Sulaimon Salaudeen highlights the peoples expectations about the in-coming Gboyega Oyetola administration in Osun State.
The victory of Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in just ended Osun State governorship election was largely expected, though it came after the supplementary elections in seven polling units. Prior and all through his campaigns, revelations pile upon evidences each day he was the likeliest among the throng of contenders across party divides to clinch the highest political seat in Osun.
While the announcement by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) spurred jubilations across entire length of the state, given and against backdrop of anxiety prompted by misdemeanours contrived by opposition parties which prompted a supplementary election the preceding day, keen and sincere watchers of events as they unfolded knew the conclusion, what dramatists would regard as resolution/denouement, would be Oyetola’s win.
For such category of individuals, their could not have been much news in the news! From parleys with various stakeholders, at the Ileri Oluwa Situation Office, Onward, Gbongon Road, Osogbo, and towns/communities, during which groups in their hundreds, pledge love, loyalty and block votes, to entire campaigns across major towns/cities, all of which were ‘mega’ in volume of turn out by party enthusiasts and residents, even to routine lining of roadsides and shouting of “Ileri ni o” meaning “Ileri is the one”, a derivative of “Ileri Oluwa”, adopted by the APC candidate as a distinguishing cognomen amongst other candidates, each new day by residents of towns, at the passing of the candidate himself, not quite a few could have doubted and indeed knew well in advance what the outcome of the election exercise would be.
Monarchs of all categories across three zones, either individually or in groups, were not left out in the pledging of loyalty and run of endorsements. Such meetings during which some of them expressly, even openly, directed their subjects and townspeople to accept and vote then candidate Oyetola, or face consequences, became at a point all too familiar. Muslim clerics, Christian leaders and leaders of other faiths, did not just come visiting the APC torchbearer, or welcome him in their domains, they organised open and well promoted prayer sessions for him, telling God their preference, even as they directed their congregations where they should go and how they must vote. Often at such occasions, they stopped only short of threats!
Aware of consequences of an otherwise outcome, they bonded in unilateral rejection of unwanted fate. Copious references were made of the years of blatant blackouts, not just physically when refusal by The Executive to procure mere transformers, sentenced residents across the state to years of blightly/benighted darkness, curtailing them, including those in Osogbo, a major electricity dormitory/distribution point in entire southwest, from accessing light, but more particularly in terms of roads, especially in the capital, which they claimed were just too extremely bad to be describable. Journeys and movements at the time which should not have taken beyond minutes had then lasted hours!
One of the clerics, in drumming home the critical necessity for ‘continuity’, once waxed: “We have light today, our children are going to good, fine schools and they eat free meals every day of the week; our roads, at least major ones, are not just good, but are dual carriage ways. The bridges, better than you can see in most places in the southwest here, have removed bottlenecks in vehicular operations. With the complementary significance of the bridges, road users now easily access every part of the capital.”
As attention in the heat of campaigns, amongst opposition elements shifted from Aregbesola, the very butt of scurrilous jokes and derisive attacks, to Oyetola, references got made of a candidate who is an “Ajele (foreigner/usurper), a stingy person, an invidious schemer who had penciled down sack of workers as solution to so-called half-salary debacle, all trumped to de-market the obviously most marketable! Upon INEC’s announcement the election of 22 September was inconclusive, the schemers upped their die-let-live art, promoting an Oyetola who was no longer interested in the race and one who had parted ways with Aregbesola!
But the candidate, now governor-elect, himself, who soon enough assumed his elemental/seminal best, dismissed all in well publicised channels on conventional and new media platforms, allaying the fears, and telling a tale which, in clarity of delivery and credibility of content, roused and rallied the citizenry more to his side, returning entire lie to and turning them against peddlers of falsehood! Oyetola, vaulting over really formidable wiles, polled a total of 255,505 to defeat, with a margin of 482, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and its candidate, Ademola Adeleke, who scored 255,023.
