Recently in the national dailies, the Governor of Osun State , Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola claimed that Osun state is “one of the best in Nigeria.” To buttress this view, he quoted the 2012 development index of the National Bureau of Statistics while speaking to the 42nd Annual General Meeting of Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria held in Oshogbo. He insisted that the Bureau rated Osun State as number two nationally after Niger state “in terms of poverty reduction.”
While there is nothing wrong if one is very proud of one’s state and speaks glowingly about it, it is at times more rewarding to be silent, or at best be mindful of one’s public statements, especially when that state is experiencing monumental human crisis of survival. A state where people are dying because of inability to afford 400naira asthma inhaler certainly cannot be said to be “one of the best” places to be in Nigeria. More so, quoting 2012 statistics in 2015 is disingenuous and fraudulent. It is part of the lies that is being woven into the fabrics of Osun state.
To come out and make such statements about Osun state is an evident of undue arrogance and condescension. It is a direct assault on the sensibilities of a state where several segments of the people have not had consistent income for several months because of inability of Ogbeni Aregbesola to pay salaries of workers resulting from his mismanagement of the state’s resources. This is a disdainful audacity and a taunting temerity. It is an effrontery deodorized in obnoxious foolishness.
A surgeon, Mehmet Oz once contended “As a surgeon you have to have a controlled arrogance. If it’s uncontrolled, you will kill people…” Aregbesola has been the “surgeon” operating on Osun State theater since 2010. He is entitled to some arrogance, especially a “controlled” one because of his initial successes. But like Dr. Oz posited, Aregbesola’s arrogance is becoming “uncontrolled” and he is “killing” the people of Osun state. He seems not to understand that in exuding a modicum of arrogance for whatever reasons, he ought not to “lose respect for the others” as once advised by Steffi Graf. He has to stop disrespecting the people of Osun state and needs to keep his ego in check.
It is about one year now since Ogbeni Aregbesola has been sworn in for the second term as the Executive Governor of Osun State. Since he has been sworn in, he has been running the state as a fiefdom. He has not appointed any Commissioner or Special Adviser. Like an Emperor, Osun State has been his Empire. He has been the Alpha and Omega of Osun State in this span under review. Given as excuse for not appointing commissioners and or advisers is the dwindling financial resources of the state in the last few years.
But for those who have been following the erratic Governor of Osun State since his first coming in 2010, this is a fib fit for the fiddle -faddle. This is because in his early years as the governor of Osun State during his first term, it took him about one year before he appointed any commissioner at all. That is how he came about the title of “emperor.” The title was actually given in admiration by the citizens of Osun state who had a lot of goodwill for him. They supported him completely and had his back. He was the man they waited for. He engaged the former governor of the state, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola for three and half years in the bid to reclaim his “stolen mandate.” The same Prince Oyinlola that he characterized as a “bully who came from a reactionary military arm” was the one Aregbesola begged on his knees to support his bid for second term in office.
The parting of ways with Emperor Aregbesola came when he was messing up our schools and meshing them together. He was mixing students of different denominations and faiths together. He mixed Methodists, Anglicans, Catholic, Cherubim and Seraphim, C.A.C., African Church and Baptist together and all became indistinguishable. He meshed Anwarudeeen, Nawarudeen, Ahmadiya and others together. He got the Christians to attend Muslim schools and vice versa to the consternation of everyone. The wearing of pudah led to several months of religious antagonism in Osun State widely known for peaceful co-existence.
In the course of wasting the meager resources of the state, he thoughtlessly and disrespectfully destroyed decades of our history and heritage. He destroyed the proud History of several great schools like Ilesha Grammar School, Ilesha; Oshogbo Grammar School, Oshogbo; Olivet Baptist High School, Iwo; Olivet Baptist High School, Ede; Fatima College, Ikire; Fakunle Comprehensive High School, Oshogbo; St. Charles Grammar School, Oshogbo; Atakumosa High School, Osu; Obokun High School, Ilesha; Oduduwa College, Ile-Ife; Anglican Grammar School, Otan Ayegbaju; St. Margarets, Ilesha; Our Lady’s of Apostles, Ile-Ife; Oluorogbo High School, Ile-Ife; St. John’s Grammar School Ile – Ife and several other historical schools like that.
These schools and several others of their ilk had special historical reasons why they were created by their owners and communities. They are expressions and symbols of certain epochs in the histories of their communities. They represent aprons to a beautiful past and threads to great future for their communities. They are sources of sentimental pride and emotional integrity to the communities in which these schools are domiciled. We advised him against the idea. We explained the ramifications of what he was doing. He was adamant, arrogant, blatant, and flagrant in his manners. At times, he was insulting and condescending to distinguished, well read, much more cultured and eminent personalities who are products of these schools who made concerted efforts to plead with him.
In a bid to change the face of Osun State, he had embarked on the development of infrastructure on a massive scale. He seemed to be a man in a hurry, which is not a crime. But he was imprudent and negligent. He engaged in building mega schools for which his party, APC, condemned the governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun “Iroko” Mimiko. He ensured the continuation of feeding elementary school pupils under the United Nations programmed that Governor Oyinlola started in conjunction with the United Nation and called it his own invention through propaganda. He deceived the people of Osun that he has been paying for the feeding of these children when this is indeed a United Nations programme.
