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Tag: Osun governorship poll

  • ‘Shift Osun governorship poll’

    ‘Shift Osun governorship poll’

    Traditional Religion Worshippers Association (TRAWSO) has called on the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Joash Amupitan, to reschedule the 2026 Osun State governorship election from August 8 to another date.

    In a letter signed by the President of TRAWSO, Dr Oluseyi Atanda, Vice-President, Chief Fagbenle Adedayo and Secretary-General, Chief Fasola Onifade, the traditional worshippers said the date clashed with the annual Osun/Osogbo festival.

    Read Also: APC chieftain backs Oyebamiji, predicts inclusive governance in Osun

    The traditional worshippers’ stance was contained in the letter addressed to Prof. Amupitan dated January 20, 2026.

    They said the date fixed for Osun governorship election would disrupt religious rites and limit full participation by devotees and residents.

  • INEC to employ over 15,000 ad hoc workers for Osun governorship poll

    The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Osun State has said it will employ over 15,000 ad hoc workers for the conduct of the September 22 governorship election.

    INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Osun State, Mr Olusegun Agbaje, broke the news yesterday at a stakeholders’ meeting with party leaders in Osogbo, the state capital.

    He said the commission would do everything possible to conduct a free and fair election in the state.

    Agbaje said the commission had recruited over 14,000 out of the over 15,000 ad hoc workers needed for the election.

    The REC said INEC had engaged different ad hoc workers’ sources, such as the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Federal establishments and tertiary institutions in the state.

    He added: “As we speak, we have sourced over 90 per cent of the ad hoc workers who will participate in the conduct of the election.

    “The NYSC management promised us over 8,000 of their youth corps members. They will form the large chunk of our ad hoc workers.

    “The Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) has provided us with 3,000 personnel/students, while the Federal Polytechnic at Ede has assured us of 2,000 personnel, plus students, out which 1,500 has been received.

    “The over 70 other Federal establishments in the state would also be providing us with 1,000 of their members who will participate in the conduct of the election.”

    Agbaje urged the 48 political parties that will take part in the election to advise the electorate to collect their Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs) for the election.

    The REC said INEC had been carrying out voter education and public enlightenment campaigns, adding that many PVCs were yet to be collected by registered voters.

    He said about 540,658 PVCs were still with the commission and enjoined voters in the state to come out and collect their PVCs.

     

  • Supreme Court upholds Aregbesola’s victory

    Supreme Court upholds Aregbesola’s victory

    The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the victory of Governor Rauf Aregbesola in the August 9, 2014 governorship election in Osun State.

    A seven-man panel of the court, led by Justice John Fabiyi, unanimously upheld the concurrent decisions of the election petitions tribunal and the Court of Appeal on the petition filed against the outcome of the election by Iyiola Omisore of the Peoples Democratic Party.

    Justice Centus Chima Nweze, in the lead judgment, held that the two appeals by Omisore (SC/204/2015 and SC/204A/2015) were without merit and dismissed them.

    He upheld the decisions of the tribunal and Court of Appeal, saying the appellant failed to lead credible evidence to support his claim of malpractices in the election.

    Justice Nweze upheld the cross-appeal by Aregbesola and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the effect that the tribunal was wrong to have assumed jurisdiction over Omisore’s petition, which was filed outside the seven days allowed by the Electoral Act.

     

  • Osun poll: What next for APC?

    Osun poll: What next for APC?

    For a politician whose credibility is in doubt, and whose principles and values are in contention, the performance of Iyiola Omisore, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the recent Osun governorship poll, must worry both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and other political analysts. Though Senator Omisore got a huge part of that surprising vote from his Ile-Ife stronghold, thereby raising doubts about the fidelity of the balloting in those places, it is certainly not out of place to take cognisance of the electorate’s unpredictability and sometimes weirdness when they perform their civic responsibility. If in the 1993 presidential poll, Bashir Tofa lost his home state of Kano to M.K.O Abiola, it should not be regarded as normal that Southwest voters, who sometimes erroneously pride themselves as more sophisticated than any other electorate in Nigeria, should vote so bizarrely in favour of someone so controversial, so unqualified for high office, and so unprincipled.

    President Goodluck Jonathan defends his embarrassing militarisation of elections in the name of providing security, but he will be unable to do that in 2015, for the forces available to him are so limited that even if he wishes, there is no way he can pour troops into the states on the contemptuous scale witnessed in the Ekiti and Osun elections. The APC has promised to campaign against the militarisation of elections, it should go ahead, for there is hardly any Nigerian who is not embarrassed, even humiliated, by Dr Jonathan’s immature methods. However, while the APC must continue to doubt the president’s oath to conduct free and fair elections, seeing how boisterously he often fails to match words with actions, the party should not lose sleep over any attempt to militarise the polls. Dr Jonathan simply won’t be able to do it, not even if he succeeds in pacifying the restive Northeast.

