Ademola Adeleke has transformed politics in a manner not even Mbadiwe, of the “men of timber and calibre” fame, could have imagined. Yes, Mbadiwe, the word crafter, the neologist, who turned First Republic politics into entertainment. His pun filled campaign language always drew mammoth crowds; even voters who hadn’t liked him and his party never missed his rallies because they broke the monotony and drudgery of everyday life. To Mbadiwe and fellow political road travellers, people should enjoy politicking, not make it a tool for maiming and killing. Then it was politic of service, not politic of self enrichment. Chinua Achebe captured those essences of politics at the time in his novel Man Of The People.
However, a long military interregnum that followed the first takeover in 1966 ended all that. By the time civil rule ‘returned’ in 1979, the damage had been done. The new crop of politicians that emerged from that Dark Age had learned and mastered that staccato, fire-spitting, violent diction of the soldiers before them. They saw politics as continuation of the war years. You want power, I want it too. It is going to be a fight to the finish. We take no prisoner. They weaponised politics. This violent, acrimonious, scorched earth political culture has persisted till now. However, Adeleke, the opposition governor of Osun State, would change all that – with just his shuffling, waltzing feet and flailing arms. Dancing. This is what his wife Ngozi has to say about her husband’s dancing: “My husband did not start dancing today. I got to meet with him when he schooled in the US. They called him Jackson because of his dancing skills. When we went to my village for my traditional marriage, my husband danced from morning till the next morning. He brought Shina Peters himself and another musician. It was like a carnival. I don’t think my village people have ever seen that type of wedding up till today. They still talk about it.”
Adeleke isn’t slightly built; he is stocky, fleshy and clean shaven. But in spite of his weight, he moves with the lightness of a cat. He is like the wind that blows this and that way without faltering. He is a floater. It is this agility that he brings to dance floors in churches, schools, offices, and homes. When he ran for governor in 2022, many people said he was a nonstarter. What could he do against seasoned opponents like Oyetola, who was the sitting governor then? A dancer for governor? Give us a break, some said. But he bested them all, cynics, the doubting Thomases and all. The same thing in the election held August 15. The floating dancer did it again. He not only beat his closest opponent from the ruling APC handsomely, but he also “bulldozed” a whole horde of APC governors and other party apparatchiks deployed to Osun from Abuja. A day before the election Adeleke had boasted, “I’m a bulldozer. I am not afraid of federal might and governors backing the APC candidate. If they like, they should bring all the governors.” It was no empty boast. When, Sunday, the result came in, the vote for Adeleke, who earlier had dumped his former party PDP, was more than a half the tally, over 500,000 of the over a million who voted; Oyebamiji, the APC candidate, backed to the hilt by the Presidency, came a distant second with slightly over 440,000 votes.
Adeleke won the vote because before then he had won the hearts of people, not through any stellar performance in office but out of it. He has humanised the face of politics in a way that restores human dignity, values life, giving it meaning. He has cleansed politics of their morass and now people who used to say politic was “a dirty game” are thinking and saying otherwise. I’m not saying we all have to be dancers to make our politics more temperate, more humanistic. No, dancing is Adeleke’s way of doing it. You may do yours another way, so long as it beautifies the thing and makes it loveable again.