Oyetola’s campaigns, in revealing his simplicity as a person, saw him admitting that, despite commendable performance of the outgoing governor, quite a lot still remained to be done, particularly on roads, a number of which he explained had been listed for immediate renovation. According to him, continuity involves accepting both gains and pains, credits and liabilities, pledging, in regard of owed arrears of salaries, to pay outstanding months soon upon assuming office. He equally promised to sustain O’YES, O’MEAL, OÁMBULANCE, O’REAP, AGBA OSUN and many other programmes of the outgoing administration, and finetune some to bring them to serving humans and communities better. On purported planned sack of workers, the governor-elect noted if outgoing administration did not lay off workers, even in the thick of now largely escaped financial crunch, his own administration would find more ways to survive better, even as, according to him, the situation has now significantly eased. He indeed pledged to prioritise people’s health and well-being, adding efforts would be directed at improving the state’s internally generated revenue, without introducing new taxes.
There are quick lessons to draw from Oyetola’s success story. One is the need for incumbents to have actual, not pretended, legacies and execute/complete projects upon which to lay/argue ‘continuity’. In Osun State, one marvels each new day how much volume of work – solid projects – roads, bridges, school buildings, all of which were beautifully completed – got packed into an eight-year period by an Aregbe whose vision was laid out early and clearly enough, and whose mission got so thoroughly accomplished that no one could have been left in much doubt of needs for a successor with enough guts and heart to drive the state further up scales of development.
Everywhere you turn in Osun today, irrespective and regardless of noxious comments of opposition elements, as quite often parroted by their agents here and there in the state, ‘continuity’ must be atop your mind, and for a governor genuinely intent to sustain the run of glory in governance and devotion to politics only as channel to masses-centric revolutionary interventions, Osun indeed does not deserve less than it got in the just ended baton-transfer exercise!
Another is incumbents serving out their terms must be decisive, evince clarity of vision and display unusual candour regarding successor choice. While the emergence of Oyetola through direct primaries – the first of its kind in recent times in Nigeria – which soon got the nod, rather than endorsement, of Governor Rauf Aregbesola, threw up dusts at party level which is just getting settled, many an opposer of Oyetola’s emergence, most of whom went through same primaries themselves, would have admitted in the silence of inner recesses that he indeed deserved the crown better than they, not only with his towering humility, mellifluous elocution and rare, very rare intelligent, analytical prowess, but his unsurpassed, all too obvious, integrity, a trait which shined forth quite early in his unapologetic consistency as a thoroughgoing progressive. Oyetola himself did say: “My philosophy/guide words are integrity, accountability, industry.” Never the one to tinker with and publicy talk about contesting for this post or that, the governor-elect, since 1999 when he donated buses for the use of Alliance for Democracy and making other contributions to party, as it morphed through Action Congress (AC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and now APC, never sought or vied for any political office, until and since his appointment eight years ago, as Chief of Staff (CoS) by one of those who luckily have been nurtured by his rare brotherly love and kingly largesses.
Aregesola is about vacating the seat and handing over a state irreversibly set upon the plinth of progress and development, ranked as the most secure state in Nigeria, and one of the most economically stable and viable in the country. Aregbe’s Osun, blameworthy perhaps for grossly insufficient publicity, must indeed have been ranked far less than deserved and appreciated much less than merited, considering accomplishments, not so much in terms of physical infrastructure, bold signposts of which have been well harvested, but more particularly in the area of social safety net programmes which have reversed and remedied quite staggering number of lives directly and indirectly through O’YES, O’MEAL, O’AMBULANCE, O’REAP, AGBA OSUN, programme for widows, among others.
Indeed, delivering promises and accomplishing set goals are correlates of integrity, deficiencies regarding which have viscerally ailed Nigeria, especially on part of the leadership, whose stewardships across states have reversed rather than advanced the citizenry in measures and colours that remain too pronounced to be doubted! Few weeks presence in the state by this writer has shown Osun is clearly not among these. Governance is essentially a business of integrity, a pact on social contract to deliver redemptive services to the people based on prior pledge, regardless of excuses which are often too earnest in coming! In sticking to his words, Aregbe is an exampler, following well in the footsteps of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his begotten successors of our day and times. It is definitely not possible to work so clearly hard and well and not make spirited efforts to ensure emergence of a better, or at the least, an equally competent, successor to keep the work going. From Senator Bola Tinubu to Raji Fasola and Akinwumi Ambode, Lagos state’s is an admirable ‘continuity’ story which a serious state like Osun is set to replicate. Integrity must not be mouthed, it must be acted, and Aregbe, with his now INEC certified choice of Oyetola, has proven it is possible to say it and do it. That is the way to close integrity gap in governance.
