BABAFEMI OJUDU
Today, I wish to write about karma.
Not its deep philosophical or spiritual meaning. I leave that to theologians, mystics, and philosophers who devote their lives to probing the mysteries of existence and divine order.
I simply want to tell two stories.
Stories that help the ordinary person understand that life has a way of returning to us the consequences of our actions — whether for good or ill.
Stories that remind those who wield power today that authority is temporary, but the memory of how power was used often outlives the powerful themselves.
Power passes. Consequences remain.
This piece is not written to ridicule anyone. Certainly not. Age and experience have taken me beyond that stage of life. I have arrived at that season when one begins to use personal experiences not to settle scores, but to teach — in the hope that others may learn from the mistakes we made and from the mistakes made against us.
Some years ago, a number of my colleagues and I in Ekiti State became openly critical of my brother, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, who was then governor.
The response was swift and unforgiving.
The machinery of government and party power was allegedly deployed to force us out of the party. Pressure was mounted on ward executives to gather signatures for our expulsion. I, Senator Tony Adeniyi, Hon. Oyetunde Ojo, Hon. Bimbo Daramola, and many of our supporters became targets.
The chairman of my ward, Mr. Clement Afolabi, was hounded, threatened, arrested, and detained because he refused to be bribed into organizing my expulsion.
Politics in our environment has often carried the temperament of warfare.
In response, we moved to suspend the governor himself and publicized the action widely. Matters escalated dangerously until the national leadership of the party intervened and appealed to both sides to sheath their swords.
Even after that intervention, the police were recruited to pursue us on claims of criminal libel. Our lawyers resisted successfully, but the harassment continued.
We were humiliated, isolated, and made to appear politically irrelevant — despite the fact that many of us had played significant roles in Fayemi’s political emergence.
But life has an uncanny way of turning the wheel.
I have often struggled to convince myself that Dr. Fayemi had absolutely no hand in the later suspension of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole in his ward and his eventual removal as National Chairman of the APC. The methods looked hauntingly familiar.
Even before attempts were made to expel me from the party, another symbolic drama had unfolded.
The local government arm of the party, led by one Mr. Akinleye, was allegedly instructed to pour five bags of rice at my gate — a theatrical gesture intended to “return” the truckloads of rice I had donated to party members during the COVID period.
I was told the governor was displeased that party members accepted relief materials from me.
Such was the bitterness of politics.
Ironically, that same Akinleye and many of his ilk today has switched camp and reportedly serves an anti Fayemi purpose . They are now involved in hounding many who once stood firmly with Fayemi. The way of politics passeth all understanding.
That too is the nature of power.
Those who persecute others often forget that political seasons change. Today’s enforcer may become tomorrow’s victim. The hunter, sooner or later, hears footsteps behind him.
It was therefore with some surprise that I recently listened to Dr. Fayemi lamenting the current state of our party and complaining about intolerance, exclusion, and the abuse of internal power structures.
Many of his observations were not entirely untrue. Yet one could not ignore the irony.
Much of what he now condemns are practices many believe flourished under his watch as governor and later as Chairman of the Governors’ Forum.
Mr. Ibrahim Magu, the embattled former EFCC Chairman, certainly may have his own stories to tell. Even the present President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may have tales too to tell of the cohorts of governors and aides under President Buhari.
Many who laboured for Fayemi’s emergence found themselves pushed into political exile, isolated from party structures, and treated as enemies.
Life sometimes forces us to drink from wells we once dug for others.
That is one of the enduring lessons of politics — and perhaps of life itself.
To be clear, I have since forgiven Dr. Fayemi. We occasionally speak and exchange warm conversations. I must even thank him for his presence at my son’s wedding.
Age and experience teach one the futility of carrying permanent bitterness.
But forgiveness is not amnesia.
Memory remains one of the scars history leaves behind.
Now let me tell the second story.
After the 2007 presidential election, INEC declared Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua winner, while General Muhammadu Buhari was declared to have lost.
Incidentally, Buhari and the late Yar’Adua were not enemies. Buhari and Yar’Adua’s elder brother, General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, had been friends, military colleagues, and men who understood one another beyond politics.
Buhari challenged the election results from the Tribunal to the Court of Appeal and eventually to the Supreme Court.
Three days before the Supreme Court was to deliver judgment, President Yar’Adua reportedly summoned PDP governors and a few influential political figures.
What he reportedly told them was remarkable.
Intelligence available to him, he said, suggested that the judges were preparing to rule against him. He told the gathering he was willing to accept the judgment. Buhari, he reportedly said, was his brother. If Buhari became President, it would neither diminish him personally nor spiritually. In fact Yar’Adua, God bless him, openly came out to say that the election that brought him to power was flawed.
But the governors reportedly resisted fiercely.
“No, it cannot happen,” they insisted.
What followed belongs to that dark archive of Nigerian political history that many know about, but few openly discuss.
The judgment, many believe, was influenced.
Yar’Adua remained President.
One of the principal political actors widely accused at the time of helping shape that outcome and who has on occasions bragged about it is today loudly lamenting that he himself was rigged out during a party primary.
How fascinating life can be.
The very instrument once used against others eventually returned to its wielder.
Karma.
Cosmic balance.
The harvest of human actions.
The two judges said to have resisted pressure were later appointed ambassadors by President Buhari — one to London and the other to Washington — not minding their age, perhaps in recognition of their courage and steadfastness.
There is a lesson in all this.
A man who participates in the subversion of justice loses moral authority when he later becomes a victim of injustice himself.
One cannot applaud the destruction of institutions when it serves his immediate interests and suddenly become a defender of due process when the same destruction turns against him.
This is how nations decay.
When men destroy principles for temporary victories, they fail to realize that someday they too may need those same principles for protection.
That is the tragedy of power without restraint.
In the end, karma is not always mystical.
Sometimes it is simply history taking notes.
Sometimes it is life quietly completing a circle.
Sometimes it is the cosmic reminder that no condition is permanent, no throne eternal, and no abuse of power ever truly disappears.
The universe has a long memory.
