HARDBALL
SINCE November 16, it’s been an endless din from Dino Melaye’s Ajekun Iya political studios, hitherto home to monstrous box office audio and videos: crisp danceable and pulsating singles, extremely alluring and mellifluous elpees, and even boisterous, all-action Tarzan-istic movies, of superhuman adventures among the trees, with gamely game!
With this latterly stream of lamentation, is Ajekun Iya (glutton for thrashing) that Dino often promised his political traducers, now wary of Ajeku Iya (left-over thrashing), after Dino’s senatorial mauling, though inconclusive, of November 16?
Ajekun Iya! Ajeku Iya! Beautiful ones, wouldn’t you say, in Yoruba lexical rascality? But no funny lexis! Dino is in no joking mood, after turning the drubbed of November 16, instead of the drubber he had promised, and bragged to his millions of Kogi West doting senatorial supporters. And the thrashing isn’t even concluded — Ajeku Iya!
So, if the once boisterous Dino just turned the ultra-gentle but never genteel lamb, now pushing his case to the celestial, you know there is a limit to how much thrashing anyone can take — Ajekun Iya! Dino the Mighty just handed some of his political foes to God Almighty! Stranger than fiction?
As the kingdom of God suffereth violence, so was the Kogi November 16 election (and on the sideline, Dino’s senatorial re-run against rival Smart Adeyemi)! Dino probably feels hard done by, in an electoral equivalent of war, and its kill-or-be-killed credo, more so when Dino was benchmarking himself, not against Adeyemi, his senatorial opponent, but against Governor Yahya Bello; over whom, he bragged, he had every advantage: height, money, looks, education and even sexual prowess!
Had Dino therefore triumphed (instead of ending up the vanquished one), he would surely have been bragging, in high decibel, about his stupendous conquest, as he now drivels, in endless stream, of post-defeat jeremiad. That really is the problem.
Dino, the garrulous, cuts the picture of the guy, in that English proverb, that always screams he is at the mercy of wolves. After much false alarm, which prompted neighbour rescue missions, no one showed up when eventually wolves invaded.
That is the political story of Dino Melaye. Even if he was this time hard done by, no reasonable mind would take his cry too seriously. So, win or lose, the political Dino leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
If he wins, it is endless infantile bragging that projects nothing but ribaldry from arrested childhood, that makes you shake your head in pity — and shame — for whoever his constituents are. How are they so blest!
And if he loses, it is endless drivel that demeans the profile and essence of the loser — the quintessential, bathetic Dino!
So, whether as imperious Ajekun Iya victor, or sorry Ajeku Iya captive, Dino is an unfazed poster boy of how not to play politics.
But hey, he might still triumph, and all the jeremiads of the past one week would, open sesame, morph into colourful boasts and bombasts!
November 30 — next Saturday — is the date. Book ringside seats, for it would be a classic!
The Nation
