Tension remained very high for most of yesterday through out Osun State as the two leading candidates in today’s gubernatorial election, incumbent governor Rauf Aregbesola of the All Progressives Congress and Iyiola Omisore of the Peoples Democratic Party made discreet last minutes moves to woo voters.
Security was tight across the state as tough-looking soldiers, policemen and Department of State Security personnel were seen patrolling major streets.
About 73,000 security operatives including 15,000 soldiers, 30,000 policemen, 8,000 DSS operatives and 20,000 civil defence “personnel have been deployed to maintain law and order during election.
Source said men of the anti-terrorism squad are part of those drafted to the state and “are already searching for dangerous weapons including improvised explosive devices.
Today’s election is expected to be a straight fight between Aregbesola and Omisore. While Aregbesola will be banking on the incumbency factor and his record of achievements in the last three and half years, Omisore will benefit largely from being the candidate of the ruling party at the national level and the “federal might” that comes with it.
However, Omisore’s tainted past, particularly his alleged role in the death of Chief Bola Ige “may work against him.
Meanwhile, the Osun State Police Command has announced a 24-hours curfew in the state.
The state’s supervising commissioner of police, Mr. Augustine Evbakhabokun said this was done to guide against intruders, thugs and other electoral violators who might want to hijack the election for their own interest.
While addressing the press in Osogbo yesterday, Evbakhabokun directed that no politicians, no matter his or her position must be seen with police orderly during the election.”
Evbakhabokun added that nobody would be allowed to carry fireman to the polling poll, stressing that violator of the electoral law will not be speared.
He urged politicians to play the game according to the rules and regulation guiding the electoral law.
He warned “all trouble makers” to relocate from the state in their own interest, saying those caught violating the law will face the music.
The Acting Inspector General of Police, Mr. Sulaiman Abba had earlier warned that trouble -makers caught during the election would face the wrath of the law.
Abba assured that adequate security would be provided for electorates, electoral officers and stakeholders before, during and after the poll adding that the Police was prepared to check any break- down of law and order.
The Police boss equally noted that nobody would be allowed to intimidate voters and warned political thugs and their sponsors to beware as the police are fully ready to protect lives and properties of the citizens.
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega yesterday re-affirmed that the commission would ensure that the election in Osun is transparent, fair, free, credible and acceptable nationwide.
Jega said: “The commission remains focused and firm in conducting a credible poll in Osun State that will show the entire world that Nigeria can handle her internal democracy for others to copy.”
He urged all the candidates to refrain from lawlessness and promised that security men would not molest, harass or intimidate eligible voters during the election.
Also yesterday, INEC released an information kit on  today’s election ‘which shows a total of 1,407, 222 valid number of voters (post-March 2014 Continuous Voter Registration (CVR)).
The Osun State REC disclosed that 10,432 Ad hoc staff had been recruited for the election.
Agbaje said that three security agents would man a polling unit, while the whole local government councils would be secured through coordinated motorized patrols to forestall any breakdown of law and order by unscrupulous elements.
Meanwhile, the National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Oyegun yesterday alleged that the party had uncovered what he termed “PDP’s manual plan to rig governorship election in Osun State.”
Oyegun, at a press conference in Osogbo yesterday alleged that the manual had been completed with projected fake results in all the 30 local government areas of the state.
He said that the rigging plans were contained in two documents prepared by the PDP in Osun, “which are now in the possession of the APC.”
THISDAY

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The Osun State Government has declared today (Friday), August 8, 2014 as public holiday to allow voters living within and outside the state capital to travel to their various towns ahead of Saturday’s governorship poll.

A statement by the state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Sunday Akere, said the holiday is to enable residents and civil servants, who would be travelling to different parts of the state to perform their civic duties, have enough time to travel without hitches.

He charged electorate in the state to conduct themselves peacefully while travelling to their destinations and at their various polling units during the poll on Saturday.

The commissioner counsel members of the public not to panic with the heavy presence of security operatives in the state, saying they are in the state to ensure their safety and credibility of the election on Saturday.

He added that the state Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, is committed to security of lives and properties of the teeming populace in the state at all times, saying Saturday would not be an exception.

Akere appealed to the people of the state to troop out en mass to exercise their franchise on Saturday without fear of being intimidated by anyone.

In the same vein, the state government has instructed all OYES cadets across the state not to wear their uniform to the polling units. It also called on security agents to arrest anybody found wearing the uniform, as they will likely be nothing but fake cadets.

