POSITIVE signs are daily manifesting that Governor Rauf Aregebesola of the All Progressives Congress, (APC) is indeed the darling of the people of Osun. The people have solidly demonstrated their utmost resolve at all the political rally that have seen Ogbeni traversing the nocks and crannies of the state with the message of hope. They have shown that they have truly rejected the PDP for good.
Ignoring heavy rain along the route leading to Ilesha from Osun Jela, Owode, Kajola, Idominasi, Oke-Omiru, Isokun, Itakogun, roundabout, Oja-oba, last week Tuesday before the governor’s campaign ship berthed at Osun Ankara, Irojo in Ilesha, it was popularity and balmy ride on the crest of the political soapbox. The crowd at the APC rallies has constituted nightmare for the opposing political parties in the state who are ridden by fear of their imminent defeat.
The mammoths crowd that greeted the governor in his home town, Ilesha is a clear testament that the main opposing challenger, the PDP is definitely in the throes of electoral conundrum. Prior to that day, Senator Omisore had said in an interview in one of the national dailies that the crowds seen in all Governor Aregbesola’s campaign rallies are there for mere entertainment.
“There is a crowd at the rallies because there are Fuji artistes there to entertain them. Those people only came to watch their favourite Pasuma or Wasiu Ayinde Marshal performs. Didn’t you see similar crowd at Fayemi’s rallies? What has that cost him? The votes are in the wards and in the towns. I’ve been going to every ward and polling units”, Mr. Omisore said.
From all indications, Senator Omisore is ignorant of the usefulness of electioneering campaigns. Apart from being an organised effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group, it is the highest profile of political activities that focused on the grand primacy of democracy and the actual processes of institutional governance. Although Senator Omisore has been seen amongst motley of crowd, grabbing corn ears fitfully to his mouth!
So far, Omisore’s satanising campaign against Aregbesola and the APC has been a dismal failure. Already, the ominous heat of total rejection is tormenting the party leadership and its minders into planning how to traumatised the electorate with security apparatus prior, during and after the election. Thanks in part to Governor Aregbesola’s sterner leadership, his people-oriented programmes and his consistent called for eternal vigilance on the part of the electorate whose duty it is to reward performing administrations or punish ruinous and tunnel-visioned governments; the shadow in which the PDP has casts itself since the beginning of the Fourth Republic.
Omisore’s campaigns in most parts of the state, especially in Ilesha, the birth place of Governor Aregbesola didn’t go without criminal vandalisation of Governor’s billboards in the ancient city. The PDP venture into Ilesha was not to sell it candidate or manifesto to the people, but to reassert their well known imprint – “violence in trade”. Why would the PDP and its agents insist on continuing on the part of violence when it is faring so poorly in public rating?
The only plausible answer is stomach-turning. The PDP probably calculates that it can win the election by creating a crises situation that would warrants flooding the Governor’s home stead with thousands of security agents who will in turn prevent the people of Ilesha from voting for their son on the day of election whom they have variously described as change agent!
So far, the tactic is not working because there is no corresponding or collateral damage of equal destruction visited on the offensive PDP by the peace-loving APC faithful. The PDP has been doubling down in connivance with the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. They are both calling for the militarisation of the state prior, during and after the August 9th governorship election, the same way the PDP’s Presidency unleashed military terror on the people of Ekiti in the just concluded June 21 governorship election.
The barrage of attack against the APC followers in Ile-Ife, the home town of the PDP candidate, Senator Omisore has not abated to date, and promises to fester even more dangerously till election day and afterwards. However, this is not adding or winning the supports of the people for the PDP. If anything, it has waned the people’s supports for the party and earned it greater notoriety as a political party that thrives in subversive politics of brigandage and thuggery.
The Presidency’s reaction to petitions by the APC on the cruelty visited on its members by the PDP has been muted. There is the need for the PDP and Senator Omisore to tweak the rules of engagement. The nation cannot remain oasis of peace and prosperity in a country on fire. The PDP candidate cannot be spurning spectre of unbridled political violence that is certain to bridgeheads the 2015 general elections.
To be sure, the APC government of Governor Rauf Aregebesola has better incentives for the peace-loving people of Osun than the violence spewing and bloodcurdling PDP. The PDP’s engagement in violence campaigns is a reflection of its weakened and poor electability after the party’s seven and a half years of the locust. That cannot be compared with the APC’s three and a half years of tolerable governance, development politics, infrastructural revamp, agrarian rejuvenation, expanded governance, and education for the total man.
Osun electorate have seen through the banal facade and covert gimmickry that the PDP candidate in the forth coming election is pushing forth. The dummy bothers on regaling the people of the state with suppositions and fathoms that suggest a repentant personage who would no longer be violent. Aside that, the PDP candidate has sought to project Governor Aregbesola as a man who has reduced the standard of education in the state than revitalised it; even though the Governor has been severally laureled by UNESCO and other organisations as the ultimate enabler and promoter of education in Africa.
Senator Omisore has largely painted a desolate picture of the state’s educational system, beating his breasts and vowing to upturn what the world education’s universal body christened “shinning armour in the dark firmament’.
Senator Omisore failed in both attempts. In the eyes of the general public, even though he has been exonerated by court of competent jurisdiction for not having hands in the assassination of late Chief Bola Ige, he will remain hunted, not just for his alleged involvement, but by the stigmal it permanently left in his trail as an accuse felon.
Governor Aregbesola symbolises the new dawn for the people of Osun for turning round the poorly and thoroughly mismanaged government; the run down school system, the collapsed health care delivery system and the comatose infrastructure across the state. Osun electorate will be asking both the PDP and Labour Party, LP candidates alike to point to what their contributions have been to the state since the state was created.
Both Senator Iyiola Omisore and Alhaji Fatai Akinbade have been straddled at the seat of power in the last 15 years of the nation’s democracy. While Senator Omisore was Deputy Governor and a Senator, Alhaji Akinbade was one time Secretary to the State Government.
It is going to be a day of reckoning for political hawks who rule the rust of power in Osun State to the detriment of the electorate whose backs and resources catapulted them to Olympia heights. There will be no room for baring stale charlotte as a bait to swindle the people of their rights to chose who governance them.
•Ikhide wrote from Lagos.
