18th July, 2022
By Korede Abdullah
The Osun State governorship election has come and gone. One of the dramatis personae in the political drama of the state and former governor of the state, Rauf Aregbesola deliberately played an unabashed saboteur. In all his shenanigans, the most shocking to me is that Aregbesola still has the temerity to brag about his treachery in the governorship election in which Ademola Adeleke of the PDP clinched victory. He made a hypocritical tweet to spite the APC and its candidate, Governor Gboyega Oyetola, over his defeat.
How does one undermine the platform that has shot one into the political limelight? How will he bring down a whole roof of the building because of his parochial interest? Here is a man who has been a commissioner for eight years in Lagos State. He later went to his home state to become the governor and spent eight years with the support of those he has turned into his enemies!
Despite the fact, his performance, in terms of bringing the dividends of democracy to the people was not that stellar, Baba Kabiru was rallied around by the party apparatchiks who made sure he won his second term amidst the baggage of unpaid salaries to workers dangling precariously on his neck. Making snide remarks about your political platform on which you are currently holding a very big position is the highest form of political apostasy. It’s a moral burden on him to still strut around as a minister under a party he has helped to emasculate in his state.
It’s also very unfortunate that we have a political weakling as the president who will never lift his finger against Aregbe even though it is obvious the Minister of the Interior is a political turncoat. An office holder who has not committed half of the political sacrilege like Aregbe would have received the hammer under Obasanjo’s presidency. Even Goodluck Jonathan, as meek as he appears, could not have stomached such brazen sabotage by his political appointee. But President Buhari as usual will look the other way as if nothing is amiss.
All said the Osun election should serve as a lesson that in a democracy, power resides in the people. I learned that governor Oyetola didn’t make any reconciliatory move to the aggrieved party members since the governorship primary election in the state. He should have learned forgiveness and how to build bridges of friendship from Asiwaju Tinubu. Instead of crying over spilt milk, the APC stakeholders should brace up for the task ahead which is to ensure the Jagaban’s victory in 2023. This can only be achieved by going back to the drawing board and uniting all the aggrieved APC members in the Southwest. Politics, just like sport, we win some and lose some. Congratulations to the Osun State governor-elect, Senator Ademola Adeleke!
*Korede Abdullahi, a lawyer, writer and public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos
Aregbesola’s old war song video like the one below is still fresh in people’s memory:
