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#GARLANDS FOR A #BROTHER:
#CHIEF #ROTIMI #MUKHAIL #MAKINDE.
Waking up to see the banner of your birthday brightened my day but pained that I am afar off.
i would have loved to be in Ife with you today because your life and my relationship with you has been so gratifying and you have personally earned the reverence that i accord you.
My relationship with you is one of my earthly treasures.
Adversity could be beautiful. Our relationship was formed in adversity.
I recall today how our trajectory in politics seem to have been like the life of siamese twins.
We both made up our minds from to run for elective positions the house of Representatives I guess in 2006-2007 having been studious followers of commanders in our states of Osun and Ekiti, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and Dr. John Kayode Fayemi both aspiring to be governors respectively then, of course we were all under the Irrepressible General Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the stormy petrel and political impresario.
In those days to be on the side of opposition and satisfied with it will require more than guts but unbending faith of a man aspiring to martyrdom.
These were the days when politics of winning in the south west was declared as "do or die" and we cross matched it fittingly with the epithet "rig and roast" in Ekiti. Our commitment was Episcopal. We were not baited, neither were we driven by pecuniary gains rather we wanted to sustain our politics of sacredness as identified by our satisfaction with being a regional party.
We were not sold on the allures and trappings of politics of the federal, which we saw as gloating in corruption, not only materially but in our values as south west. It was the politics of us and them! And we owed no apologies.
Oh! how I remember the campaigns of those days and how we saw some people back then, and fast forward to day it gives me the thrills and creeps.
Anyway that was where and how our relationship was born, we both were driven by service and love for our people , you had to quit your lucrative job as an accountant in NNPC and with good posting to boot and opted to venture into the murky, brackish, shark infested waters of politics against all entreaties.
In those days you could not go far if you couldn't endure sufferings, if you could not persevere, sacrifice yourself and means for common good and above all you MUST be loyalty on legs, all of these we both demonstrated and sustained in the face of adversity.
I recall painfully too that even as we both lost the ticket in 2007 due to shenanigans, we remained and pushed boundaries within our party , and this was where you had to pay the price of losing three brothers in one day! While you barely escaped by the mercies of God, having been saved by a pastor who shielded you in a makeshift church when your assailants pursued you into a "night vigil" session .
To attest to your character as a good and reflective man, you as a practising Muslim had to rebuild that make shift church into a modern one as an eternal appreciation to God and providence and a standing reminder obviously of the path politics of service and loyalty had taken you.
When we made it to the house of Representatives in 2011 having slugged ut out with others regardless of our contributions, you proved your mettle and gave expression to the zeal to serve, you moved great motions and your contributions on the floor were notable, I remember you and your black Aran cap and then Speaker Tambuwal who was your friend from your higher institution days will say , let Makinde give us wisdom from the #source referring to Ile -Ife that your represented, the cradle of the yorubas.
Only a few will know that that we know about subsidy at all today in Nigeria was due to your knowledge coming from that space and little credit has been given to you for leading a beleaguered nation in the direction of good state of health, for this you are still paying the price for standing as a patriot against comradeship that the nation had bled for years for.
Rotte as I affectionately call you, you are brother through and through, I remember everytime I get to your lovely home , you will not let me sleep in one of your well furnished guest chalets you will vacate your bed for me! Inspite of my protestations, you will insist.
You are one who will never abandon a friend to himself under any circumstances no matter how inconvenient to you, I remember with teary eyes how you stood by me in my last bid for the Governor of my dear state, and after that bid failed , you stood by me for a return bid for the house of Representatives and even travelled to Ekiti early in the morning to intervene , only a brother will do all these and more.
When the bid was getting cloudy , you enlisted several interventions that I remain shocked that you could , inspire of the fact that you too was fighting your own battle to return to the same house, both of us having failed to return in 2015!
Rotte is one man who will be fighting his own battle and be concerned about a friends challenges, while campaigning seriously for the Present Governor in Osun, and stretched financially, and realising that my primary was close, you still sent me money to make calls to my constituents in the run up to my primary election, yet you were in dire straits too. What a heart !!!
Well as fate would have it, it turned out that I did not get the ticket that will enable me to contest in 2019 because I am not preferred, I was already dealing with mine and the same fate now befell you after all you did and how most suitable you would have been for the Constituency, indeed after you had secured requisite assurance and above all having earned it, I have remained inconsolable till date.
As a brother I looked forward to us together back in the house a d you did too, but life and its uncanny manifestations deprived us, I even was comfortable to say if Rotte made I, I have! But .....
Well in retrospect Rotte this was the fate that befell us in 2007 after all sacrifices , same fate has befallen us today, the joy and beauty of adversity is that it binds more than prosperity sometimes.
That fate gave birth to us as friends , and today the same fate has delivered unto us brotherhood.
Rotte is a passionate man in many ways, I recall the treatment Senator David Mark got in the house in our hands while advancing the cause of the party we gave our all to, that afternoon when he overreached himself by coming into our chamber, I recall our getting smoked and all that, these are actions of a passionate man, History will forever be kind to you my brother no matter what.
Today as you mark your birthday, I am indeed proud and privileged to called you a brother indeed, and I want to use this opportunity to thank you for all you have been to me, for the secrets we both have found confidence in ourselves to share a d for the trust we both have reposed in ourselves to keep.
Rotte I join your teeming admirers and Madam aand your lovely kids to wish you, my dearest brother , the only "#Rotte of the #source " a very happy birthday.
God sure doesn't make friends in this mould anymore, He makes them as brothers, a d that's who you are to me now and till I breath my last breath, come rain come shine, within your gaze or not, within precincts out of reach, you dwell indelibly in my heart.
Today may be cloudy, but we will rise above our present situations. God did before , God will do again.
True brotherhood cannot be dimmed by adversity, rather it binds.
Happy birthday my beloved loving brother.#Rotte.
#congressman #bimbo #Daramola
3rd January 2019.
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