DAILY INDEPENDENT

BEING A JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE ADDRESSED BY ALL STUDENTS ASSOCIATION IN THE STATE OF OSUN, COMPRISING THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN STUDENTS, JOINT CAMPUS COMMITTEE (NANS/JCC), NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF OSUN STATE STUDENTS (NAOSS), AND ALL THE STUDENT UNIONS IN THE TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS IN THE STATE OF OSUN ON THE FORTH COMING AUGUST 9 GOVERNORSHIP ELECTION

Gentle men of the press, we thank you for your support in covering our mass rally, from Old garage Osogbo, state capital, state of Osun, we considered this as a generational responsibility and a bold step to sustain our democracy, all what we are asking for is one man one vote and that the sanity of our system must be protected through a free, fair and credible election, that will devoid all method of manipulation, we have heard  of many new rigging inventions, Zimbabwe option, fading, coding of ballot papers and all other forms of rigging method, the students in the state will not allow any form of rigging and will not accept any result which does not reflects the wish of the people.

We are also against militarization and all other form of security harassment that will suppress the popular participation of the people in the coming election. We are deeply concern as stakeholders because whatever decision people will take in August 9 will also affects our various institutions and future of education sector in the state, it is a decision about our life, our future and survival, therefore, credible election in Osun is not negotiable as posited in our leaflets circulated during the mass rally.

Another very important issue we also intend to address here today is a misrepresentation, malicious and false claim by some unscrupulous   students who are impersonating as the students leaders in the state,

We are compelled by the student populace to clear the air on this falsification of the peoples consent and misrepresentation of facts.

Very early Saturday morning, our attention was drawn to a publication in the Saturday Punch Newspaper (August 2) titled “Student Deny Endorsing Aregbesola” where some unidentified students were reported to have denounced the endorsement of the state Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola by the student populace.

For the avoidance of doubt, there is no students association in Osun today bearing Osun State Students Association as claimed by the unidentified students that the story was credited to and at no time did our Students Union Presidents  from Osun State Polytechnic, Adetunji Peter Oluwaseyi, Federal Polytechnic, Ede, Bashir Saheed; Students’ Union, President, Osun State College of Education, Ila-Orangun, Abiodun Saheed signed or gave their consent on any statement denouncing the endorsement of Aregbesola. Those names were only included to give legitimacy to their illegal student organizations.

We want to state categorically that the above mentioned Students Union Presidents had no knowledge of the purported statement and we want the members of the public to know that it is a ploy by some politician to divide the students. The affected presidents are here today to tell the world that they knew nothing about the fake statement.

Since the creation of the this state, the only indigenous student body is National Association of Osun State Students ( NAOS) currently led by Ojo Omowaye as President. As we all know, NANS/ JCC Osun Axis is currently led by Awowole Samuel, as Chairman. This is the only structure legally reorganized as interface between institutions under the national structure of NANS.

Osun student however rejects and dismiss the report in its entirety  and affirm that our union president were not party to such ridiculous claim, It is our believe that there is no reason whatsoever for the students in Osun not to support the second term ambition of Governor Rauf Aregbesola, first, as a leading light in the student revolutionary struggle against military and tyranny in 70s, as symbol of development and good governance who has been tested and trusted  and secured the confidence of the mass through honesty, transparency and unusual courage to make life more abundant for the people.

This is a man that beyond the imagination of many  has democratize education that the ruling class has turned to the exclusive right of the rich within 3 years through the 50% reduction in tuitions in the state owned tertiary institutions, increment of bursary allowance from the ridiculous N3,000 to N10,000, Law and Medical Students from N10,000 to N100,000, increment in the subvention in public schools, and the school feeding and health programme for the school children at the elementary level coupled with massive infrastructural development in the educational sector and many more.  These developmental projects and other revolutionary ties informed our support for Aregbesola

For clarity, Performance and development was the basis of our relationship and support for Aregbesola second term, that is why we participated in a rally organized by some youths and students organizations to rally support for the governor Aregbesola last week, and we stand by that support . This support is very important for Aregbesola not only as a product of our revolutionary extraction with the  same ideological  tie , but as a leader who has demonstrated uncommon political will to selvage education.

We must state here that it is not that we don’t have disagreement with the governor in the past or our support is the termination of any future radical and conscious engagement with the government, it will never, because the previous engagements was never about individual it is about the system and very confident to say that so far so good there are unprecedented, rapid and radical improvement in the system. Therefore we must not be blindfolded in playing our crucial role to eliminate opportunism, mediocrity and reactionary in the supreme reign of power. This is where we stand.

