The Governor Magazine
Special Inaugural Edition
Special Inaugural Edition
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governor<br />
the<br />
SPECIAL INAUGURAL EDITION<br />
Mr. Dele Alake<br />
GODFATHERISM<br />
IN POLITICS<br />
I would categorise people who are ranting about<br />
godfatherism in Lagos politics as belonging to the<br />
class of the opposition saying one-man rule, they<br />
are just mentally vacuous or at best merely playing<br />
to the gallery to attract attention to themselves, for<br />
their own ulterior motive. Yes, I'm sure it's the<br />
governor of Kaduna state that brought this into<br />
focus recently from the lecture, whatever it is that<br />
he came to give in Lagos, and he made those<br />
statements about godfatherism.<br />
Let's define what exactly is godfatherism, even in<br />
religion isn't there a godfather? Even when you have<br />
a newborn baby or child, a lot of family members<br />
aggregate together giving names and some people<br />
say, “I'm his godmother or godfather” and stuff like<br />
that, even in religion, isn’t there a godfather? More<br />
so in politics, and everywhere in the world. My own<br />
basic understanding of godfatherism, in the esoteric<br />
format is somebody who helps somebody<br />
to achieve or to climb a ladder, either social,<br />
intellectual or business, whatever ladder, can<br />
be regarded as a godfather. If I'm in a position<br />
to help you succeed, progress or develop, then<br />
I can be labelled your godfather that is in the<br />
esoteric form, in the positive form. Now when<br />
you say godfatherism in a negative context,<br />
that is what we don't have here. Awolowo the<br />
sage, our revered sage, in this part of the<br />
country, he was a godfather, how? He bred<br />
many leaders, he gave birth not biologically,<br />
but he gave birth to many leaders, he created<br />
many platforms that enabled many other<br />
leaders to flourish, that's a godfather. So if you<br />
refer to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as a godfather,<br />
then I would put him in that mould of a<br />
godfather because he has also bred many<br />
leaders, he has created a system, a platform<br />
that has enabled scores, myriads of people and<br />
leaders to flourish. However, when you put it in<br />
the negative form of the El-rufai format, we<br />
don't have that here and I would like to ask Elrufai<br />
if he can honestly in good conscience say<br />
that he is not a beneficiary of godfathers, has<br />
he not had people who helped him climb the<br />
political ladder, who was El-rufai before Atiku<br />
brought him out, and took him to BPE at that<br />
time, which led to his being noticed by<br />
Obasanjo, was he Obasanjo's younger<br />
brother? Did Obasanjo pluck him from his<br />
cubicle to come and make him minister?<br />
Somebody gave him a platform to get noticed<br />
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