The upcoming elections in Osun State have again revealed how far politicians are willing to go in securing their personal agenda at the expense of the citizenry. For the fact that the incumbent Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, like many other governors in Nigeria, have little to show for his 8-year term in office, last minute measures are being employed at a scale never witnessed.
Often seen priding himself in guerilla politics, the governor and his backers are leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that the candidate his godfather, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has selected is in a turn of political appreciation elected as the next governor of the state come September 22nd, 2018. Aregbesola, who once served as Commissioner for Works under Bola Tinubu before earning the backing of his principal to contest the gubernatorial elections in Osun state has every conviction to help install Gboyega Oyetola – who is rumoured to be Tinubu’s cousin.
In a rare show of twisted transparency, Tinubu, who also has familial roots in Osun state, was recorded to have publicly remarked in the presence of the Ataoja of Osogbo, that Oyetola, the APC gubernatorial candidate whom he specially backed, has no motivation to steal state funds because there is no money in the state to steal in the first place. For an upright APC National Leader, who is pushing a candidate from the same party where the outgoing governor comes from, such statement is an indictment on the dilapidated state the finances of the state has been left to rot in.
That Governor Aregbesola allowed such statement to also go unchallenged is an attestation to his failure in office as regarding the improvement of the state resources as well as bettering the lives of the people. It was the same lingering excuse given by the governor for years that the state is broke, thus workers and pensioners have not been able to earn their full emoluments for years until last week when a part of the tranche was disbursed. If not that the Paris Club’s refund was hurriedly allocated to Osun in the spate of same unpaid salaries controversy, workers in the state would still have been left to hope for entitlements which would never come.
That the Accountant General of the State resigned in protest of the shady manner disbursements of monies are about to be made, is also a testimony to the non-transparent manner the state machinery is employing to swing the resolve of impressionable voters as regards the coming elections.
From the targeted unveiling of the TraderMoni scheme by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo which has been interpreted to more or less mean vote buying, to the hurried release of the ₦16.6 billion Paris Club refund by the Federal Government to the state, all fingers point in the direction of using state resources to influence voter decision.
This appears to be an unfortunate trend gaining traction in the polity anyway: something of this nature was done in Ekiti State just days before the election when Governor Ayodele Fayose sanctioned that a certain sum of money masked as ‘salary arrears’ be paid into the bank accounts of public workers. As the opposition would not be left slacking away in strategy, they equally shared cash monies in thousands to the electorate who showed evidence of voting for their party. This event in Ekiti has indeed set a bad precedent in upcoming elections – already evident in the Osun State elections.
In the light of all these messes, we shall again remind ourselves of the real importance of governance that some crop of usurpers might not take the silence of the people for granted whilst continuing to perpetuate their own selfish agenda election after election. It is only right for the electorate to seek deeper beyond the propaganda and optics, and to look beyond party lines in our choice of candidates as elections are beginning to rush at us from every corner of the country.
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