YNAIJA

Photos of the Governor State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola  acknowledging cheers from his Supporters, during the 16th Edition of the Walk to Live Exercise in Osogbo, State of Osun on Thursday 07-08-2014

Supporters of Governor Rauf Aregbesola participating in the 16th Edition of the Walk to Live Exercise in Osogbo. Insert: From left, Acting Chairman, All Progressives Congress (APC), Osun Chapter, Elder Adelowo Adebiyi; Deputy Governor, Mrs Titi Laoye-Tomori; Governor Rauf Aregbesola; his Wife, Sherifat and others, on Thursday 07-08-2014

Supporters of Governor Rauf Aregbesola participating in the 16th Edition of the Walk to Live Exercise in Osogbo. Insert: From left, Acting Chairman, All Progressives Congress (APC), Osun Chapter, Elder Adelowo Adebiyi; Deputy Governor, Mrs Titi Laoye-Tomori; Governor Rauf Aregbesola; his Wife, Sherifat and others, on Thursday 07-08-2014

Governor State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola (arrowed) acknowledging cheers from his Supporters, during the 16th Edition of the Walk to Live Exercise in Osogbo, State of Osun on Thursday 07-08-2014

From left, Acting Chairman, All Progressives Congress (APC), Osun Chapter, Elder Adelowo Adebiyi; Deputy Governor, Mrs Titi Laoye-Tomori; Governor Rauf Aregbesola; his Wife, Sherifat and others, during the 16th Edition of the Walk to Live Exercise in Osogbo, State of Osun on Thursday 07-08-2014

