By Dotun Adekanmbi
One of my uncles ‘prophesied’ that I would be a journalist. But he was not sure I had a strong constitution to withstand harassment from the powers that be. In my mind, I said a man could not have been more wrong in his life. I had planned to study Law.
When time came to fill my JAMB form, I wrote ‘English’. I love to read and write. But lawyers also read now, I was told. Yes, I agreed but not for me all the ‘hereintobefore’ and ‘I put it to you’ according to a ‘decided case’ in Mungo Park’s court 1800. The Law had lost its allure. After school, I practised journalism. Then I went back to school. There I met Prof Yemi Osinbajo. Not in person but via a book, Nigerian Media Law, which he co-authored with Kedinga Fogam. The book is a treasure trove of incisive exposition of legal issues that ought to interest any student of Mass Communication. It cut through the clutter of legalese and presents a clear picture of what anyone, mass communicator or lawyer, could possibly come up against in professional practice. The book gave me an insight into the mind of the man who would later become Nigeria’s Vice President.
For a non-lawyer, my interest in Yemi Osinbajo was curious. From a class text, it moved to career-monitoring, particularly in the period in which he served as Lagos State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice under Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu. For me, two achievements clearly stood him out: the reform of the judiciary of Lagos State, which he championed and the landmark defeat of the Federal Government in court after former President Olusegun Obasanjo ‘sat’ on financial allocations to Lagos State over issues of local government administration. Both are intertwined, with a single individual – Yemi Osinbajo – being the connector.
The reform of the Lagos State judiciary became the template for similar exercises across Nigeria. Even if the deep legal thrust was somewhat over my head, I knew that the administration of justice became better both in terms of human resource and the conditions of service. The attendant improvements made the judiciary less intimidated by the muscle-flexing attitude of the executive arm of government. Winning the case of Lagos State VS the Federal Government also helped to encourage the culture of ‘testing the law’ in a federation and thinking outside the box in revenue mobilisation. Who could have thought that a State could generate so much internal revenue for development purposes after the false narrative by a former Governor that roads could not be built or maintained in the same Lagos State because there was no bitumen!
Osinbajo’s unexpected emergence as Nigeria’s Vice President gave me the confidence that God has no ‘closed for today’ sign in His factory. He will use whoever He wants to achieve whatever end He has purposed. But the strong point to note is that the one to be used must have fully prepared himself to be drafted and deployed for service. By all standards, Osinbajo came fully prepared for office: clear-headed, focused, demonstrably willing to serve and seen as serving. Of him, one can boldly declare that he embodies the popular saying: “to thine own self be true.”
From the side-lines, one could say without equivocation that he is an efficient technocrat in politics. Little wonder he is regarded across combustible and corrosive party lines as Nigeria’s most effective No. 2 citizen ever. He gets the work done. He is down to earth. His brainpower and people management skill more than compensate for what he lacks in a towering physique. He is by popular acclaim the Muhammadu Buhari administration’s ‘Star Boy,’ the poster boy of efficiency, commitment, honesty and loyalty.
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Where many are announced by raw physical presence only, Osinbajo only needs to speak to announce his presence: very articulate, never caught unprepared in situations needing empirical validation; always thinking on his feet and hard as granite under the harmless exterior. And when situations demand it, he is never short on quotable riposte: who will ever forget his anecdote of the looted empty shop and needless security over it during his sparring session with Mr. Peter Obi of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)?
Again, from a distance, Osinbajo does not strike one as an individual who has been changed by the power of his office. I continue to read across several social media platforms that he is still the same good old ‘Jebby’ that his friends called him in the formative years. In this same Nigeria where many friends, on assuming the position of an ‘ordinary’ Councillor, would frown at any semblance of ‘over-familiarity’ whenever anyone forgets to ‘stand on all existing protocol? He appears more comfortable with being called ‘Prof. Yemi Osinbajo’ than being tagged with the awe-inducing ‘His Excellency’ label that tends to create a distance between the leader and the led.
On Monday, 11 February, 2019, I finally met and shook hands with Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (PYO) at an event in Lagos. Before this time, Facebook always harassed me with notifications that someone posted ‘a picture of you’ each time Osinbajo’s picture was used to illustrate a post. Meaning that PYO and I looked alike. On impulse, when I met him I immediately sought to confirm the reported semblance between us both. Yes, we both are slight of frame. Yes, we both use glasses and yes, our sense of fashion is understated. But he has a full head of gray hairs whilst mine are still trying to ‘show face’. More than me, he knows how to tackle explosive issues, how to make people see reason and, if they refuse to see reason, how to nicely put them down nicely with good humour. More important for me, though, is that the meeting confirmed all I had seen of him from a distance.
For people who frown at his ‘politics’, especially with what he has achieved with ‘Trader Moni’, his whirlwind sweep across markets in Nigeria, his admonition from the pulpit in the course of his duty as a senior pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) will serve well: ‘E f’ara bale’ (relax, cool temper, chill, etc).
