Corruption and Greed.

Before Odeyemi reported to Nigeria for his first appointment (as Adviser on Communications), he called me up in Germany and asked that I give him advice on how to be successful. He was worried that Alao-Akala received too much bad press because of the manner in which he became governor, betraying governor Ladoja. Part of the advice I gave Odeyemi was to make a round of all the major news outlets in Nigeria, especially in the Southwest, meet with the editors and senior reporters and present them a well-written 10- or 20-point “Development Plan” on which Alao-Akala would embark. Odeyemi complained that he did not have any contact with The Guardian and asked if I could introduce him to my friends there. I called my friends at The Guardian and asked them to please accommodate Odeyemi. Some of the people in the media, especially an editor at Thisday, were not even willing to shake his hand. But I persuaded the people at The Guardian, and they told me it was okay to give Odeyemi their number. I also specifically told Odeyemi that the senior people at The Guardian were not the sort that you bribed. I knew them personally and used to work with them in that newsroom.

What did my friend do when he went to The Guardian? He brought a bag-full of money that he placed on the table, telling the gentlemen there to share as they deemed fit! Of course, they rejected the offer. When Odeyemi left, one of them called me (actually he used to be my boss there) and roared: “Biodun, what kind of man did you send here? That boy was so arrogant, pompous and garrulous. Can you believe he brought money here?” Now you know where I got the “arrogant” and “garrulous” from in my previous article on Odeyemi. It was not my original idea.

A newspaper senior reporter once told me that he met Alao-Akala at a private function and the governor accused him of not using his paper to do positive stories despite sending N1m to him through Diran Odeyemi. The reporter told me that he asked the governor to “go back and retrieve his money from whomever he sent” because he never got any money.

Odeyemi also told me that the Alao-Akala administration paid the Ibadan-based Nigerian Tribune editors N3m monthly to guarantee positive stories. Odeyemi was angry at the media outfit for raising their “price” on Alao-Akala. Ladoja, he said, used to give them just N500, 000.

Issue #4: Threat to the Lives of Dissenters.

Finally, some readers and followers of Oyo State politics will remember the time that Baba Adedibu went to the Nigeria Televison Authority (NTA)’s office in Ibadan to roughen up a female producer because the station had the guts to report the elections tribunal’s reversal of Ladoja’s “impeachment.” Well, my good friend, Odeyemi, was in that rampaging entourage. He told me himself that he dragged the woman downstairs (by her armpit) to face Baba Adedibu who slapped and poured venom and invectives on her. I told my friend that he should be ashamed of that, asking him how he would feel if someone did that to his wife. He told me he had no way of knowing how Adedibu would treat the woman.

If you recall the celebrated whipping that Odeyemi received from aides to Azeem Gbolarumi, former deputy-governor to governor Alao-Akala, Odeyemi told me that he decided to initiate the bad blood between Alao-Akala and Gbolarumi on the instructions of Alao-Akala. “The governor and I decided that I should be the one attacking Gbolarumi so that the attacks would not be traced to him,” Odeyemi told me. And why was there a need to attack Gbolarumi, I asked Odeyemi. “Oh, the governor thinks Gbolarumi plans on challenging him during the gubernatorial primaries, and we need to damage him before then,” he told me. Because of the fear that Gbolarumi might run against Alao-Akala, they turned governance into anarchy.

For now, I will limit the expose of Odeyemi to just those issues. I imagine that if time permits on both ends, we will delve deeper into ALL issues. For now, it suffices for Odeyemi to know that I write (as can be attested to by checking all my previous writings, including my time at The Guardian) to illuminate issues, usually without regard to whose Ox is gored.

Sometime in 2007, Odeyemi sent to me a poorly-written “personality attack” article aimed at Rashid Ladoja. He asked me to edit it for him. I was then on official assignment to Germany. I immediately called him and asked if he was crazy. I reminded him of the (solicited) advice I had given him before he took the job: “Go there and be a bridge-builder”, I had told him.  “If you have the kind of access to Alao-Akala that you claim, use it to persuade him to mend fences with all aggrieved parties in the State. Do not get embroiled in their fights. Certainly, do not continue to egg them on,” I told him. I edited the piece, basically re-writing the character-assassination piece that my friend was going to publish from the desk of Special Adviser on Communications, using his name and title! How did such positions of esteem get rubbished like that?

Open-minded readers will discover, within minutes of searching the Internet, that I have criticized former governors of Oyo State - Lam Adesina and Rashid Ladoja, and, of course, Baba Adedibu, for the socio-political calamity that has befallen Oyo State and Ibadan in particular. All three men are of Ibadan origin. Adesina was of AD while Ladoja and Adedibu were PDP members. I have no political affiliation in Nigeria.