    What should preoccupy the APC, and by extension right-thinking patriots, is how to respond to the increasing pedestrianism of Nigerian politics and elections. It is not only the Nigerian leadership that is incompetent and infantile, the voters themselves are probably far worse, with the Southwest electorate in greater ferment than any other geopolitical zone. For instance, consequent upon the loss of Ekiti, governors in the zone have started to roll back their principled and fairly well-considered stand on education, infrastructure and other policies. They have begun to enact mass surrender to the short-sighted and even whimsical needs of the electorate. Indeed, if they refuse to cut school fees, the truth is that the PDP opposition would simply promise to do it and sweep the polls. If they enforce their sensible stand on restricting the use of commercial motorcycles, the opposition would simply take advantage of what is now ludicrously described as a disconnect. Yet, the current, newly modified policy on education, particularly as it relates to cutting of school fees, is simply not tenable. The end is disaster, considering how the quality of education, like infrastructure, health and security, has been declining for decades.

    If things look dreary on the social and economic policy fronts for the APC, the party however remains unchallenged on one front: that of providing, in alliance with like-minded and principled politicians, ideological, visionary and sound leadership for the Southwest in particular, and the nation in general. It will be recalled that when Olusegun Mimiko won the Ondo governorship poll in 2012, there was a thunderous clamour by a faction of the Yoruba leadership – the same Afenifere faction that now unreflectively and selfishly allies with Dr Jonathan – for the projection of a new leadership for the Yoruba. They failed to understand that no one can give what he doesn’t have. Dr Mimiko has of course been unable to satisfy the longings of that faction. And when in spite of his mediocre talent and accomplishment, not to say temper and superficiality, Ayo Fayose won the Ekiti poll, the same faction began noisily to celebrate what they described as the impending change of leadership in the Southwest, a change they swore in June would sweep Osun into the PDP column and sound the death knell to the APC.

    Osun has been saved. But that is not to say that Ogun, Oyo and Lagos are safe. The APC must recognise that the pedestrianism undermining the polity in general is also wasting the Southwest even more. The electorate cannot be trusted to be sensible or futuristic, and in many ways their private envies, which, like the Afenifere faction’s, manifest in their hatred for APC leaders, will tempt them into the same fatalism and self-destruction that are convulsing the Middle East. Osun has been saved, but Osun is also in many ways different. The state appears impervious to the private demons gnawing at the livers of the electorate, and immune to the hobgoblins erected as scarecrows by a faction of the Yoruba leadership who implausibly see the PDP as their salvation. The APC must find ways to counter the religious card foolishly played by the PDP in the region, and the campaign of calumny directed at one or two members of the party’s leadership in Lagos. If Southwest voters had recalled the stagnation they endured under the PDP after 2003, they would have spurned the PDP’s advances in Ekiti and elsewhere. But memories are short, and the APC, in spite of its stellar performance in its Southwest states, is actually threatened by protest votes, with the non-performing PDP poised to benefit.

    Ogun and Oyo States must also find ways of uniting their party; and Osun, in spite of APC’s spectacular victory must recognise the need to find common ground with those who voted against the party. Indeed, given the needless controversies engendered by the APC government in Osun, one shudders to think what might have been had the PDP found someone less controversial and more brilliant and earthy than the obnoxious Senator Omisore. There is, however, no way the campaigns for the 2015 polls will not exert some influence on the voting pattern in the other APC states in the Southwest, for many issues will come up between now and the general elections. To that extent, the APC may not be in mortal danger. But following the Osun victory, the party must cleverly repackage itself, refine and make its message more succinct, rejigger its internal democratic processes and, knowing the limitations of the electorate, how they are often swayed by frivolities rather than substance, find a means of reaching out to them and meeting them on safe and common ground.

    The Osun victory is a relief to the APC. Now must begin the hard work of appealing to the sometimes superficial desires of an undiscriminating electorate without compromising the futuristic plans and noble principles of the progressive party. For, notwithstanding the propaganda of the PDP, and in spite of many conservatives and reactionaries joining their ranks, the APC remains Nigeria’s best chance at the moment to escape the chaos, madness and retrogression instituted and reinforced by the PDP in the last 16 years.

  • On the Osun governorship poll

    On the Osun governorship poll

    Despite widespread public concerns of possible rigging and violence, the Osun State governorship election was successfully held last Saturday.

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) incumbent Governor Rauf Aregbesola was overwhelmingly returned to office, recording 394,684 votes as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) -over 60 per cent of the votes cast. His main opponent, Mr. Iyiola Omisore, of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) obtained 292,750 votes; quite impressive, but still a distant second. He was comprehensively beaten and has conceded defeat.

