By Seyi Odewale
President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday explained how the first civilian governor of Osun State and the Interim National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande lost his re-election bid as the governor of Osun State, through a political ’massacre’ masterminded by the former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003.

He made this disclosure in Lagos during the presentation of Akande’s autobiography.

The president said Akande’s party, the Alliance for Democracy (AD), which dominated the six states of the South-West, were routed at the 2003 governorship election, with Lagos as an exception.

He described the method used by the then ruling party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) as diabolical double-crossing.

Buhari said, “It is common knowledge that Akande was the victim, along with other AD governors, of a diabolical double-cross, which ended his gubernatorial career. Only the steadfast Asiwaju Bola Tinubu escaped the electoral massacre masterminded by President Obasanjo.”

Akande, the president said, though very sad about the outcome of the election, but took it in his stride.

“Desperately disappointed though he was, and being a good Muslim, he accepted this setback as part of the trials of life. He looked to the future of service to the country,” Buhari said.

The President said his first meeting was in 2006 when preliminary consultations were coming to fruition for a grand coalition to unseat the PDP-led government.

However, those efforts, according to President Buhari, eventually came to nothing.

“My first personal contact with Chief Akande was if I recall correctly neither he, nor I, nor many of our friends and associates gave up as, in Chief Akande’s words: “the country was going down and down under PDP” (p.396 of My Participations), ” he said.

Buhari used the event to describe Akande as a ‘‘perfect public officer,” and the type of person he could go into the jungle with.

According to him, the former governor is “a man of “inflexible integrity” in and out of public office, never accepting or offering bribes.”

He further described Akande as a decent, truthful, and friendly person, and an administrator of the first order, whose leadership qualities made him the unanimous choice as the first Chairman of the APC.

The president also narrated how Akande had risen to prominence from his participation in the Constituent Assembly established by the military government of Olusegun Obasanjo.

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“He was always in the thick of things through the difficulties and political discontinuities of the 1980s and 90s. He emerged as Governor of Osun State in 1999 when the military handed over to the civilians.

“Chief Akande had a horrendous baptism as Governor of Osun State with discord from his party; his State Assembly (including an attempt to impeach him without any reason whatsoever); from the trade unions and his deputy Governor.

“On top of that, he inherited a deeply indebted treasury, huge arrears of salary, allowances, and pensions. Enough challenges to overwhelm many aspiring leaders. Bisi Akande stood four squares and faced all the challenges head-on and overcame most of them,” the President said.

He said Akande’s first action in combating corruption in his state as a governor was to stop the payment of “critical allowances” a euphemism for government money customarily shared by the big boys in Osun State. “This set the tone of his Administration,” he said.

Buhari said it was on record that within a year, Akande had paid off all the salary and other arrears, showing his mettle as a competent and serious administrator.

“By 2003 Chief Akande had virtually sanitised governance in Osun State having cleared some of the troublemakers from his government and, though reluctant to serve a second term, he was persuaded to run again,” he said.

Explaining the synergy between him and Akande, President Buhari said they fused in their attempts to dislodge PDP from power in 2011 and 2014 because they both have similar thinking that Nigeria can only be managed successfully by alliances between major groups.

The President recommended the book to students of Nigerian politics and the public alike.

“This book is a historical document. Students will find this an invaluable source of Nigeria’s politics, notably between 1999 and 2020,” he said.

Present at the event was the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, House of Representatives Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum, and Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, the APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and several other APC governors.

The traditional rulers were also represented by the Imperial Majesty, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi, the Oluwo of Iwoland, Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi, and others.