Obaseki lied, Godfatherism is never the problem but pride

“When you wanted to be enthroned for the first time, ‘godfstherism’ was a virtue and a blessing to the cause, but immediately you entered, ‘godfatherism’ became an abomination. And your party now suddenly became ‘our’ party in your rash actions, a party you did not know how some people came together to form and build it with their own resources.

You keep arrogantly ranting, ‘Our party! Our party!!’ That is what you keep shouting! But today, that ‘godfatherism’ has left you to go through the normal process of electoral enthronement in that party on your own, and you now know that you are not part of the owners of the party, but just a privileged member – a mere card carrying member for that matter. Little wonder one of the holy book says: ‘My people perish for lack of knowledge’ and also, ‘Pride goeth before a fall’.

The lesson in all of these:

1. Nobody rises to success or becomes anything good in democracy without the politics of his political party.

2. Nobody becomes a ruler in democracy without the endorsement and support of the major stakeholders and members of his party.

3. Nobody can rise in politics on his own capability. You will always need the right and the wrong people.

4. You don’t keep fighting leaders or everybody in your party all in the name of ‘godfstherism’.

5. There is ‘godfatherism’ in every democratic system anywhere in the world. So, if you want to fight it,

you will be left to run it on your own.

6. You can’t be fighting the sitting National Chairman of your political party and say you are fighting ‘godfstherism’. That is foolishness!.

7. If ‘godfatherism’ helped you to get it the first time, if you now keep fighting it in power, then you should be ready to face it all on your own the second term.

8. If he had thought you to fight ‘godfatherism’, he didn’t teach you to fight himself, not even as the sitting National Chairman of your party.

9. If you indeed hate ‘godfatherism’, then you yourself shouldn’t continue to behave like one and an emperor in governance in the party.

10. If ‘godfatherism’ is your problem, then go and create your own political party with your own resources, where you won’t be a ‘godfather’ yourself or allow anybody to excercise any undue influence of ownership in your party.

The people we unfairly label as ‘godfathers’ in the politics of Nigeria today are those Nigerians, who thought of creating those political parties, when you and I are not thinking of it; do not know how to create it or doing something else with our own resources.

If you don’t want anybody to ‘godfather’ you in any political party, then you have to go and create, build, grow and fund one with your own money.

The political parties we have in Nigeria right now have foundung ‘owners’ and these are the people, who used their personal money; mental endowments; socio-political connections; life risk; material resources and scarce time to create those parties.

They are the investors, who created them primarily for the advancements of their own political ambitions, interest and purposes. Obaseki like me in any of those political parties are just mere card carrying operational members. We can only claim to own the party, if our money is involved in the creation, funding, expansion and running of the parties.

Let Obaseki and co. go and use their millions to create a political party, then when it is time of critical decision taking or excercise of investment interests during party policking, allow mere members of the party to push their interests aside or hijack the operational structures of the party, all because they don’t want to be called ‘godfathers’.

IF GODFATHERISM IS THE PROBLEM, THEN DONT ASSOCIATE WITH IT THE FIRST TIME; DON’T GO TO IT THE SECOND TIME; DON’T COLLECT ANYTHING FROM IT AT ALL, OR ELSE, YOU WILL HAVE TO GO AND FORM YOUR OWN POLITICAL PARTY, SO THAT YOU COULD RUN IT GODFATHERLESSLY, IF YOU WANT TO CONTINUE TO CONDUCT MORE ELECTIONS ON THAT PLATFORM.

There is hardly any political party in the world, where you won’t meet with the influence and control of certain major stakeholders or party stalwarts. These are the critical major stakeholders in the founding of those parties and it is their rights to excercise such control influence during the time of selection processes and decision making.

The only party, where that influence could be minimal is the one that is truly owned by the mass movement of the people in a society with almost equal founding efforts and funding stakeholdership, not like the ones we have in Nigeria right now.

The ones we have now have few people, who came together to found and built them with their own resources and those are the people some of us ignorantly label as ‘godfathers’.

If Nigerians don’t want political parties with high influence of ‘godfathers’ as some Nigerians daily cry about it, then they must do well to willingly come together to form parties, where individual members could contribute money and material resources almost equally to found, run and grow them good political prominence.

But the ones we have now have founding owners and those are the people Mr. Obaseki has been disgracing up and down everyday in his party.

However, if Godwin Obaseki had been one of them in APC, who knows, he himself would have been a ‘godfather’ of a sort and probably, to get his second term ticket wouldn’t have been this embarrassing and difficult as he got it during the first term, when the ‘godfatherism’ tendencies he now hates helped him to easily facilitate it against all odds”.

Olukayode Salako