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Osun is moving; Aregbesola is Working

Friday, 25 July 2014

Osun: Issues in focus

Osun: Issues in focus

BY AYO OLUKOTUN
Viewpoint illustration
“My tenure in Osun by the Grace of God and the will of the people willend in 2018”
– Rauf Aregbesola, July 20, 2014
“If I meet Governor Rauf Aregbesola, I would greet him and tell him to be preparing his handover notes”
-Iyiola Omisore, July 20, 2014
The opening quotes sourced from the two leading candidates in the Osun governorship election indicate the keenness and intensity of the campaigns which will culminate in the August 9 election. There are, to be sure, 20 candidates jostling for the coveted seat but in reality the contest has been described aptly as a ‘three-tier horse race’ between the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, who is also the incumbent governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola; that of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senator Iyiola Omisore; and that of the Labour Party, Alhaji Fatai Akinbade.
Before assessing the candidates and their platforms, a few statistics are in order. Depending on which source you are citing, the population of the state is put variously at anywhere between 3.4 million (NPC) and 4.4 million (UNFPA). The Independent National Electoral Commission put the population of the registered voters at 1.25 million and the voter card holders, as of the end of April, at 59.6 per cent of that number, which is roughly 736, 000. The number of polling units is also put at 3,010. What this means is that less than 25 per cent of the population of the state will on August 9 decide the fate of the candidates. As a corollary, and in the absence of opinion polls suggested by The PUNCH columnist, Prof. Niyi Akinnaso, several of the outspoken debaters and stargazers on the election will neither vote nor will their views loom large on the polling day.
The other background matter worth attending to connects the issue of militarisation of the state along the lines of what happened in Ekiti State.
While the PDP members such as the Minister of State for Works, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, argued that the presence of soldiers in Ekiti encouraged the voters to come out in the confidence that no harm would befall them, spokespersons for the APC insist that the soldiers and the security agencies generally were not neutral arbiters but partisanly held the ring against the opposition APC.
As a matter of fact, a human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, has stated the opinion that the deployment of soldiers for elections is illegal. In the same vein, the APC has gone to court to restrain the Federal Government from deploying soldiers for the election.
Considering that the role of the military in the Ekiti election and the involvement of Alhaji Musiliu Obanikoro, Minister of State for Defence , viewed as a PDP hawk, has become matters of controversy, it might be unwise to repeat the Ekiti scenario of militarisation in Osun. Obviously, international attention will be focused on the election given that the United States has argued that it would be bell weather of the wider election of 2015.
Now, to the major candidates. Omisore of the PDP is not a new comer to Osun and national politics. He has held the positions of deputy governor as well as senator. Well educated, Omisore stakes his claim to governorship on an alleged deal between him and Bisi Akande that the latter would back him for governorship after four years in office; he argues to the bargain that he was already coasting home to succeeding Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola as the governor before the judicial victory and consequent swearing-in of Aregbesola in 2010.
There are issues however about the candidate one of which is memory of his alleged controversial involvement in the assassination of the former justice minister, Chief Bola Ige. It is conceivable that in spite of the candidate’s heated denial of alleged role in that tragic event, he has not succeeded in entirely laying the matter to rest.
Substantively, Omisore and his campaign team have mounted a spirited campaign challenging the achievements and even personality of the incumbent forcing the latter to defend his record. For instance, Omisore has punched holes in the incumbent track record by alleging that he has handed over the state to “strangers” by which it is meant Osun indigenes resident in Lagos. He has raised issues about the cost of some of Aregbesola’s projects; spotted errors in Opon Imo, a flagship achievement of the governor and alluded to the controversy raised by the schools’ merger and wearing of hijab.
Unfortunately, Omisore has spent more time putting his opponent on the spot and berating him than enunciating his own programmes. Although he has hinted at an eight-point agenda, the electorate is barely familiar with the high points of this programme as they are crowded out by his politics of attack and threats of repeating Ayo Fayose’s miracle victory in Ekiti.
The incumbent, Aregbesola rides on the wave of his governance record which centres on poverty reduction as illustrated by the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme, the facelift and modernisation of Osogbo, the state capital, educational reforms whose initial hiccups Aregbesola insists are more than compensated for by the adjunct of a far-flung project in which tailors, food vendors, and sundry artisans are employed through the provision of uniforms and the school feeding system. Articulating a neo-welfarist ideology on the lines of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Ogbeni, as he insists on being called (shunning the use of ‘His Excellency’) has, by and large, implemented visionary social programmes that have sought to bring governance to the nook and cranny of the state.
The Labour Party candidate, Akinbade, a former Secretary of the Osun State Government, would in other circumstances, considering his mettle, have been a high profile contender. But as it is, the two titans, Aregbesola and Omisore, have reduced him to the status of a backbencher. In the event of a neck to neck election, however, he might, ironically, come into his own as a ‘beautiful bride’. This may explain why he is being courted by both the APC and the PDP. It is unlikely however, if a level playing field is provided that the PDP would be able to repeat the “Fayose miracle”. In a text message sent to this writer, in the aftermath of my comment on the Ekiti election,
Pastor Biodun Bakare, after doing a post-mortem of that election, went on to say, “It is not going to be easy for Omisore in Osun State over Aregbesola because the latter is closer to the people”. In other words, Osun is a different kettle of fish from Ekiti to the extent that Aregbesola, who has a thriving grassroots organisational culture, cultivated a pro-people orientation. Significantly, and contrary to the expectation that religion will be an issue, several Christian leaders such as Bishop David Oyedepo and Pastor Enoch Adeboye, have endorsed the incumbent based on performance.
Conceivably, Omisore’s battle cry would have been anchored on change.
It would seem however that in the circumstances of a state, arguably, in the throes of governance upgrade and verifiable deliverables, the message of ‘change’ is unlikely to be heeded. The election, considering the various uses to which the omnibus ‘federal might’ might be put, may be closely fought but there is little doubt that the incumbent stands a more than even chance of winning.

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