Gbenga Daniel: When law of karma beckons

“Karma brings justice not vengeance. It’s the universe’s way of restoring balance…..Karma is a potent reminder that justice is always in the works, even if it seems slow.” — Anonymous

He’s at the moment the senator representing Ogun East Senatorial District. But between 2003-2011, he ruled Ogun State as an absolute governor and left with a record of being rated as the most tyrannical henchman that ever governed that State. This is no less a person than Otunba Gbenga Daniel who for eight years ruled with downright intolerance disguised in erroneous ‘omoluabi’ garb. He left office with a legacy of unbridled political repression.

Daniel, known in political circles by the sobriquet OGD, is one former governor that instigated lawlessness over good governance under the guise of guaranteeing political obeisance to his person rather than to his then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), or the state he governed.

If not for the affliction of historical amnesia that tend to make our people forget too soon, the disturbing political cum repressive misdeeds of particularly past political office holders like Daniel should be a reason for them never to ever represent their constituents in any elective capacity. Unfortunately, someone like Daniel and many others like him sneaked back to the corridors of power thinking they’re robed in conjectural garments of invincibility and that without them, their society cannot move forward. What they abhorred while in power like due process and good deeds, they espouse outside power. What hypocrisy!!

Otherwise, how best can one rationalise Daniel’s recent public outcry regarding his purported ‘political harassment’ by incumbent Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun’s administration. If indeed Mr Abiodun is at this point in time presumably harassing him, Senator Daniel should rather plead for de-escalation of the issue rather than attempting to put up justification that cannot stand the test of equitable legal principle of: “He who comes to equity must come with clean hands.”

Soiled hands can’t be rescued by equity. Daniel wants equity at the moment but he didn’t do equity while in office. He should be reminded that during his time as governor, he persecuted real and perceived political opponents and promoted lawless afflictions against them during his better forgotten reign as governor.

How time flies for Daniel to have easily forgotten that whatever goes around comes around. That a day has come when the once dreaded ‘hunter-Daniel’ between 2003 and 2011 has now become the ‘harassed-Daniel’ in 2025. Just fourteen years after leaving office, it is sadly, but deservedly, just dawning on Daniel that the “mill of God grinds slowly but steadily and slowly grinds them all.”

This once-upon-a-time emperor of Oke-Mosan Governor’s Office, according to reports, was asked what he thought could ever be asked from him. And that is for any government in the state to have the ‘audacity’ to ask him to comply with the laws of the state. No wonder when the government of Governor Abiodun asked him to present approved documents of some of his prime properties including his ‘Asoludero Residence and Conference Hotel’ in Sagamu local government area of the state for ‘physical planning audit purposes,’ just like every other property owners in that neighborhood were duly asked to do, Daniel promptly went hysterical.

Without properly approved land documentation, any government may opt for demolition if it chooses not to ratify such buildings’ anomalies not in compliance with its laws upon request; in this instance, the Ogun State Urban and Regional Planning and Development Law No.61 of 2022 provisions in the affected areas.

To Daniel, the demand for his approved buildings’ documents have ‘political undertone.’ And shockingly too, the former governor now professes ‘due process and the rule of law’ that have no meaning to him as governor for eight years. The once-upon-a-time imperial governor of Ogun State is suddenly crying a miserable political foul in 2025.

Daniel wasted no time in showing his intolerance to political dissent, whether suspected or proven, upon being sworn-in as governor. Within months of his ascension to power, he went after his predecessor-in-office and respected elder statesman, Akinrogun Olusegun Osoba who in exercise of his freedom of movement and association after leaving office went to IIaro in Yewa area of the state on a senatorial fraternal visit. The next day, Daniel sent the police after him. When they came to arrest Akinrogun in his Bourdillon, Ikoyi residence, the ACP that led the team didn’t come with an arrest warrant, which yours sincerely who coincidentally was with Akinrogun that fateful early morning immediately pointed out that lacuna to the well behaved police officer. He left with his team only to return the next day, armed with an arrest warrant and a truck load of armed police men. But with the intervention of notable Nigerians, Akinrogun was released on bail, for committing no crime. It is also on record that Daniel didn’t pay the elder statesman his statutory monthly pension and ensured he hounded him out of the state throughout his infamously styled “OGD ziggy reign.”

The man popularly called OGD equally hounded unsuccessfully, the Owu-Abeokuta born Senator Ibikunle Amosun who stood up to him for eight years. Notwithstanding his evil machinations towards Amosun at that time, almighty God saved him from Daniel’s devilish plots. In 2011, God eventually used current president but then former Lagos Governor emeritus to enthrone Amosun as Daniel’s successor in office.

Daniel hates sharing the spotlight with anybody as governor. No wonder he fought with Rt. Hon. Dimeji Bankole, the amiable former Speaker of the House of Representatives while both were riding in an official coaster bus on the day of commissioning of the Sango-Ota Overhead Bridge that Bankole facilitated as a federal project at that time.

Late Dipo Dina, an Ijebu man like Daniel and a prominently promising governorship hopeful against his re-election at that time was arrested for exposing projects’ costs inflations and other abhorrent practices in Daniel’s government. For a bailable offence, Daniel, insiders alleged, gave orders that no magistrate should dare grant Dipo Dina’s bail request. But when his matter came before the magistrate court, a certain courageously principled female magistrate married to one of the foremost journalists in this country, after considering the merit of the case, granted Dina’s bail application and that marked the destruction of the magistrate’s promising career. Daniel’s alleged loyalists went after her and the brilliant female magistrate was hounded into a forced exile in England. Regrettably, the so called progressives did little or nothing to restore her career back to track after regaining power, till date.