    As expected and because of the huge stakes involved, the election was closely fought by the main contenders in a long, hard and often bitter campaign. Tension was high in the state and there was a real possibility of violence breaking out during the election. But it turned out to be quite peaceful and, by and large, the results reflected the electoral choice of the electorate. The observers adjudged the actual voting to have been free and fair.

    Governor Aregbesola deserved to win the election. His performance in government has been quite impressive, with an astonishing development of infrastructure. His schools’ reforms have also been widely acclaimed as innovative. Despite reservations in some enlightened quarters, his populist and charismatic style of government earned him a huge electoral victory in the election. But he also campaigned very hard, leaving nothing to chance. He and the APC leaders had learnt some hard and useful lessons from the Ekiti governorship election, which Governor Kayode Fayemi lost to his PDP rival, Mr. Ayo Fayose.

    In contrast to Governor Aregbesola, his opponent, Iyiola Omisore, had little or nothing to offer the electorate. When he was in office as deputy governor in the Bisi Akande administration, his record was really appalling. It included his determined and prolonged effort to organise Akande’s impeachment as governor. The source of the friction which paralysed the government was Akande’s refusal to meet his financial claims for a fraudulent contract Omisore had purportedly concluded with the previous military administration. I tried to resolve his differences with Governor Akande, but failed as Omisore wanted his financial claims met. In addition, there is still a considerable public speculation that he may have been involved, or implicated, in the assassination of the late Alliance for Democracy (AD) leader and Federal Attorney-General, Bola Ige, a case which has remained unresolved since 2002. Soon after, he defected from the AD.

    Because of all these, public perception of him as a politician has been quite negative. His character, or lack of it, has not matched his lofty and remorseless political ambition to be governor of the state at all costs. He tried the Ekiti strategy of ‘stomach infrastructure’ but this did not work. He was rejected. His election as governor would have been a terrible set back for the state.

    Though the election was largely devoid of any serious violence, this was due largely to the remarkable and commendable restraint shown by the electorate in the electoral process, particularly on the voting date. A week before the election, the PDP Federal Government deployed a large number of military forces, including the Police and the State Security Service, evidently to intimidate and harass the APC and its supporters. There were palpable fears that the security forces would be used to rig the election, which the PDP was determined to win, after its victory in the Ekiti State governorship election.

    Scores of APC leaders, including its National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, were arrested on the eve of the election. What was even worse and totally unacceptable was the deployment by the PDP Federal Government of hooded armed men that were not even part of the regular armed forces of the country, with the clear intention of intimidating the electorate. This is reminiscent of Hitler’s storm troopers, the infamous SS, used by the Nazis to subvert democracy in Germany. Not a few innocent German heads were broken by Hitler’s SS men in his quest for absolute power in Germany. Are these not the men that former President Olusegun Obasanjo warned the nation about in his attack on Jonathan last year? Has he not been proved right in raising the alarm?

    Those so arrested and detained by these armed men included my youngest brother, Folarin Fafowora, a member of the State House of Assembly. It was claimed that ballot papers were being stamped in his house. But the house was not even searched by the DSS in the first place. In fact, as he has since told me, he was riding an Okada in Osogbo when he was picked up by the DSS officials. He was only released on Tuesday after four days in illegal detention. I have asked him to sue the DSS for his illegal detention and denial of his rights. We cannot continue to have the security forces acting illegally so brazenly against innocent citizens. This is provocative and designed to subvert the electoral process in the state. But undaunted by the heavy military presence, the voters refused to be intimidated and cast their votes in a peaceful manner. They displayed admirable and exemplary courage that the voters in other states should show in future elections to restore electoral integrity.

    Next year’s general elections, including the presidential, are crucial for the future of free and fair elections and the survival of democracy in our country. We cannot accept the continued use by the PDP Federal Government of military and illegal para-military forces to intimidate the electorate. That was why a substantial number of voters simply decided to stay away rather than risk intimidation and illegal detention by the security forces, including hooded and unidentified armed men. The role and use of security forces in future elections in our country should be clearly spelt out and defined by the INEC. Armed forces, regular or irregular, should not be deployed unless asked for by the INEC, or by the contending political parties themselves. When deployed, such security forces must be plainly neutral between the contending political parties.

    The Federal Government cannot arrogate to itself the right to deploy its security forces anywhere in the country, except where a situation of emergency has been declared, and duly approved by the National Assembly. What happened during the election in Osun State was farcical, disgraceful and plainly illegal. The APC must ask the courts to pronounce on the legality, or otherwise, of the use of the military by the Federal Government during the elections when a state of emergency has not been declared. The Federal Government must not be allowed to unleash a reign of terror in the country, particularly during elections.

