By
David Titiloye
In year 2017, I attended a public lecture organized by the student body of the faculty of education in the university of Ilorin. The lecture was in honour of an icon of education in Nigeria, Prof Babatunde Fafunwa and Comr. Abdullateef Ishowo was the guest speaker at the event. A gathering that had professors and doctors in the university of Ilorin on seat witnessed the entire audience standing and clapping in ovation for the man Abdullateef Ishowo whose words left many of the attendees in awe.
I could remember student leaders in the hall singing “You are a leader, you are a leader” intermittently as he spoke.
Never had I seen someone spoken so well before.
A lot of questions began to run through my mind, “Who is this man?”, “Whence thou cometh from?”, “How did he learn to speak so well?”.
2 years later, I became senate president of the university of Ilorin student union and while the senate council committee was planning a parliamentary summit, they approached me to ask if I had anyone in mind who could be our guest speaker for the event, I responded that “I know just the right man, his name is Abdullateef Ishowo”.
True to his words, he honoured our invitation to speak at the university auditorium. A summit that had professors, doctors, accomplished politicians at the university auditorium that day, had one man steal the show yet with his oratory prowess and that man is “Abdullateef Ishowo”.
My senators approached me after the event “Where did you find this man?”, “the way you described him was little compared to what we experienced”.
I infact made a friend that day who said she attended the summit after seeing that Abdullateef Ishowo was billed to speak that day, having heard him previously speak at a NUJ conference, she felt it pertinent to hear him speak again.
The man Abdullateef Ishowo has that effect. You hear him speak once and want to listen to him over and over again because his words pierces through your mind and leaves a lasting effect on you. I once said oratory for him is not just a skill but also a gift from God.
Yesterday, he was appointed as the spokesman of the president campaign council for PDP in Kwara state and a few people remarked that Kwara state has lot an analyst to partisan politics but I responded; Kwara state politics has been blessed with a good man and his only mistake for me is joining partisan politics a bit late.
This is because, if we don’t get it right again in 2023 and Kwara state by extension Nigeria remains this way, one day Abdullateef Ishowo would stop being an analyst and his children will ask what he did to help his generation, if he says he was the best analyst in town, they will ask how despite all his analysis, we kept making the wrong choices of leaders, will he then explain to them that he stayed neutral when he knew the right way we ought to go but didn’t have the courage to just state it?.
A wise man once said
“We must take sides; neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.”
Abdullateef Ishowo has taken a side, it is now left to us to follow the path of the sage.
One thing I can guarantee you is that with Abdullateef Ishowo as a mouthpiece of the presidential campaign in PDP, you won’t have a Fani Kayode-esque mudslinging style of campaign, his will be issue based. Both the opposition and supporters of the PDP will drink from his well of wisdom and be made to understand why voting the PDP is the most pragmatic choice towards our recovery process in Nigeria.
