Gov Ajimobi's demolition of Ayefele's house was petty and silly

There is a distraught picture of singer and entrepreneur, Yinka Ayefele, strapped to a wheelchair, his hand concealing most of his face, downcast, dejected and forlorn. All around him, his employees and supporters are close to tears.

The picture was taken just hours after Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi authorised the demolition of Ayefele’s Radio House on Challenge Toll Gate Road, Ibadan, in the early hours of Sunday, August 19, 2018.

“Oyo State government did it at last…my pain, my sweat. So help me God”, Ayefele shared in an emotional Instagram post afterwards.

I have listened to both sides of the argument since the demolition and I have to say that Ajimobi’s reason for bringing down the structure is weak and silly. It smacks of vindictiveness, executive rascality, vendetta and outright pettiness.

“The governor only brought down a small portion of the house…the main music house is still standing. The property was on the city’s right of way, under high tension wires. It was unsafe even for the occupants”, an aide of Ajimobi told me.

But where sensitization, cajoling and listening to the courts should have sufficed, the Oyo State government went for brute force. Yet forced eviction should have no place in a civilised society.

The aide quoted above stuttered when I asked why the house had been left standing since 2008, why the government granted Ayefele approval to erect the structure in the first instance and why the government kept collecting taxes on the billion naira property for 10 years.

The Oyo State government’s insistence that it had handed Ayefele a demolition notice since 2017 is also a weak excuse because the dispute between Ayefele and the Oyo State government was still in court whenthe bulldozers relocated to Challenge Road.

Ayefele’s Fresh FM has also been very critical of the Ajimobi government. On July 3, 2018, the Oyo State government wrote to Fresh FM, demanding a “retraction of a libelous broadcast” and an apology. Those who reside in Ibadan say Fresh FM pulls no punches when it comes to taking Ajimobi and his policies apart.

This demolition therefore smacks of going after a perceived enemy of government or an attempt to stifle free press in a democratic dispensation, just to score cheap political points.

A few years ago, after winning the election into his first term as governor, Governor Ajimobi paid a visit to Ayefele’s radio station and called the studio “one of the best I have seen in Oyo State without equivocation”.

At the time, Ajimobi also prayed for Ayefele’s media business to flourish, telling the world that he had refused to listen to folks who told him to demolish the house only because Ayefele was very critical of him during the electioneering campaigns.

Today, with his second term in office tapering to an end, the same Ajimobi has ordered that Ayefele's media business with hundreds of employees—the same business he extolled a couple of years ago—be reduced to rubble on his watch.

I still believe that all of these could have been handled by the courts, that the resort to bulldozing was an unnecessary show of force, that in an era when government should be supporting and encouraging the private sector, the relocation of Ayefele’s business instead of a demolition, was still achievable.

In the end, Ajimobi’s politics, governance and decision making have never been ones to be proud of. Bringing down a part of Ayefele’s thriving business is yet one more example of “constituted authority” completely heading south like it has always done.