    Even among senior military and security officials, there is a serious and growing concern regarding the deployment of armed soldiers in elections in our country as we saw during both the Ekiti and Osun states elections. These officers are concerned that the Army is being illegally used to determine the outcome of elections in Nigeria. This will inevitably lead to the military becoming more politicised and less professional. It is a road we have often taken in this country in the past with disastrous consequences. It destroys the professionalism and political neutrality of the military. There are enough security challenges for the military in our country without them being further dragged into the vortex of politics.

    Now that he has been deservedly returned to power, Governor Aregbesola will be well advised to review and reflect on some of his controversial policies and strategies which have created divisions in the state. I refer here, specifically, to his education policy to which Christian leaders have raised strong and determined opposition. He may have good intentions on this issue, but there are serious concerns that he may have unwittingly fuelled religious tensions in the state. Osun state is multi-religious with both the Muslims and Christians living together peacefully for over a century. The governor must keep things this way and not create among the electorate the impression that the government is in support of one side or the other of the religious divide. His electoral victory would probably have been more comprehensive had the religious factor not crept into the consideration of Christians in the state, most of whom probably voted for Omisore, despite his several shortcomings and lack of electoral appeal.

    In addition, the quality of governance in the state should be elevated. Governance is a serious business. It should not be handled in a cavalier style as is the case now. The governor must reach out to all sections of the civil society in the state, particularly the workers and teachers. No matter the support and attraction that a populist strategy may generate for the governor, sight should not be lost of the need to ensure that the state is not polarised economically, or religiously.

  • FG terrorizing Osun ahead of governorship poll – APC

    FG terrorizing Osun ahead of governorship poll – APC

    The All Progressives Congress on Friday accused the Federal Government of terrorizing and intimidating the people of Osun State ahead of August 9 governorship election in the state.

    The party in a statement issued in Lagos by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, wondered why the government will send agents of the Department of State Services (DSS) to the state when the present situation does not warrant such action.

    According to the APC, some of the DSS agents were masked and clad in black, “ostensibly to harass innocent citizens in an unprovoked and primitive show of power that can only be described as sheer gangsterism.”

    The party said, ”As widely reported, DSS agents, armed to the teeth and riding in over 50 trucks, drove around Osogbo and other parts of Osun State on Wednesday blaring siren and shooting sporadically in the air, thus disrupting the normally peaceful life in the state.

    ”Residents who were visibly traumatized by the shameful display of state power ran helter-skelter and wondered why their government has sent masked men, or ninjas, to terrorize them. They now understand that the masked thugs who have been following the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate around on his campaign trail were actually government sanctioned.

    “This is a power show taken too far, even with the well-known impunity tendencies of the Jonathan administration.”

    The APC said it gathered that 5,000 more DSS agents are being dispatched to the state before the election, because of an orchestrated petition alleging that certain leaders of the party are planning mayhem during the election.

    It added: ”The real purpose of this fake petition and the consequent deployment of thousands of secret police to Osun is to harass, intimidate and arrest the leaders of the APC in the state, in a repeat of what transpired in Ekiti.

    ”Flooding Osun with irresponsible DSS officials to terrorize the residents is another low for a government that is notorious for abuse of power and federal institutions. It is no longer news that the military, the police and other security agencies are working for the Jonathan administration, rather than for all of Nigeria. What is new is that the security agencies have now been unleashed on the citizenry.

    ”What rankles even more is the constant assurances by President Jonathan that the election will be free and fair. How can we have a credible election in an atmosphere of state-led gangsterism? How can we have a credible election when the federal government that is supposed to protect the people and ensure violence-free polls is the same one that purveys violence? Where else in the world do secret police announce themselves by firing to scare away harmless citizens? When did masks become part of the State Security Service agents uniform?”

     

  • Guber poll: Jonathan visits Osun Saturday

    Guber poll: Jonathan visits Osun Saturday

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Osun on Thursday said that all arrangements had been concluded to receive President Goodluck Jonathan in Osogbo on Saturday.

    The Secretary of PDP in Osun, Mr. Bola Ajao, made this known when he addressed journalists in Osogbo.

    Ajao said the President was coming to throw his weight behind Senator Iyiola Omisore’s bid to win the state governorship election.

    The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the election holds August 9.

    He said Jonathan would also use the visit to intimate the residents with his transformation agenda.

    “The President’s passion for overall development is not hidden. Few days from now, residents will be at the poll to elect a governor to steer the ship of the state for another four years.

    “The import of the President’s visit is not only to boost the candidature of the party’s governorship candidate but to further explain his transformation agenda to the people.

    “A vote for the PDP is a vote for individual growth and collective emancipation through a one man one woman vote,’’ he said.