How Has Abdulrazaq Wronged Kwarans (The Lies Of His Political Foes By Caleb Ono Bobi)

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How Has Abdulrazaq Wronged Kwarans (The Lies Of His Political Foes By Caleb Ono Bobi)

For two whole days, I had Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq’s campaign manifesto spread out on my dinning table for a studious scrutiny to ascertain how much he has failed or succeeded in executing his electoral promises to the letter. I did not also want a Hillary Clinton’s self adduced judgement of ‘just perfect’ to overrun my final deductions.

I, however, later found the requisite answer in the summarized assessment of the governor by three well respected royal fathers of Offa, Oba Mufutau Muhammad Oloyede Gbadamosi Okikiola, Esuwoye II, the Olomu of Omu-Aran, Oba Abdulraheem Adeoti and the Elese of Esie, Oba Yakubu Babalola Egunjobi II. The royal fathers had collectively described the Governor as “humble, unassuming, an achiever and a promise fulfiller”. The govenor who had visited their domains the past year had made promises of roads rehabilitation which works are currently at advanced stages in the various communities. The Obas had never had it so good since these past 16 years of oligachic misrule in Kwara State.

The Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Salihu Yakubu Danladi, would have found it difficult to spearhead a quick passage of AbdulRazaq’s 2019/2020 budget if the governor was a non-performer. He recently had fine words, testimonies of achievement, for the amiable governor during his unceleberated 60th birthday. “AbdulRazaq”, says Danladi, “exudes the virtue of simplicity, foresightedness and determination in the pursuit of a better Kwara that works for all”.

According to him, the governor symbolises the reality of a long- standing dream come true of Kwarans and Kwara State, having led the gunless revolution that took us off the grip of kleptomaniac political hegemony that held us in jugular for years.

Danladi said, AbdulRazaq has done really well in areas of road infrastructure, educational development and interventions, rehabilitations of various public and social facilities, healthcare interventions etc.

Definitely, the successes of Governor AbdulRazaq within eight months could be intimidating and draw the vulture’s envy of Bukola Saraki and his political godson, Abdulfatah who has long gone into hiding. So vexed is the former senate president, knowing that these astounding landmarks have broken the political bridgehead that would hinder his future entry into Kwara as a political captain. This is the foundation for all the lies currently being recruited into our social domain to mislead Kwarans that the APC administration of AbdulRazaq is not performing but only out for vendetta against his perceived enemies. They say, all the government is doing and spending money on is propaganda. And I tell them, for those of us privileged to read propaganda as a course in journalism, what makes propaganda work in a democracy is TRUTH. All three forms of propaganda – white, grey, black must be based on truth, provable truth not the Shonga type or that of the water reticulation project of Bukola and Abdulfatah. Lies, all lies of past rulers and our Governor does not believe in political cheapness of telling lies to the governed.

The arts of lying and deception are
perennials of politics, having been used against Kwarans for over 16 years in the history of the state.
Indeed, those rulers saw lies and deception as necessary and justifiable parts of politics. For example, elitists argue that people need to sometimes be deceived by an enlightened elite whilst, for realists, the circumstances of good national politics frequently demand deception by leaders. In
contrast, some democrats and journalism professionals argue that political
deception is corrosive to good, democratic
governance other than in exceptional
circumstances. Locating strategies of deception within an understanding of organized political communication (OPC) including propaganda extends our grasp and understanding of how lying and deception have become central to the exercise of
power, even within the past 16 years in Kwara State. Today, we know that the past rulers expended enormous resources towards shaping the ‘information
environment’ and OPC frequently employed
deception, whether by lying, omission,
distortion, or misdirection. My further research
made me understand the various forms of deceptive OPC such as propaganda
and their role in the exercise of their power, and whether
these strategies were justified or not, and the consequences for the health of democracy in Kwara.

I was still looking at AbdulRazaq’s manifesto and suddenly, I was jerked to realisation that Bukola and Abdulfatah were another Hillary Clinton who often admitted that
she sometimes took “public” positions that are at odds with her “private” position. In other words, she sometimes lies to the public about her true views.
Only the most naive observers in this state saw both rulers as governors with purposeful intentions to develop Kwara State. Both were not prepared for true governance but came to set up an industry of corruption for the manufacturing of lies and deception with a view to amassing individualistic wealth to the detriment of other less privileged Kwarans.

For instance, Bukola Saraki lied so much to facilitate the Shonga Farms Deal. This was a deception that caused Kwara State the loss of billions of naira both in local and hard currency.

In politics, hypocrisy and doublespeak
are tools. They can be used nefariously, illegally or for personal gain.
Often, the only way to get something
done is to have separate private and public truths.

But Bukola and Abdulfatah do not consider two other major reasons why politicians lie, both of which often involve the manipulation of public ignorance. This was the state at which AbdulRazaq met Kwara as governor. Gentlemen, your past lies and deception of Kwarans could take you both to hell.

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