2020 BBNaija: Gov. Dapo Abiodun gets outright condemnation

For the ‘culture,’ he blessed the winner of the 2020 Big Brother Naija ‘reality TV’ show, Olamilekan Agbelesebioba, (aka Laycon) with N5 million and a three-bedroom bungalow.

Governor Abiodun, however, forgot to reward Miss Aishat Kareem, a Senior Secondary School Two (SSS 2) student at Aminat International College, Osara Road, Abeokuta, and her three teammates, for earning Ogun State the first position and grand prize, at the just-concluded National Junior Engineers Technicians and Scientists (JETS) competition, organised by the Federal Ministry of Education, in March 2020, in Lagos.

Although Kareem and her team scaled through the zonal and state levels to emerge overall winners in the country, they weren’t deemed worthy of three-bedroom flats and N5 million each by Governor Abiodun.

Their achievement wasn’t deemed worthy of celebration nor was it canonised as the best form of elevated culture. For emphasis, Kareem and her team led Ogun State to clinch the first position at the nationwide JETS competition, beating contestants from all over the country.

The teenager’s win bears no significance to the sage in Abiodun. The governor would rather celebrate Laycon and his win; so doing, he redefines Ogun as the ‘Gateway State’ where pagan illusion triumphs over the moral eye and mind.

In Abiodun’s peculiar Eden, one must thrive in debauchery and jostle in dystopic filth, like the BBNaija ‘reality show’ to matter.

Giving an update on his social media handle, Abiodun said: “We have appointed the winner of the Big Brother Naija Lockdown, @itslaycon Youth Ambassador of Ogun State in addition to house and cash gifts. I relayed this development today when I played host to Olamilekan Moshood Agbelesebioba, AKA Laycon in my Oke-Mosan office in Abeokuta.

Ogun indigenes and Nigerians in general, are displeased with Abiodun; in a manner akin to what the Yoruba would term, “spooning water from the clay trough into the Atlantic,” Abiodun gave Laycon gifts he could easily acquire by his grand prize of N85million courtesy BBNaija’s filth show.

The governor’s desperate spin on his ill-advised action was as disastrous as his intent. It was so painful to read his feeble excuse cum justification for his action. “The appointment and gifts,” he stated, “are a celebration of Laycon’s good character, intellect, and virtues which were proven to the whole world on live TV as better choices than vices.

“A proud son of Ogun State, Laycon displayed the essence of focus in the face of temptations and provocations. This is the true Ogun State spirit,” he said.

The frantic rationalisation of his gifts to Laycon elicits mourning and intense hair-splitting among the concerned citizenry of Ogun State.

Where did Ogun State get it wrong? How did a state notable for blessing Nigeria with a formidable league of literary greats, multiple-award-winning journalists, eminent lawyers, actuarians, soldiers, academics – all nation builders – plummet so fast in value and ethics?

Senator Ibikunle Amosun must be chuffed with righteous ridicule; the successor he warned Ogun State about has dipped the state several depths beneath the abyss of his tenure as governor.

In Amosun’s time, the citizenry only had to contend with Ogun’s deathly roads, porous borders, and insecurity. On Abiodun’s watch, they have to contend with more sinister versions of the aforementioned, and something scarier, the mind of its leadership.

Even though Abiodun celebrates heathen idolatry, it’s not for a lack of absence of national heroes and heroines in Ogun State. The state is known for its copious endowments of brilliant minds and role models across all spheres of human endeavour.

The governor simply chose to defy the tenor of lore and wisdom indigenous to Ogun State by ditching national idols like Aishat Kareem and her team, to deify Laycon and his ilk. By his action, Governor Abiodun establishes Ogun as a state that promotes degradation as entertainment and the squalid underside of celebrity culture.

“If that were me,” sighed thousands of Ogun youths, perhaps, as they watched Laycon savour photo ops with Governor Abiodun.

It was hardly surprising that the governor came under heavy criticisms for hosting Laycon at the government house in Oke Mosan, Abeokuta, on Tuesday, where he offered him the gift of N5million and a three-bedroom bungalow.

The shrill tenor of Abiodun’s Public Relations (PR) fiasco is resonant even in the coolness of his eyes, and casualness of his detached act; Abiodun treats decadence as art, something to be proud of.

In a nutshell, he projects Ogun, the Gateway State, as a portal to monolithic filth.

He congratulates Laycon for ‘representing’ Ogun State really well, in a show that celebrates pornography, debauchery, and folly as ritualised perceptions of reality and modern cinema.

“This is the true Ogun State spirit,” he enthused. We feel Abiodun’s own connoisseurship in his action and desperate rationalisation of it.

It was, however, ennobling to read the prompt condemnation of his action by concerned citizens of Ogun State and neighbouring domains. All hope is not lost, it would seem.

Governor Abiodun’s action was meant to be a PR stunt but it falls flat on the face and intent. It projects disturbing imagery of the workings of his mind and the nature of his cabinet. His government values muck over brilliance and canonises it as its filth attic.

In the curious workings of his mind, Abiodun wished that his gift to Laycon would draw applause from Ogun youths; it was meant to project him as a hip, noble governor. But an action meant for the gallery could resonate in a tenor contrary to the intent, he would learn.

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The governor’s house and cash gifts to Laycon manifest as vaunting totems of hostility and egotism. Hostility to Ogun’s unappreciated and under-served true heroes and heroines. The harsh clangour of his intent resonates as his government’s native lyric – it pitches insolently.

Abiodun glorifies filth, and his action dissembles like a peat bog in which humaneness is lost. The governor has ruined Ogun State’s repute, and no degree of PR spin could launder it clean.

Of course, his media team has sprung to action, doing “damage control.” They will issue statements and a flurry of reports to saturate the media sphere hoping to displace trending vitriol incurred by Governor Abiodun’s ill-advised PR stunt.

It’s too late for all that now. Let Abiodun man up and devote precious time to the task for which he was elected.

Life in Ogun townships is still in very grave decline. The neglected tracts constitute an ambiguous ‘sick rose’ accentuating the state’s deterioration into food for worms. Abiodun’s N5 million handout to Laycon plus the cost of the three-bedroom gift could repair the dangerous craters under the Sango bridge and the Toll Gate region for instance.

It could furnish unemployed graduates with soft SME loans. But Governor Abiodun would rather dole it out to N85 million-richer Laycon thus eliciting the dangerous rhetoric: At the last elections, did Ogun State elect a knight in shinning armour or did it suffer the affliction of a tarnished knight?

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