Reflections On Babafemi Ojudu

Viewing Babafemi Ojudu’s latest media outing few days ago, my first reaction was to laugh deliriously at the tomfoolery of the proverbial “shigidi” (Yoruba idol) daring anyone to a bathing contest in the river. It is like the futility of a pinch of salt claiming superiority over a glass of water.

But, after further reflection, I think what Ojudu actually deserves is pity. He is battling the trauma of idleness and now desperately seeks relevance, even if that means telling self-deprecating lies in an attempt to inflate his political worth.

That is my summary of his performance in a current viral videos where he makes a lot of fictive assertions at the expense of the immediate-past President Muhammadu Buhari and his successor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

To start with, just consider this stark contraction: the Ekiti-born journalist-turned-politician declares that Buhari as president “did not have a vision”. Yet, this is the same man in whose government Ojudu had served as “Political Adviser” for eight years! Seriously? The question then is: why did he remain in the government of a leader who lacked vision?

Of course, the answer is blowing in the wind. Ojudu is only a political hustler looking for what to eat. Truly, what a rabbit will eat never allows it to reason or understand the meaning of dignity and integrity.

Another instance of Ojudu’s shameless contradiction: he claims that he and other Asiwaju’s “political disciples” in 2007 persuaded the ACN leader against taking an offer of “Finance Minister” from the PDP administration of President Umar Yar’Adua. Seriously? At this point, I couldn’t help laughing again in Ojudu’s native Ekiti dialect. The lie in this claim can easily be established from the fact that at that material time, Ojudu was the executive editor of The News/PM News. It was not until 2010 that he resigned to bid for the senatorial ticket of Ekiti Central.

In fact, but for Asiwaju Tinubu, there is no way Ojudu, a political lightweight, could have won the ticket against better known and far more accomplished journalist like Dr. Dele Alake.
So, isn’t it shameful that a supposed journalist/editor could now claim to be a “political disciple” to the National Leader of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) around 2007? It is characters like Ojudu that are giving journalism a bad name in Nigeria! Where is journalism ethics?

In the early 2000s, the earlier victim of Ojudu’s lies and blackmail was “Oshoko” himself, Ayodele Fayose. Using his media platform, Ojudu had hounded then Governor Niyi Adebayo to a political defeat in 2003. Once Fayose came in, Ojudu tried to hijack the new administration. So chummy was their relationship initially that Fayose once alleged that Ojudu handled the job of sewing the “Aso Ofi” (hand-sewn traditional attire) he wore on his inauguration on May 29, 2003. Fayose only started to resist when Ojudu’s interference, among others became too excessive. So bitter was their falling-out that “Oshoko” started calling him “Oju-dudu” (the black face). Predictably, Ojudu launched a relentless media witch-hunt against Fayose in retaliation until he was controversially impeached in 2006.

Now, taking about the scramble for Ekiti Central Senatorial ticket in 2011, not a few observers believed that Asiwaju “forsook” Alake, a long-standing and time-tested loyalist, for Ojudu, who soon showed his true colour when he failed to gain ACN’s nomination for second term in 2015.

Of course, by 2014, Asiwaju could not save Ojudu from his constituents in Ekiti who were tired of his arrogance, insolence and incompetence. Once Opeyemi Bamidele got the nomination, Ojudu suddenly became “radicalised” overnight against Asiwaju. It is a mark of better judgment and performance on the part of Bamidele that he is today in his third term in office and also the Majority Leader at the senate.

After all said and done, the true test of character is what someone does in the face of great temptation. Note that when Alake lost out in the Ekiti powerplay of 2011, he never switched camp to PDP nor launch a media war against Asiwaju. Not Ojudu who, after losing the Ekiti primaries in 2014, lobbied and lobbied and was rehabilitated with the position of “Political Adviser” under Buhari in 2015 and was posted to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s office. Thus began his vicious and relentless campaign of calumny against Tinubu.

In retrospect, it was perhaps a strategic move by Buhari that he did not keep a political snake like Ojudu close, but offloaded him to Osinbajo. Of course, everyone still remembers the despicable length Ojudu went in 2022 in a desperate effort to discredit Tinubu and assassinate his character in the build-up to the APC presidential primaries, calling him unprintable names, even though Asiwaju is yet the same man who had made him politically in 2011.

Perhaps, what Ojudu did mostly for eight years under Osinbajo was bearing false tales and idle gossips. And finding or creating enemies for Osinbajo. In fact, not a few believe he was one of those who kept egging on Osinbajo to the political disgrace he suffered at the APC primaries in June 2022. It is a measure of the quality of “political advice” Ojudu gave that his principal, a sitting vice president, was beaten silly by a cabinet minister at the APC primaries.

Ever a sham political strategist, Ojudu was so confident of Osinbajo’s landslide victory at the APC primaries that he boastfully told an interviewer in a viral video prior that he would retire to the farm if Tinubu ever won and became president. Shameless enough, he is yet to fulfil that pledge, almost two years after Tinubu’s inauguration. Had Ojudu truly retired to his much-touted cassava farm, perhaps public interest would be better served. At least, with a promise of better food security for Nigeria, instead of his current toxic career of lying and revisionism.

Of course, the story of all that transpired at the 2022 APC primaries is yet to be fully told. It is an open secret, for instance, that there was bitter and vicious infighting about U.S dollars received and not shared including a major contribution by a legendary casino operator from South-West. That will form the basis of a future article

Meanwhile, who will remind Ojudu of his 2022 pledge to retire to the farm if Tinubu became president?

~ Chief Omisakin Iluyomade, a political analyst, is based in Ibadan, Oyo State.