What I Like About Aregbesola; And...Well... Others Don't



OGBENI AREGBESOLA AT TINUBU'S
60TH BD CARNIVAL ON MARCH 29

 Oh, I like Rauf Aregbesola as a person; but I dislike his beard.

I love his spartan figure (here, body frame indicates discipline and frugality, a sadly diminishing element in Nigerian public servants); but abhor his sartorial jauntiness (in order words, little shame to his dress sense).

As in this picture, he takes his public perception and aspiration so seriously that he is unafraid to ruffle feathers with his earthy brown flag of "Omoluabi" odyssey; while those who can't stand him find it difficult to denigrate his concepts of "Omoluabi", they see only executive antagonism laced with secessionist hallucinations in all these blood-lusting exertions.

To many admirers, getting close to him exposes you to his intellectual fecundity and ebullient passion to be consciously relevant in changing his environment; but to "the others" he is an uncouth demagogue (and that word is pronounced with a certain slant of the head indicating barely containable disgust and derision).

Aregbe comes across as an articulate mass mobilizer with a strong drive to win the trust and hearts of his people, galvanizing them to levels they hitherto had resigned themselves were unattainable; not so, his other "friends" would say - the man is just a smart-alec whose seeming good-intentions are carefully constructed schemes to siphon Osun's meagre funds to the Overlord in Lagos.

In close contact, Aregbe leaves an impression of a man in a hurry to challenge rooted paradigms; a cerebral conversationalist who parades his arguments and thoughts in dialectal robustness and consummate urgency; yet to others he panders to an image of a verbal wrestler, a rustic enforcer who seems unable to recognize occasions when not to plunder your capital.

To those who are unafraid of dueling wits and logic with Aregbe, they encounter a brilliant thinker who is compelled by the propensity of his own intelligence to submit and find some sort of accommodation with contesting and prevailing arguments and positions; but his traducers see a hubris-driven, ego-suffused intellectual pretender-marxist who in calmer climes should be in no greater position than an organizing secretary to a farmer’s party.

Obviously, you know where I stand on this enigma, but where do you stand?


FLASH: More 'photo-comments' on Bola Ahmed Tinubu's multi-layered spectacle of  a birthday celebration between Wednesday and Friday last week.