On Tuesday, workers in Osun State, under the auspices of organised labour, massed at the entrance to the State Secretariat in Abere, Osogbo, where they held a victory rally celebrating the victory of Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party in the hard-fought Saturday, August 15 governorship poll. Contrary to oft-repeated opposition claims that Nigeria’s democracy was endangered by the alleged emergence of one-party dominance by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the Osun poll demonstrated that democracy is indeed alive, well, and vigorous in the country.
The mass support of workers was without doubt a decisive factor in the outcome of the election. Widely dubbed a civil servant state, the labour unions had, before the elections, indicated a near-unanimous support for Adeleke’s re-election for a second term. It is ironic that the APC and its ideologically ‘progressive’ predecessors in Osun State, the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which ought to be natural allies of labour, had always had electorally costly, fraught relationships with workers in the ‘State of the living spring’.
Perhaps the best governor yet in Osun in this dispensation since 1999, in terms of disciplined and focused governance as well as infrastructure delivery, Chief Bisi Akande, lost his re-election bid in 2003 partly as a result of protracted industrial disputes between his government and workers. The resort to paying half salaries to workers, partly due to excessive and chaotic populism and the consequent overextension of resources, became an albatross on the neck of the Ogbeni Raufu Aregbesola administration.
Although Aregbesola narrowly won re-election for a second term in 2014, his successor, Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola, only barely edged out his major opponent, Mr Ademola Adeleke, the current governor, after a contentious run-off poll in 2018. Oyetola’s restoration of fiscal discipline and seriousness to governance in Osun enabled him to begin to pay workers their full salaries.
However, his administration reportedly inexplicably failed to clear the arrears of half salaries owed to workers, which it inherited from the Aregbesola administration.
Thus, in addition to the deep fissures within the ranks of the APC as a result of the bitter feud between the Aregbesola and Oyetola tendencies in the party, continued workers’ grievances were again contributory to propelling Adeleke to the Osun State Government House in 2022 on the platform of the PDP. Given his reflexive love for dancing at the slightest hint of music, Adeleke’s adversaries, particularly in the APC, offhandedly dismissed him as unserious, undisciplined and undeserving of re-election for a second term.
Yet, the dancing governor promptly not only paid the full salaries and entitlements of civil servants and other public sector workers, but he also reportedly cleared the backlog of arrears of half salaries carried over from the Aregbesola era while also paying arrears of debts owed to pensioners. Thus, the enthusiastic support of workers, the reasonable impact his administration made in road infrastructure delivery in key urban centres, his disarming humility and the continued disharmony in the APC provided the context for Adeleke’s emphatic victory in last Saturday’s election.
In a way, Adeleke seems destined to be the APC’s nemesis in the politics of Osun State. Even as the meltdown in his former party, the PDP, worsened, he made strenuous efforts to join the APC as many other governors had done and were enthusiastically received into the ruling party. President Bola Tinubu was reportedly favourably disposed to Adeleke’s decamping into the APC, with all the advantages of incumbency this would confer on his party. But the leadership of the APC in Osun had other ideas. ExecutiveBranch
They vehemently and clamorously resisted the governor’s joining their party, insisting that they did not need his support to regain control of the state at the forthcoming polls. The President bowed to their wishes, and Adeleke moved into the Accord Party with nearly the entire structure of his faction of the PDP, save for the departure of a few prominent names from the PDP to the APC. It was on the platform of the Accord Party that he polled 511,067 votes, winning in 19 of the 30 Local Government Areas in Osun to emerge victorious against Asiwaju Bola Oyebamiji of the APC, who scored 444,815 votes and secured victory in eleven LGAs.
Instructively, when the Senator representing Osun West Senatorial District, Alhaji Isiaka Adeleke, the Osun State governor’s senior brother, died, Asiwaju Tinubu had then strongly urged that Ademola Adeleke, a member of the ACN, be fielded to fill the vacancy in the by-election on the platform of the ACN. The then governor, Raufu Aregbesola, stoutly resisted the move. Adeleke contested for the Senatorial seat on the platform of the PDP in 2017 and roundly trounced the ACN candidate.
The APC leadership in Osun claimed that their governorship candidate, Oyebamiji, is an accomplished financial expert and serious-minded technocrat with an impressive public service record, and they may be right. But irrespective of his qualities, he was Commissioner for Finance in both the Aregbesola and Oyetola administrations, and it is unlikely that workers would be able to distance him from their grievances with both administrations. In the same way, despite their latter disagreements, Oyetola was Chief of Staff in the Aregbesola administration for eight years and an inevitable inheritor of the administration’s electoral assets and liabilities.
For a party that rejected the incumbent governor from joining its ranks, one would have thought that the APC would do everything to mend fences among its members, heal internal wounds and fight the election as a harmonious entity. The outcome of the elections indicates that several alienated leaders of the party, such as Senator Iyiola Omisore, who was peremptorily disqualified from participating in the governorship primaries, were either indifferent or their supporters voted against the party.
Even then, the APC’s score of 444,815 votes, despite its internal divisions and the seemingly arrogance-induced complacency of its leadership, is suggestive of a party with solid electoral structures and strength on the ground with bright future potentials if remedial surgical reorganisation is undertaken now. Coming shortly after the Conference of Catholic Bishops, particularly John Cardinal Onaiyekan, had cast doubt on the integrity and credibility of INEC as well as insinuated the alleged desperation of President Tinubu to ensure electoral victory for his party at all costs, the Osun elections demonstrate the dangers of brazen partisanship by supposedly credible bodies like the Catholic Bishops.
President Tinubu has received widespread commendation for his statesmanlike refusal to unleash federal might on behalf of the Osun APC; INEC has attracted accolades for its professionalism and efficiency, and the security agencies, particularly the police, for their neutrality and partisan detachment. Curiously, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) expressed the view that “Nigerians have roundly rejected the APC. The election in Osun State is just a telling indication that the APC will be defeated in the general election in January 2027. Indeed, it is a forerunner of the 2027 General Elections.”
Yet, this is an ADC whose candidate, Najeem Salaam, garnered just 17,180 votes in the election despite its National Secretary, Ogbeni Raufu Aregbesola, being a former two-term governor of Osun State and a former Minister of Interior. National Publicity Secretary of the ADC, Bolaji Abdullahi, has attempted the face-saving kindergarten spin that the party worked for Adeleke to prevent an APC victory in the election.
But Governor Adeleke has affirmed unequivocally that “I commend political partners who went all out to make Saturday a victory day for all Osun people. But for the sake of history, we must clarify that ADC was never part of the alliance”. And as for the 2027 presidential election, Adeleke again minced no words: “Mr President is a son of Osun State, and I hereby reaffirm my earlier endorsement of him for a second term in the 2027 presidential election.”
At the workers’ rally to celebrate Adeleke’s victory, the Osun State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Christopher Arapasopo, said the workers’ union was proud of the President and declared its support for his second-term bid, stressing that allowing the people’s vote to count demonstrated Tinubu ‘s commitment to democracy. In his words, “The President has demonstrated that truly he is the son of the soil. We are proud of him because he has demonstrated that, yes, he is the father of the nation”. Surely, the ADC must be living in a fool’s paradise.
NOTE: Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Theliberationnews
