My first encounter with Aristides the Just, the great Greek politician and statesman, was in 1987 through the late Dr. Tai Solarin, who shared the timeless legend of his ostracism.
As the story goes, during a high-stakes vote to banish a leader from Athens, an illiterate citizen, unaware of who he was speaking to, approached Aristides and asked him to write the name “Aristides” on his pottery shard (ostrakon). When a startled Aristides asked what harm this man had ever done to him, the peasant replied, “None at all. I don’t even know him, but I am just sick and tired of hearing everyone call him ‘The Just.’” Rather than arguing or abusing his power, Aristides calmly wrote his own name on the shard, submitting to the flawed will of the populace.
Today, Senator Lola Ashiru faces a remarkably similar political battlefield as he fights to safeguard his legislative legacy in the Red Chamber. Despite a long, documented list of enduring developmental projects and strategic infrastructure facilitated across all seven local government areas of the Kwara South Senatorial District, a faction of influential detractors is doing everything possible to paint the Senator black and obliterate his record of achievements. To these characters, effective governance is not measured by sustainable growth, but by transactional politics. To them, if a lawmaker is not doling out short-term cash handouts at regular intervals, such a person has “failed” in office. Long-term projects that structuralize development, touch lives, and endure for generations carry no appeal for this group.
The core of the grievance against Senator Ashiru stems from a refusal to play the game of ephemeral politics. While some demand immediate, fleeting cash distributions, the Senator has focused on legacy projects that stay rooted in the soil of Kwara South long after election cycles end. From critical structural interventions to community-focused infrastructure across the local governments, these are the foundations upon which economic independence is built. To trade long-term structural empowerment for short-term handouts is to swallow poison and expect health. It is simply a case of Concrete Infrastructure versus Stomach Infrastructure.
Much like the easily swayed Athenians of old, these influential actors have successfully weaponized misinformation, brainwashing a segment of the populace into accepting packaged falsehoods as absolute truth.
We owe a profound duty to God, our people, and posterity to break our silence. We must expose the reality of the alternative candidates being packaged by these characters, individuals often pushed forward not for the collective advancement of Kwara South, but to satisfy the deep pockets of a few political gatekeepers. Replacing a ranking, performing senator with a placeholder candidate is a step backward we cannot afford.
In the National Assembly, hierarchy matters. As Deputy Senate Leader, Ashiru’s legislative influence brings far more value to Kwara South than a newcomer could yield.
His position as a ranking senator and the Deputy Senate Leader grants Kwara South a level of leverage, committee influence, and budgetary negotiation power that a newcomer simply cannot replicate. To willingly displace a high-ranking legislator is to voluntarily relegate the entire senatorial district to the back political benches in Abuja.
The alternative being packaged by these influential gatekeepers is not an upgrade; it is a regression. The candidates being pushed forward are designed to be malleable, serving the financial appetites of their sponsors rather than the developmental needs of the populace. We are witnessing an attempt to replace a statesman with a placeholder, and the ultimate victims will be the ordinary citizens whose futures are being bargained away.
Athens realized too late the value of the man they had cast out, eventually recalling Aristides when crisis loomed and true leadership was required. Kwara South does not need to suffer the consequences of a self-inflicted political exile to realize the value of what it currently possesses. It is time for the electorate to look past the repackaged falsehoods, reject the politics of immediate gratification, and defend the tangible progress achieved under Senator Ashiru’s stewardship. Let us choose the enduring legacy of development over the fleeting illusions of propaganda.
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08 June 2026.
(The Whistler)