Daniel’s style of leadership fits Plato’s three inherent ingredients of a tyrant including humiliation of subjects; creation of mistrust/disunity amongst them; and ensuring that they are incapable, through persecution, of any actions against him.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s apparent that Daniel effectively ensured that he stabilized his fistic reign through coercion and political repression, near absolute restriction of correct information, hideous tracking of political opposition, and deployment of wanton acts of violence through alleged loyal cult groups.

Daniel ensured that known and perceived opposition became, without option, victims of his passions and unjust desires for power. He is a control freak that exercised power in a harsh, cruel and sometimes destructive manner. Surprisingly on the outward, he is a suave man but behind the curtains, he’s oppressive, harsh and an arbitrary leader who made life unbearable for the governed.

The state House of Assembly members under the speakership of Rt.Hon. Tunji Egbetokun suffered unspeakable persecution under Daniel’s reign in the state. At a point, Egbetokun and other members that were against Daniel’s dictatorship went on AWOL from the assembly complex in the state capital out of palpable fears for their lives. Alleged Occultic oath taking routinely reigned supreme during Daniel’s tenure as governor. A classical example of this was the unethical publication of the nude pictures of the lawmaker representing Ijebu-Ode constituency, Honourable Wale Alausa, in The Nigerian Compass, a newspaper purportedly owned by the then Ogun state governor where he was allegedly swearing to an oath of loyalty to Daniel.

When things went awry between Daniel and Alausa, the latter was dehumanized with the publication of his nude. Daniel is not a man that repays good with good. Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo ensured his emergence as governor in 2003 and also his re-election in 2007, deploying his then presidential might against Amosun, a fellow Egba man, that the people of Ogun State wanted at that time. In 2011, Daniel assiduously worked against Obasanjo’s daughter, Iyabo’s re-election into the senate deploying the instruments of state at his disposal. He also, due to dictatorial inclinations, fell out with his known beloved aides at that time including Messrs Kayode Samuel and Wale Adedayo. Both courageously left his government despite the fact that many others suffered in silence and could not leave him for fear of immense persecution. Insecurity caused by alleged protagonists of his government ravaged the state. Traditional rulers in the state feared him for no reasonable reason than the fear of being unjustly dethroned.

Leaders like Daniel have descriptive phrases from different philosophers. John Locke said tyrants like him and his ilks exercise power “beyond right, which nobody can have a right to.” Furthermore, Locke said OGD’s type of leader as governor begins “wherever law ends,” and this is determined by their ‘whims and caprices.’

Daniel now crying wolf for what he routinely did to others as governor becomes laughable because he was fully aware of his then unjust actions. “A child can be forgiven for being afraid of the dark,” but not an adult like OGD that is now afraid of the “light” for avaricious reasons.

It is not impossible that he deludingly believed that with his then iron cast hold on Ogun state, he’ll forever be the one controlling the political narratives of Ogun but he goofed as a poor student of history. History has a way of repeating itself with leaders like him that arrogantly forget easily while entrusted with power that today’s not forever.

Thomas Paine in: The Crisis, written in December 23, 1776 elucidated the futility of Daniel’s type of tyrannical fallacies despite the turbulence of his reign that tried men’s souls in Ogun state when he posited: “The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.” Where’s the hold Daniel thought he’d forever wield on the people of Ogun state today?

The emerging scenario between the duo is ascribed to Governor Abiodun’s widely believed plan to contest for Daniel’s same senate’s position from Ogun East in 2027. It is an ambition that is legitimate but should be pursued within strict legal prescription. However, it stands to be seen if Daniel will attempt to slug it out with an incumbent Dapo Abiodun? If yes, he’ll be attempting what his politically brutish self will never fathom as a sitting governor? Daniel as governor was too brutish to take that and it will be naively unconscionable for him to think the current governor will take that from him. Again, let Daniel know that whatever goes around surely comes around. The law of karma is indeed beckoning at him.

Almighty God humbled Daniel when against his deluding machinations, the politically tenacious Amosun, his arch and indefatigable political enemy, succeeded him. Amosun, uplifted by God through Asíwájú’s political benevolence in 2011, gave credence to the words of Benjamin Franklin in Pennsylvania Gazette of November 17,1737 where he said “Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God. It is the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.” Asíwájú aided Amosun to bury Daniel’s political religion of ignorance that festered the farm of his tyranny for eight years.

Notwithstanding Daniel’s misdeeds, Dapo Abiodun’s administration should follow due process in handling his buildings’ approval demand without condescending to his own shameful and sheepishly petty conducts while in the saddle as governor. However, yours sincerely wants Mr Abiodun to realise as well that today’s not forever. Who knows? It’s Daniel’s turn today to be served his own prepared poisonous menu. Beckoning also is a tomorrow’s turn of anyone who chooses to act while in power as if his/her today in office is going to be forever. Nothing can ever be forever. That is the vanishing nature of everything under the sun, including power.

Sanusi, former MD/CEO of LASAA, is a managerial psychologist and currently the managing partner of AMS Reliable Solicitors.