It would have been hilarious, if not that it is tragic, how former President Goodluck Jonathan futilely tried to spin a statement made by Governor Rauf Aregbesola to his own advantage but ended up ridiculing himself and brought out the painful memory of his tragic rule.
Governor Aregbesola was speaking during an all-night interactive meeting, ‘Ogbeni till daybreak’ in Osogbo last week. The audience was made up of media practitioners, civil society organisations, political parties’ representatives, students and the general public. There was also opportunity for phone-in and comments and questions from online platforms. TVC, a national television which is also on cable and three radio stations (OSBC, Ravefm and Arafm) broadcast the programme live between the night of Friday May 11 and the morning of Saturday May 12, 2018.
A senior journalist in the state, Mr Kola Olabisi, asked the governor what was his greatest regret to which he replied that it was the coincidence of his first term in office with the ruinous PDP regime which terminated in 2015.
This is how it was reported by The Vanguard newspaper whose correspondent, Gbenga Olarinoye, was present. ‘If I have to answer you literarily, I don’t regret being a governor but philosophically, the only regret I have is that my administration coincided with the PDP led administration.
“As a matter of fact, PDP superintended the most irresponsible government in Nigeria, it was the most traumatised era in the history of Nigeria.
“If I have had the opportunity of working with serious government at the Federal level between 2011 and 2015, it would have been an Eldorado’.
However, Jonathan responded with a long but tendentious and inane treatise which reconstructed the narrative that Aregbesola admitted failure but should not blame him (Jonathan) for the failure. Is it a function of failure of grammatical apprehension or plain mischief by Jonathan? Where in this report did Aregbesola acknowledged failure?
If anyone has failed in government, it indisputably was Goodluck Jonathan, if we begin with his comprehensive defeat at the 2015 presidential election. It was the first time in the history of Nigeria that an incumbent president would be defeated in a comprehensive manner in a presidential election and his party, the PDP, routed and eviscerated nationally in an onset of its unravelling and inexorable disintegration.
For the avoidance of doubt, Aregbesola defeated Goodluck Jonathan thrice in political contests. First, at the April 2011 presidential election in which Jonathan won in all the South West states but lost woefully in Osun.
Again, Aregbesola defeated the PDP candidate in the 2014 governorship election in Osun, Senator Iyiola Omisore, who was backed to the hilt by Jonathan.
The entire security armada of the country, including police dogs, was deployed to Osun. As the truth will come out later, the candidate was given N1.7 billion directly from national treasury, in a looting frenzy, for which he is now the customer of the EFCC, running from pillar to post, looking for the balance of N1.4 billion, having refunded N300 million. Jonathan and his candidate were defeated in that election by Aregbesola, whose glorious second term is now winding down.
Jonathan had boasted before that election that he would take Osun, even if the heaven would fall. But the owner of heaven proved to him that he is a mere mortal with transient power and that all powers belong to Him alone and Jonathan’s candidate will be defeated and heaven will not fall. Jonathan and his party were disembowelled by Aregbesola in the election which opened the floodgates for his eventual ouster from power.
Again, Jonathan was comprehensively defeated in 2015 Presidential Election in Osun, as in other South West States and indeed other parts of the country.
The drama to the 2015 election was that Jonathan’s campaign in the South West was accompanied with a spending binge; he was spending money like a drunken sailor. There were reports of huge sums in foreign currencies being dashed out to sundry people and interests in Osun and other South West states. He went to respected Christian clerics and maximised the photo op of the image of him kneeling down and being prayed for. From there, he went to traditional rulers who pointed their beaded staff at him while kneeling in their midst. From the traditional rulers he went to the cultists, adorned in the full regalia of the cult. At the end of it all, he was roundly defeated as he failed to get re-elected.
However, Jonathan’s failure preceded the election. He failed in governance, which brought about his electoral failure. Indeed, long before the election, he had earned the sobriquet of ‘The clueless one’, after failing to find solutions to the myriads of problems facing the nation in economic development, security and financial prudence.
Though oil sold for more than $140 under him, the country suffered in all indices of development. The only development took place in the account balances of PDP members and Jonathan’s wife, some of which have been forfeited to the federal government.
The rag-tag Boko Haram insurgency group blossomed into a formidable army that seized large swaths of Nigeria’s territory in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Taraba and Bauchi, establishing their sovereignty and evil administration.
Details have since been released how, under Jonathan, more than $30 billion was not remitted to the federation account, but pocketed by Jonathan’s PDP cronies. Even personally, he has not escaped scrutiny as he got roped in the Malabo oil sleaze.
It is this run on national treasury perpetrated under Jonathan that put 29 states under financial strain and which affected Osun at some point.
Aregbesola, on the other hand has done the unprecedented in Osun, even with limited resources. The infrastructure development in education and road transport alone is without precedence and humongous. Aregbesola made reference to this at the town hall meeting and was captured in the report in The Vanguard thus: “The Governor further reiterated his resolve to complete all his projects before the end of the tenure in November, saying that he has surpassed all his predecessors in the area of infrastructural development. Aregbesola said the quality of Interchange Bridge his administration built at Gbongan, along the Ibadan -Ilesa Expressway remains one of the best in the country, arguing that such a project could only be seen in metropolitan cities like Lagos, Kano, and Port Harcourt”.
Between Aregbesola and Jonathan, who then is the failure? Those who live in glass house should not throw stones.
- Fasure, Governor Aregbesola’s Media Adviser writes from Osogbo.