By Deji Oriyomi
Splattered all over the history of humankind, right from the very beginning of creation to this day, we’ve heard unbelievable stories of missed opportunities and misplaced priorities. It is as if insensitivity to the available opportunities isn’t enough to contend with. Perhaps that is just the way it is meant to be so as to make the world go round, otherwise, what kind of world would we have had if opportunities are never lost so that someone else could get them and others spend a lifetime with the regret?
Insensitivity to opportunities, like I said, is an inevitable plague that humanity has always been bedeviled with from time immemorial. Even the Bible contains the bizarre story of how the Jews inadvertently rejected and condemned their own long awaited Messiah to death all because they were only human plagued with the scourge of insensitivity to opportunity and destituteness of insight. No doubt their expectation of a Messiah was an appearance of a mighty warrior with a large hammer, like some “Thor” in an action movie, who would lead them in war against the powerful Roman Empire and liberate them. Little did they know that it was this same Messiah that came disguised as the son of a poor carpenter.
A similar scenario in the Nigerian political space that can somewhat be likened to this biblical story of the coming messiah is the gross insensitivity to the possibility of Professor Yemi Osinbajo being the anticipated “CHANGE” Nigerians craved back in 2015, but that has now come disguised as human.
Nigerians seriously demanded change in 2015 so much so that like bees to the hive, they swarmed to the polling boots to vote a very powerful political party out and replace it with what they believed would ensure the immediate attainment of the change they craved. The prevalent mental picture of this expected change was undoubtedly that of an immediate and magical delivery of the expectations same as the Jews’ expectation of an immediate liberation from bondage by means of a Messianic Warrior.
While it will be fair enough to say we are only humans and so it is only normal to anticipate eagerly, it will be unfair not to pay attention to the need to consider other possible dimension (one that represents God’s own arrangement) to the actualization of such expectation. I am trying to use what I consider as a fitting illustration to emphasize the need to avoid the dubiety of misplaced expectations and embrace the surety of sensitivity to the availability of a different dimension to the attainment of expectations.
The problem Nigeria has been hitherto bedeviled by is that of a recurring emergence of a corrupt breed of politicians and rulers with a distorted political orientation. Professor Yemi Osinbajo is, however, a different species of politician in this current arena. He represents the catalyst of the expected change. Interestingly, there are different talking and reference points on why he could be seen as the embodiment of the change Nigerians deserve.
How Professor Yemi Osinbajo emerged as the running mate of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 was suggestive of the arrangement of an upcoming change slated for a stipulated time, and perhaps different from what and when Nigerians anticipated respectively. In October 2016, the National Leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu described the choice of Osinbajo as a product of religious balancing. According to him, “there was the issue of selecting a running mate and after a careful study and discussion, it was agreed that we should fill the religious balance ticket, given the sensitivity of the moment. Based on this conclusion, the name of a renowned professor, Yemi Osinbajo, a professor of law and Lagos State Attorney-General during my time as Governor was proposed and accepted as running mate.”
The fact that his name was proposed shows that his emergence was never a product of political ambition. Sometime in 2019, Pastor Tunde Bakare, the Serving Overseer of “Dominion Hall, Citadel Global Community Church” and a founding member of the All Progressive Congress (APC) gave some more flesh to this notion when he likened the emergence of Osinbajo to the kind of accelerated promotion that the likes of Joseph and David received in the Bible. The Bible “is replete with examples of persons who were nowhere but God elevated them,” he said.
He further drove his message home when he stated specifically how Professor Yemi Osinbajo emerged as Buhari’s running mate: “I am not sure Osinbajo was a party man. I am not sure he was there when the APC was being formed. I moved the motion for the merger of the CPC and the ACN at the Eagle Square. He was not anywhere around there that day. In fact, I can tell you that he went to the Supreme Court to argue a case on that day when they were looking for him,” he said.
No doubt Osinbajo’s unexpected choice must have come, even to him, as a huge surprise. But the fact remains that this is not unconnected with some special plan ordained by some forces beyond human. Besides, Osinbajo himself also has a long standing record of uprightness, steadfastness and integrity that made him ideally most suited for that lofty position. During his time as Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General in Lagos State, due to his unmatchable brilliance and devotedness, many reforms were undertaken including the establishment of the Office of the Public Defender, fiscal and legal restructuring among other notable things. His integrity is also apparently unparalleled.
Ever since he became the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo has fully brought all these great attributes of his to the fore while discharging his duties. Little wonder it is not uncommon to see a lot of encomium bestowed on him by different important personalities that are conversant with his dutiful engagements and activities, including none other than his boss, President Muhammadu Buhari.
Within the ambit of his office’s constitutional and delegated roles, there is barely any aspect needing reform that Vice President YemiOsinbajo has not made a case for. Among several other things, he has unequivocally called for judicial reform as well as a national debate to be organized by the Legislature to reduce the size of Government so as to reduce the very expensive spending and save up money for social policies and infrastructural development. He has also repeatedly emphasized the need to democratize the fight against corruption so as to effectively combat the menace of corruption, illicit financial flows and secret corporate ownership and others.
More recently, no one in this administration has been so central to the efforts to revive the economy than Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), whose Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP), designed by the Economic Sustainability Committee (ESC) which he heads, has been a kind of lifeline for saving the economy from collapse resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic battering. The ongoing implementation of his National Economic Plan has successfully served as a means of succor for many and the country as a whole.
Components of this plan such as the Survival Fund Scheme, Mass Agriculture Programme, Social Housing Scheme, Promotion of Local Production and Innovation, Installation of Solar Home System and several other schemes have turned out to be exactly what Nigerians need at this very crucial time. Also noteworthy is his effort in attracting some of world’s biggest technology giants such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Huawei and more to Nigeria to partner with the Federal Government for the benefit of Nigerians, especially young people.
It is safe to say that the anticipated change actually came disguised as an upright human situated, closest to the highest and topmost echelon of power. That was the change that my people, Nigerians, you and I inadvertently clamoured for and that we unknowingly got. The onus now rests on us to be sensitive enough to perceive what we have got here and to have a clearer insight into the way forward from here in terms of doing the needful when that defining moment of decision arises again.
Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) once said “opportunity usually comes disguised as a challenge, a drawback, even a tragedy; it hardly ever looks like the next great leap of mankind that it really is.” Similarly, change, like opportunity, has come disguised as human. The onus, I repeat, rests on Nigerians to decide, when the time is right, the fate of the nation by either actualizing the mandate of this change personified and represented, for the first ever time, at the very highest echelon of power, or allow it go down in the book of records as yet another one that got away.
