“The 2023 elections may not be over in Abuja and in other states but the governorship election is over in Oyo State and that is where I hang my consolation and escape from Nigeria’s current madness. There was an election to elect the governor of Oyo State on Saturday, March 18. INEC announced a winner and everyone who fought the victor immediately dropped the sword and embraced the victorious. I found that to be very strange in rancorous Nigeria. If you know any other state in Nigeria where that has happened, please tell me. There is even no imitator. But why?”

“The ides of March are come,” Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar says in utter derision and dismissal of a life-and-death warning. And the soothsayer replies “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.” And truly, they were not gone. The 2023 elections should be over by now but they are not. There are people everywhere mocking poets and prophets. Clouds of uncertainty are hanging. Even our president has had to issue a statement denying saying in secret that he won’t hand over to his victorious Khalifa. There are threats of protests and counter-threats of arrest over the process and the outcome of the presidential election held over a month ago. Labour Party’s vice presidential candidate vowed on national TV that the president-elect won’t be sworn in; the election winner replied with a vow to arrest and lock up Labour and its symbols even before he is sworn in. There was a dream: What does it mean to have flood in dry land? You sleep and see two hundred elephants clinking tusks; you also see two hundred buffalos pooling together four hundred horns. If the inner eye is still seeing, you will know that the world is shifting and drifting – or about to. Confusion and chaos are ingredients of war and they appear afoot. Since that is the case, what I look for now are streaks of hope, to keep my sanity.

My ancestors in Old Oyo said with pride – and even arrogance – that they were different from other species in the specificity of their character and characteristics. “You can only hear of Oyo imitators; Oyo does not imitate anybody.” Their neighbours never liked hearing that from them but they never stopped acting it and shouting it from their rooftops. The 2023 elections may not be over in Abuja and in other states but the governorship election is over in Oyo State and that is where I hang my consolation and escape from Nigeria’s current madness. There was an election to elect the governor of Oyo State on Saturday, March 18. INEC announced a winner and everyone who fought the victor immediately dropped the sword and embraced the victorious. I found that to be very strange in rancorous Nigeria. If you know any other state in Nigeria where that has happened, please tell me. There is even no imitator. But why?

I read a cartoon in a national newspaper when I was in secondary school. The newspaper I cannot remember, but the cartoon and its caption I cannot ever forget: A former president, Nnamdi Azikiwe, is shown counseling a victorious young politician on power and its ephemerality. “My son,” the ex-leader says with sadness, “I have been to the mountaintop; it is quite slippery there.” What makes the mountaintop that slippery? Because I work and live in Ibadan, three days to the March 18 governorship election in Oyo State, a senior newspaper editor in Lagos sent me a text: “What are the chances of the incumbent?” I replied that “the man respects the people and has done well all round, so, he will win with more than 60 percent of the votes.” He kept quiet and left me with my “unrealistic projection.” After the results were announced on Sunday 19th, that editor sent me another text: “You said so. He won. Great. I was scared for him.” I replied with the smile emoji and added that the winner “did not leave the street for a day”; he knew the terrain and served it and so could not have slipped on Election Day.

Eleven incumbent governors contested elections to retain their seats for four more years; one of them lost and has been very quiet; another is still fighting to breathe; eight won with a lot of panting and limping back home from the battlefield; the man in Oyo has been congratulated by all his opponents. So, what made the re-election way smooth for one and bumpy for others? There was a 14th century Islamic scholar called Ibn Khaldun, author of the Muqaddimah. Some scholars say he was the greatest social scientist of the Middle Ages; others say he was “the father of historiography, sociology, economics, and demography studies.” Ibn Khaldun propounded a theory of leadership which states how leaders emerge through blood ties and group feelings. He calls that process Asabiyyah. But it is not enough for a leader to emerge; how about sustenance of that leadership? It is that sustenance that presidents and governors seek in the name of second term ambitions. But not all who seek to stand stand. Why is the mountaintop slippery? Ibn Khaldun had an answer. He came up with a list of what he called the personal qualities of a leader – the “perfecting details” that sustain leadership. What are those details? He said they include “generosity, forgiveness of error, patience and perseverance, hospitality towards guests, maintenance of the indigent, patience in unpleasant situations, execution of commitments, respect for the religious law, reverence for old men and teachers, fairness, meekness, consideration to the needs of followers, adherence to the obligations of religious laws, and avoidance of deception and fraud.” (See Ibn Khaldun of North Africa: An AD 1377 Theory of Leadership (2008) by Yusuf Sidani).