“The democratic Bisi Akande administration that succeeded the military was an unmitigated disaster for many people in the state…”
Tomorrow, the people of Osun State will elect a new governor. To understand the significance of this election you need to know where the state is coming from and where it is now.
In 1991, the ministry of the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida had done the usual military magic of creating 12 new states taking the Nigerian States to 30. One of the newly created states then was Osun State, carved out of Oyo State. I was born in the old Oyo state but by the time I was old enough to start school, my state of origin had suddenly changed.
The people of Osun had high hopes for their new state and this was why they fought hard to have it created. But the last 32 years have not justified their high hopes as the state has languished for long under mediocre leadership, starting from the military regime of its first 8 years of its existence.
The democratic Bisi Akande administration that succeeded the military was an unmitigated disaster for many people in the state, most notable for the renewal of violence between Modakeke and Ife, general criminality and brigandage and political violence which many believe culminated in the assassination of Nigeria’s attorney general Chief Bola Ige, Osun leading politician of the time. Akande also embarked on a mass retrenchment of workers, especially in the education sector which set the sector on a path of accelerated decline.
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The state heaved a sigh of relief when Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola was elected in the PDP tsunami of 2003 but the honeymoon didn’t last as the new governor was voted out in 2007. Even though a new governor was elected in 2007 but it would take three years for him to be installed by the court, which meant that the state was in a state of uncertainty and near anarchy that limited any significant growth.
Governor Rauf Aregebsola eventually took over from Oyinlola in 2010 and spent eight years, making him the first Osun governor to be rewarded with a second term. The Aregbesola years were a mixed bag with some positive sparks, especially in infrastructural development in Osogbo and improved internal revenue generation. But the governor relied too much on an indefensible accumulation of debt. By 2015 the debt crisis had caught up and the state was struggling to even pay salaries while uncompleted projects dotted the landscape of the state. The salary arrears of his second term remains unpaid today while many projects of his projects remain either uncompleted or unused.
His handpicked successor, Isiaka Oyetola who won a keenly contested (some would say rigged) election in 2018, has been uninspiring and has surprisingly focused his energy on undoing some of the works of his predecessor and benefactor. In all this, Osun remains a character-less state known for nothing significantly positive or negative. Our state is not a leader in any field nor are we producing human capital at a rate higher than our peers. For now, we simply exist.
Tomorrow, Osun people will get another at choosing a leader that its people hope will take the state from mediocrity to excellence. Sadly, the election is a re-enactment of the 2018 elections between the incumbent and his PDP opponent, the equally uninspiring Jackson Ademola Adeleke.
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There are, of course, other candidates and at least one of them has shown some promise in the debate and in his engagement with the issues bedeviling Osun. Here, I refer to Hon. Lasun Yusuf, the 62-year-old ex-deputy speaker of the House of Representatives running on the platform of the Labour Party. To his disadvantage, however, Osun’s elections have always been a 2-party affair with no room for a third party.
The campaign of the two major candidates is unsurprisingly boring and without any substance, with the only excitement being the grotesque dance of Mr. Adeleke at every given opportunity. There have been no credible proposals for the various issues confronting the 31-year-old state. And there are many issues including a stagnating economy and IGR, unresolved debt, salary arrears, poorly equipped schools and hospitals, roads that are falling apart across the state, the destruction of the local government system, and the death of the water system, among many others.
Let’s take the debt for example. While the debt profile has been falling slightly thanks to direct deduction from the state’s federal allocation, Osun’s local and foreign debt still amounts to around N170Billion. This excludes tens of billions of naira in salary and pension debt owed to workers in the state. With IGR at around N20Billion, Osun remains dependent on its federal allocation. This means that the ability of the state to pay salaries and run smoothly depends on federal allocation that, historically, can fluctuate wildly.
In addition, while the local and foreign debts are being serviced in an arrangement with the FG, the incumbent has refused to make a serious dent in the salary and pension debt. His main opponent has promised to clear the arrears without explaining how he intends to do it. The election is gearing up to be a choice between two unserious candidates and it would not be surprising if turnout is as unimpressive as the candidates themselves.
