The Capital NG>>> Power changes everything. It makes a prince out of a pitiful pauper and yet reduces a covetous princess below the rank of a palace slave. It is the cursed craving for it that benumbs reason.
Yes, since he was appointed barely six months ago as Chief of Staff to the Ogun State governor, Tolu Odebiyi, has ticked all the boxes in the biting aphorism that no man is wise enough, or good enough to be trusted with unlimited power. He has morphed into a haughty hunk of sort, presenting a perfect portrait of the power-drunk and currency-activated politician who brooks no opposition to his views. And he is not totally to blame for this newfound lifestyle.
Across the state and in political circles, it is being whispered loudly that Odebiyi, a former member of the State Judicial Service Commission and Transition Committee on Housing cum real estate professional, is the governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun’s presumptive successor. He is from Yewa, the region that has been proclaimed to produce the next governor.
His father, late Jonathan Akinremi Olawole Odebiyi, was a former Commissioner for Education in the old Western Region and leader of its House of Assembly. The older Odebiyi was also an integral member of the Action Group founded by Chief Obafemi Awolowo; a Second Republic Senator and one of the earliest Yewa citizens to acquire a University degree.
Like a man who has tasted power and is strung-out on it, Odebiyi has now started acting the part of a governor-in-waiting. Last weekend, his bosom friend, Jide Onalaja, a former Virgin Atlantic top shot and chief executive officer of Bridgewater Academy, a skills acquisition and career development centre, buried his father, Justice Sunday Onalaja in Ibadan, Oyo State. It was a big do as eminent Nigerians turned up for the late respected justice.
However, to the shock of many, the protocol and advance team of the Ogun State governor’s convoy was on ground, making many believe that Amosun was coming. Unbeknownst to them, Amosun was, at the time, out of the country. Only for Odebiyi to saunter in when the event had really peaked, to the shock, anger and disappointment of the elders at the ceremony who could not fathom why he had to appropriate his principal’s official benefits for a social function where he was invited as a private citizen, not as a representative of Ogun State.
Like it is in Ogun State, shouts of in-coming governor rend the air and Odebiyi sashayed and strutted round the venue greeting people, many of who sniggered at him.
This is hardly to demonise Odebiyi or cast aspersions on his person, rather it is borne of an urgent need to alert the executives and leaders of the APC and his governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun to his new lifestyle, lest he brings the party to infamy and disrepute by his ceaseless indiscretions
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