Tag: senatorial seat

I saw it coming and I predicted it to my friends that the leadership of the APC in Osun State was disconnected from the people. Governor Rauf Aregbesola has my support because he has done well for the people of Osun particularly in the education sector. He has built first class schools at primary and secondary levels, the two levels that are usually neglected in Nigeria. His school feeding programme has been embraced by the federal government and commended by foreign institutions and embassies in Nigeria. Whenever I travel to Southern Africa, I am always ashamed about the ramshackle buildings called schools all over Nigeria but Aregbesola’s schools have put a smile on my face. These schools are not just in the state capital of Oshogbo but they are all over the place. I had discussions with teachers in some of these schools in the last two years praising the governor for his revolutionary facilities for schools and the retort was always that salaries were not being paid to teachers in full. What does anyone say to people who say they cannot satisfy the needs of their families from their vastly reduced pay packets?

Governor Aregbesola’s infrastructural programme was also revolutionary. He had plans to build good roads all over the state. He has also changed the face of the rather traditional and rustic town of Oshogbo in the last six years. He was also trying to link Oshogbo with the now dilapidated Ilesha-Ibadan expressway but he has not been able to fully execute the plan. He was also building an expressway to link Oshogbo with Offa on a road that is a federal road and like all the other magnificent plans, it seems the state bit more than it can chew. The federal government has not always been helpful. The federal roads linking the state with neighbouring states have been abandoned. The old federal road linking Ilesha, the biggest city in the state with Oshogbo the state capital is now largely unmotorable. The local people who do not know which road is state or federal blame Aregbesola’s government. The problem Aregbesola’s government has is that it is overcommitted. I wish this governor had all the money he needed so that he could have turned Osun State into the best state in the federation. He has plans to build a road that would have bypassed Ibadan to link Osun apparently through Ijebu-Igbo with Lagos-Benin expressway.

In hindsight it seems Aregbesola could not cure himself of the Lagos mega infrastructural projects syndrome which he got used to when in the words of his biographer Professor Ayo Olukoju he was the “First Commissar of works” whatever that means! Because of these megalomaniac projects, the government of Osun State is over-borrowed and the debts are being paid monthly from federal financial allocation before whatever is left gets to Oshogbo. Public servants including teachers and judicial officers are being doled out money to in proportion to their earnings with junior workers getting most of their salaries. When Aregbesola’s first came to power, the first thing he did was to slash fees of tertiary institutions in the state.  This unwise enthusiasm was not limited to Osun it was something the APC governments in the South-west were guilty of. Some of the states quietly had to eat their vomit when they realized they had no resources to fill the financial gaps. I sympathize with these governors because the welfarist policies of the old Action Group and Unity Party of Nigeria have become so ingrained in our people that even the PDP governors in the South-west dare not depart from this state dependency culture.

These preambular paragraphs are to explain the loss of the seat vacated by Alhaji Isiaka Adeleke following his unfortunate demise a few months ago. Isiaka Adeleke was a former governor of Osun State and popularly and affectionately called “Serubawon”. I do not know the origin of the name but the rough translation of Serubawon is “frighten them”. Isiaka Adeleke’s father was a senator and trade unionist in the First Republic. The Adelekes in Ede cannot reasonably be ignored. Isiaka’s younger brother, Dr Deji Adeleke is a successful businessman and founder and proprietor of Adeleke University in Ede.  This is one of the most resource endowed universities in Nigeria. It’s buildings are first world type buildings. This is a university employing hundreds of Osun particularly Ede indigenes in the junior ranks of the university staff. I do not know if there are other Adeleke family businesses apart from shopping complexes in Ede. The point I am making is that in a money-starved state like Osun, one cannot ignore providers of paid, emphasis on “paid” employment.

When Isiaka Adeleke died suddenly, I nearly lost my life coming to Ede that Sunday evening following the sudden outpouring of grief leading to rioting and violence by the village underclass and urban proletariat. I have lived in Ede for the past two years to drive on the cratered and potholed roads of Ede city and Osun State in general.

If there was any intelligence outfit in the state, the leadership of the APC should have known the sense of loss by the people of the state by the death of Senator Isiaka Adeleke. The proper thing for the governing party to have done the moment Ademola Adeleke indicated interest in serving out his brother’s term, was to have simply conceded it to Ademola Adeleke. First the party first disqualified Alhaji Hussein, who is a serving commissioner in the lately assembled cabinet after a  one man riot squad of the governor himself alone running the state. Then the party came back to call for  a new selection which now said Ademola Adeleke was no longer the APC candidate. This created a lot of confusion and Adeleke pitched his tent with the rival PDP. With the resources at their command and the sympathy of the general public and the piled up frustration with Aregbesola’s style of administration, it did not come to me as a surprise that Adeleke won a personal battle and victory for his family which felt the government of Osun showed little sympathy to them after the death of their iconic head of the family and a former state governor of Osun State.  The government may have been legally correct in setting up a coroner’s inquest to find out the cause of the death of Isiaka Adeleke, but this was against the wish of the departed senator’s family. The government’s argument that it accommodated Isiaka Adeleke in the APC after being forced out of the PDP, and persuaded Husain to stand down for him in 2015 is not convincing because the political weight of Adeleke is much heavier than that of Hussein. I hope reconciliation with the new PDP senator, Ademola Adeleke can be arranged so that he can come back to the APC.

The government, immediately the rains stop, or even before that time, must find money to repair municipal roads in Osun State starting with the deplorable roads in Ede. The governor must go to Abuja to plead with the presidency for help. The defeat of the APC is a warning shot to the party. It must not ignore this. It must immediately react before it is too late or this will be a sad signal to what may happen in 2019. Many of us will be sad to see the corrupt regime of the past come back to finally finish off Nigeria.