He put in place a welfare program for the aged, a very laudable idea that was badly executed which an elderly man in Esa Odo characterized as “alaabaa” meaning “nonsense.” He used propaganda very effectively as he tagged his programmes O’YES, O’SCHOOLS, O’MEALS, O’RAMP, O’HEALTH, O’AMBULANCE, O’THIS and O’THAT. Now, the people of Osun are now singing of O’IGBESE meaning O’DEBT. In addition there is O’HUNGER, O’SICKNESS, O’POVERTY and O’DEATH pervading the entire state. Even “Opon Imo”, a special computer programme for the schools in Osun State that still resonates by the cyclopean nature of its failure, was tagged “Opon Eemo” by the people of the state.
The roads he embarked upon touched every nook and cranny of Osun State. There were those that eminently deserved rehabilitation. There were those roads that did not need immediate attention or were not of immediate economic value to the state. It did not matter the economic relevance of any road, Aregbesola was just constructing without planning and without thinking. He acted as if the state had unlimited resources. He began to borrow from left, right and center. He did not think of the rainy day. He had no planning for emergency times when resources would be thin. He was prodigal and profligate.
He was untutored, clueless and feeble-minded in his management style. He ended up mortgaging, and almost foreclosing the future of the state and its people. He was helplessly cursory, shallow and superficial. He exuded indolence and nonchalance. He had a laudable vision without serious planning of executing the vision. He conned the people to buy into his weird style and misled them. Aregbesola’s train sped without restraint towards the drain. He is a monumental tragedy of inestimable proportions for the ordinary people of Osun State. He bastardized the memory of Great Awo by sacrilegiously calling his own philosophy of governance Awoism. Can you imagine?
Ogbeni Aregbesola has been displaying an arrogance that is noxious and a condescension that is odiously patronizing. He goes around with an “all – knowing” air that is nauseating at best and yet goes to the State Executive Council meetings to doze most of the times. He should realize that Osun state comprises mild mannered but highly educated people. You cannot continue to play on their intelligence. Enough is enough about all these lies and deceits. He needs to come clean on what he has done with the people’s commonwealth in Osun State.
Aregbesola’s “Tinubu mentality” where everyone is a “yes man” and is afraid to ask him questions cannot work and is not acceptable in Osun State. He may not have respect for the people of Osun, but we have respect for ourselves. We are tired of his rascal behavior of being a perpetual late comer to all and every event to make himself feel unnecessarily important. What kind of importance could one seek when one is the sitting governor of a state except one is a sociopathic egomaniac? He is so contemptuous of the people that he would make them wait several hours at several events before showing up. He holds our Obas in contempt and insults them with dexterous subtlety at will. Yet, in his time of need, he ran to some of these traditional rulers to bail him out of trouble by begging them to appeal to the people not to revolt.
This last year has been the worst in the history of Osun state and its people. Never since its inception has the state been so regressive, transposed and obscurantist. Its people have never been so distraught, distressed and discomposed. They have never been so tormented, rattled and troubled. The Iyalojas are disillusioned, disenchanted and disenthralled. The commercial drivers are frustrated, resentful and stymied. Farmers have become more subsistent than commercial since there is no liquid cash in circulation to buy their products. There is no drought in the state but there is famine and hunger as its concomitant.
Our institutions have never been so demobilized and disabled. The judiciary is laid detritus. The hospitals have become slaughter slabs. The State Assembly is not just a rubberstamp, it is a melted one that cannot even be usefully appropriated for rubberstamping. There is no subsisting State Executive Council. No single Board of Parastatal is currently in place. The schools have become odious gathering of mystified and derisive children, contemptuous of culture, contumelious of courtesy, sardonic to decency and engaged in maniacal mockery of manners. The civil service has become servile, obsequious and paralyzed as a result of constant pummeling and victimization.
The people of Osun, ambitious but cautious, have been thoroughly humiliated. Their self confidence has been seriously undermined. Their stability has been seismically assaulted. Their trust has been betrayed. Their communality has been rendered disconsonant and discordant. Lies and lies have been told to confuse them. Their intelligence has been relentlessly assaulted and insulted. It is a season of anomie in Osun State.
Emperor Aregbesola and his men are threatening democracy in Osun state. Freedoms of speech and association are being violated. Osun citizens could no longer publicly debate and discuss their woes under Emperor Aregbesola without being attacked by his paid thugs. He has unleashed terror on the people of Osun State as if that would make all his errors go away. Public protesters are under attack. Public discussions and debate have become riskier and dangerous. There have been threats of assassination against dissenters. The people are being intimidated and harassed.
Osun State is in the throes of death, its thread stretched to its breadth, gasping for breath. The APC members in Osun State should begin to think of the party without Aregbesola and his inner circle. They should begin to find ways to ease him out for the good of the party and the people of Osun state. If the APC leadership would not remove Aregbesola from power this is the time for their followers to come to their senses and begin to abandon them, seeking a viable alternative either within the party or outside the party. Every man, woman, young or old must begin to have conversation on the way out of Aregbesola’s quagmire. This macabre dance cannot continue to go on in the interest of security, peace, progress and the much needed prosperity.