Osun Pensioners and Politics of Protest ( I ), By Isaac Olusesi

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Take it or leave it!  A spade has no other name. It is what it is. Simply, a spade. The protest in Osun State, last Tuesday, an embodiment of virulence and malignity of temper, rabidity against patience, was mischief- mongering remotely directed at pulling down the Osun destiny on the lap of Governor Gboyega Oyatola.

The Osun government was riled by the pensioners’ protest, not for anything else but the first time ever in its 3years to be stung for an offence it did not commit. All of that for a moment, and next moment, the government appeared on the horizon: ‘’The government representatives met with the leadership of the pensioners under the contributory pension scheme, Thursday, 14 October, 2021 and had better understanding on upward review of monthly releases to cater for pensioners in the state in order to ameliorate the challenges of those senior citizens who the government holds in high esteem. Both parties agreed to reconvene, 29 November, 2021,’’ the protesters were told to the face that dulled the pain to the government.

Impatiently, the pensioners inputted into the adjourned meeting, motives, forged to desired form by the heat of extraneous political elements, and the pensioners resorted to Sturm und Drang, turmoil or restiveness in Osogbo, state capital, clearly 34days ahead of the suspended meeting date and scuttled any further inquiry, dialogue, discuss, rapport and empathy to create a wedge between the pensioners and government. 

But the protest, not anything antidote or thematic solution and polarly divergent from rationale, played to the gallery of extraneities, the blackmailers, hidden. The mischief makers gave the protesters the gumption to act impatiently the way they did, with the pensioners’ psyche grossly diisoriented in a command chart against government.

Oyetola did not invoke any big stick or order the arrest of the protesters to harass or crack on them to have had any of the effects of force hovered on or about them in the rather stiff- neck manner of a reactionary potentate in the state once upon not too long a time. Neither did he engender the engendered communication between the government and protesters in the breach rather than in observance. Nor engaged them the John F. Kennedy way: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.’’ The essence of the protest did not call for Kennedy’s speech, an invocation of patriotism and sacrifice from the people of the United States of America (USA). 

Oyeola rather held the helm in the moments of turbulence triggered by protesters as he reiterated his steadfast commitment to the welfare of the state’s senior citizens, adding, “the government would not relent on this,’’ just as his dignity, not pride; servility, not arrogance; fraternity, not aloofness; rightness, not wrongness; and honesty, not mendacity or deceit naturally reflected steadily. 

And consequently, unpadded appreciable quietude, calmness descended on the protesters who had fully gathered at the gate of the state government secretariat that hosts Bola Ige House Governor’s Office, and the placidity or stillness made strengthened when he told the protesting primary school pensioners under  the contributory pension scheme that “The government recently released a sum of Three Hundred Million Naira (N300,000:00) for the payment of outstanding arrears of Primary School Pensioners under the old scheme.’’ And grippingly silence, like a gentle mist further fell on the protesters.  

Indeed, Oyetola is a leader, an arch- leader to be adorned with more garlands. A crown on his head! While “anyone holding the helm when the sea is calm is a follower,” one of the moral sayings credited to Publilius Syrus, a Syrian from Antioch and Latin writer best known for his _sententiae_ .

Strangely to ignite hurly-burly or uproar and give government a bad name, the protesters deployed such stuff as blackmail that situates politics of the protest on a slippery slope with the bizarre and incongruous, the wild and weird, the possible and impossible, the expected and unexpected, the imaginable and unimaginable, the disastrous and unpalatable, the backstabbing and pain shooting, the volatile and peaceful, the offensive and inoffensive, the appalling and innocuous, the predictable and unpredictable, the dynamic and static, the settled and unsettled, the arrogant and unassuming, and the nightmarish and paradise as bedfellows in the house of politics. 

And in politics, the fox can out-fox the fox, depending on what the stakes are when the chips are down like the indecency of a married woman, shouting obscenities after having had her laps opened V-shape upside down to diverse mean men for a value, less valuable. In the politics of protest, like its cousin, election, the higher the stake, the more gruesome the attempt to blackmail to outwit, outfox political friends or associates and foes or adversaries. 

The protesting pensioners, that Tuesday, lurked in the politics of blackmail and methodically delivered bland statements by the roads from the protest take off point in the heart of Osogbo en route where I’m resident, to Governor’s Office, dropping off caustic words, naked banalities, scratch insults to draw street attention to uncertain allegations and accusations, the gabbled gossips sewn together with rusted needle and shreds, intent to smirch the Governor with the mud of mischief. The pensioners shouted hoarse in scathing audible rhetoric as they conversed with some coarsely abrasive elements supposedly in the air. Invisible to the eye. 

Like the Shakespearian creation, the in- between the pre- protest and the protest proper was not foggy to defile accuracy of presentation. The protesters were inoculated, injected not with the anti- Covid vaccine available in the state PHCs, but the blackmailers’ raw ego, arrogance, clownishness, and the protest became the statute stamped with the portrait of mischief, the trademark of the opposition, an inordinate, unbridle struggle for suzerainty of the soul of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) for reasons. Still unknown.

Or what’s the protest about other than blackmail, in Osun where political values have taken firm root? How crass! Mumbo jumbo! Flimflam! Gambit! Stratagem! The protest on the tube only exemplified the pedestrianism of politics and effervescence of political values, to wit, loyalty, heroism et al. Like Andrew’s liver salt, foaming up to the brim and then evaporates almost without trace. 

But the Osun publics minded own businesses and other concerns. No one outside there obliged the protesters any ovation, stupendous or prodigious. No one did indeed. 

Rather, the protest only generated in the public ear, rolling thunder of murmurs in disbelief, high decibel of shattering murmurs also in incredulity or unbelief that instantly translated into catalyzed resonant sound of public silence, rumble ear blocking public silence, axiomatic, self- evident to the publics that the protest had carriages 

of huge float shams of damaged truth, debris of misinformation and pieces of exaggerated information seasoned with nuggets of drivel and babel of protesters' uncertain allegations. Not data mapped. The inanities of the ill regulated conscience of the blackmail made the protest short on persuasive vigour but long on vintage vitriol, the antediluvian, harsh and angry words.

Who takes the knock for the protest that merely acquired the attributes of acidity, acrimony and incomprehensibility to discredit the immaculate G-rated Oyetola with the muck or ooze of mischief, blackmail?  The protesting pensioners or blackmailers? Hold your breath! Do I hear you say protesters? Don't believe all of that baloney, stop the baloney, bunkum, hokey-pokey or claptrap. And follow me.

 *(Continues)* 

 *OLUSESI writes at the Foot of Most Merciful. Most Gracious. All-knowing* .