My criticism of Odeyemi did not stem from the fact that he is an Ijesha man. As I pointed out in my piece, his appointment is not a novel idea. People attain political heights in States other than their States of origin all the time. But Odeyemi has acted as “Omo a i j’obe ri to n ja’be s’aya” – a child that stains his shirt because he never tasted such a good soup. And he has no qualms about the pain that his actions have brought on those that live in abject penury in Oyo State.

Odeyemi once told me that he had enlisted the help of Adedibu’s thugs to “deal” with a deputy editor at Thisday newspapers, whenever the man, whose stories had criticized Alao-Akala’s government, returned to Ibadan, his home town. Odeyemi went to the premises of Thisday in Lagos and almost got into fisticuffs with the editor. This is the sort of childishness that gets journalists killed. I asked Odeyemi: What kind of politics are you playing in Oyo State? His response: “This is Nigeria.” A few weeks later, Godwin Agbroko, the Editorial Board chairman of Thisday, was killed in a hail of bullets in Lagos. No, I don’t think Odeyemi had a hand in his death. But it is the same kind of threat that Agbroko (a man with whom I worked at The Guardian) used to receive.

I wrote the piece on Odeyemi because he is profiting from people’s death, the maiming of limbs and the destruction of property. I have no dog in the fight in Oyo State politics, except that I am an indigene and would like to have some peace and tranquility in my country. I never sought, nor received any favor from anyone in government, including Odeyemi. If I did, I challenge him to name it.

After I wrote the piece that has given Odeyemi restless days and sleepless nights, more than 180 readers responded to it (positively) within 48 hours of its publication. Some of those readers were classmates of ours at the UI who still remember us quite well. Virtually all of them agree with me that Odeyemi has turned himself into a politically and morally corrupt entity. Some of them wrote that they were not surprised at the way he turned out because they knew he was always a manipulator of people.

When I edited The Torch, a campus news outlet and magazine at the University of Ibadan (’83 –’86), Odeyemi applied to the organization to work as a reporter. I consulted with my room mate then, Kayode Akinsete, who also was the organization’s secretary, and my fellow editors – Segun Adegoroye, Jide Ogundana and Dayo Adenuga. The consensus was that we should be wary of Odeyemi and to not allow him to use us for selfish ends. When Odeyemi turned in his first story, it was essentially a praise song (much like those that Odeyemi now does for Alao-Akala) for Babatunde Oduyoye, then a candidate for the Students Union presidency. Odeyemi’s article was so blatantly sycophantic that no responsible news outlet could publish it. Of course, I did not publish it despite the fact that Odeyemi and Oduyoye were very good friends of mine. He wrote a second and a third one, all in the same manner, as if he was sponsored. I did not publish them.

Odeyemi asked me why, as a friend, I refused to publish his articles. I told him that, first, The Torch was not mine. We inherited it from students before us and we had a moral obligation to preserve its sanctity for students coming after us. The university, then, was a bastion of academic excellence. Plagiarism and sycophancy were antithetical to its tenets. Second, we had an editorial board that read everything and decided what was to be published, and his articles were too self-serving. And third, I did not want him to use The Torch to attack Oduyoye’s opponents. Remember now, Oduyoye was my friend too! But I had to delineate between my friendship with Oduyoye and my responsibilities as an editor of a news magazine, especially a campus magazine.

As Odeyemi pointed out, the bulletin board of The Torch was vandalized one night, ostensibly because as Watchdogs of the university community, we were too critical of Oduyoye’s Students Union during his tenure as president, which Odeyemi supported. We did not put it back up because it was going to be destroyed again. So, we limited ourselves to the monthly print magazine. True to my suspicion, I found out years later, after we all left the UI, that it was Odeyemi who led a small team to destroy the board. I remained friends with Odeyemi in spite of that knowledge because I considered that act of hooliganism an exhibition of youthful exuberance. I tell this story here to emphasize the fact that Odeyemi, as a political and social brigand, did not metamorphose overnight.

Finally, even though I am a virulent critic of Alao-Akala’s government, I think his current Adviser on Communications, Dotun Oyelade, is doing a wonderful job as a PR officer. First, he writes and speaks well. Second, he has a grasp of Oyo State politics and its historical antecedents. Third, and most important, he uses language that is non-inflammatory and respectful of the governor’s political opponents. In short, he seems to understand that positions like that are not ends in themselves, but means to ends; and that positions, like life, are transient. He, obviously, preserved and now employs the moral and intellectual nourishment that he received in his formative years. He has restored some grace to the office that Odeyemi so grossly debased and brought to so much odium. He is mature.

Our generation was supposed to be the generation that took over from our venerable but aging parents who had lost their firm grip on the ship of our nation. And what have we done with the ship? The likes of Odeyemi have steered the ship further into unimaginable turbulence. We will not allow the ship to capsize.