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters” —– Abraham Lincoln
Is it true that voters must have faith in the electoral process for our democracy to succeed? If this is correct, then could it be rightly said that voters in this country genuinely have faith in the ongoing Professor Attahiru Jega-tutored electoral process? Then, how far has this impacted on the country’s democracy? This column is not oblivious of the fact that politicians and the people are all part of the electoral process; otherwise, there would be no process at all.
Political leaders do emerge from the political class and it is from the people that we get the electorate that vote during periodic elections. But because the political leadership most times reneges on its promises to the people, the electoral process has always been a fierce contest between forces contending for political power.
Naturally, the Election Day is always a judgment day in countries where votes count. It is a day for deciding whether those in power actually impact lives positively, changed destinies and made people’s dreams and expectations come true. The inception of a political tenure is the seed-sowing time, while the harvest period is the day of election. So, it is better to sow at the right time to have a bountiful harvest on the day of political judgment in the court of the electorate.
In Osun State, tomorrow is that Day of Judgment. There is going to be a real test of electioneering and democratic values as voters in the state go to the polls. The task before the electorate of that state is to elect a leader that would steer the ship of the state for another four years. The incumbent, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, is seeking a fresh mandate on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Senator Iyiola Omisore is flying the flag of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), while Alhaji Fatai Akingbade is contesting under the banner of Labour Party. The irony is that all former governors of the state, including Isiaka Adeleke, Bisi Akande and Olagunsoye Oyinlola are in the APC plotting against the emergence of Omisore, the seeming major contender against incumbent, as governor. This gives a worrisome impression about the personality of the PDP candidate.
Omisore has deployed many stunts just to convey a deceitful populist perception of himself. They include his widely publicised photographs of where he was buying corns on the road and riding motor cycle, commonly called Okada. Those images have merely portrayed his deceitfully theatrical side which has no basis in sane governance.
Yours sincerely believes that Osun people must be careful in making a choice tomorrow. Euripides, Orestes might have had someone like Omisore in mind when he said: “When one with honeyed words but evil mind persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.” For instance, Omisore, whether rightly or wrongly, has without knowing, built a notorious image for himself in the political history of that state.
Many believe that if he ever gets to power, which is very unlikely, Osun will turn into Hobbesian state of brute and force devoid of ideas and reason.
Whatever reservations yours sincerely might have for the defection of people like Oyinlola to APC, he, at least, made a profound statement that corroborated the above public perception of Omisore during Aregbesola’s Osogbo Federal Constituency Campaign Mega Rally earlier in the week. Oyinlola could not have known Omisore less – having been  in the same PDP with him over a reasonable long period of time – not to have known the implication of reviving the death of late Bola Ige at that rally, where he said: “Omisore is selfish and self-centred. I did not know who and how Bola Ige was killed. What I know is that Omisore was accused of killing Chief Bola Ige. When Omisore wanted to nominate a person to fill my seat as PDP National Secretary, he chose Professor Wale Oladipo. He also nominated Jelili Adesiyan, my former Commissioner for Education, for ministerial position. Adesiyan, Oladipo and Omisore were imprisoned for their alleged complicity in Bola Ige’s death.’’
He reportedly continued further: ‘Omisore also picked Gani Olaoluwa, who was also detained on Bola Ige’s death, as PDP chairman in the state. My question is: Is it until we are all turned to criminals or imprisoned before we can get political office? The person they are proposing to pick as senatorial candidate in Osun Central, Kunle Alao, known as Lele, was also a co-detainee with Omisore, Oladipo and Adesiyan on Bola Ige’s death.’ Omisore has not given any published satisfactory response to the Oyinlola effusions against him. The Osun voters might be interested in having his convincing response before tomorrow’s election.
In contrast to Omisore, Aregbesola, notwithstanding his touted inadequacies, is genuinely popular of all the candidates and on comparative basis, has done his best for the state in almost four years that he was in the saddle. Apart from contesting under a formidable opposition platform, Aregbesola, as if hearkening to the true meaning of his name, is a steadfast party man. His compelling intellectual oratory, simplicity, commitment to service, sense of humour and ability to blend with the high and mighty in the society, add up to give him a remarkable edge. His policies including Opon Imo, O’Meals scheme and his employment-generation ability, especially for the youth, are admirably inspiring. The incumbent is indeed popular and loved by the Osun people.
It is this Aregbesola’s genuine affinity with his people that calls for caution from the ruling PDP not to be hell-bent on having that way at all costs tomorrow. President Goodluck Jonathan’s public statement that tomorrow’s election will be highly policed and militarised is misplaced. Ekiti election was militarised and despite the fact that this was not why Governor Kayode Fayemi was voted out does not make it right. In yours sincerely’s view, militarization is act of assembling and putting into readiness for war or other emergency, the soldiers and entire military of a country. This is no war in Osun tomorrow; it is an election.
And in case President Jonathan and his Minister of Defence had forgotten the provisions of the constitution (as amended), it is better to restate it here for their kind and keen attention: Section 215(3) of the 1999 Constitution vested in the Police the exclusive power to maintain and secure public safety and public order in the country. On the other hand, the President has the power as enshrined in the constitution in section 217(2) of the Constitution to deploy the armed forces for the “suppression of insurrection and acting in aid of civil authorities to restore law order.”
Again, where is insurrection in any part of Osun as the state prepares for tomorrow’s election? Does the deployment of military and hooded security men not amount to usurpation of police powers with regards to maintenance of law and order? Now, my message to Osun people:
Democracy requires eternal vigilance. They must do everything to protect their votes jealously, lest they have a costly error to pay for!
THE NATION

I write this piece on the gubernatorial elections holding in Osun State. Its objective is basically to remind my friends and fellow compatriots in the south-west geopolitical zone of our country of what is at stake in tomorrow’s polls; the huge price they will have to pay if by dint of what is now called ‘stomach infrastructure’ or sheer complacency they allow an irredentist, warped and corrupt central authorities to usurp their autonomy.
Western Nigerian matters for a number of reasons. One, its people have an inherent quest for freedom to express itself, a streak that runs through its history and the consequent civil wars in the pre-colonial era and the resistance of the immediate post-colonial years. Two, in post-independent Nigeria, largely dominated by the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy, the peoples of the South-west and their cousins/neigbours in the Mid-west have ensured that the federal essentiality of the Nigerian state remains on the front burner of national discourse and its most abiding philosophical guide are contained in the deep philosophical writings of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, such as Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution (1966).
Chief Obafemi Awolowo, an accomplished thinker, argued that peoples with different culture attributes such as language and religion are best organised under a federal system. In his words, “In this connexion we should be reminded that of all the cultural equipments of a people, language is the most formidable, the most irrepressible, and the most resistant to diffusion, not to talk of fusion. It lies at the base of human divisions and divergences. And historical evidences of an irrefutable nature have shown firstly, that you can unite but can never succeed in unifying peoples whom language has set distinctly apart from one another; and secondly, that the more educated a linguistic group becomes, the stronger it waxes in its bid for political self-determination and autonomy, unless it happens to be the dominant group (emphasis in original).”
Western Nigeria has made the quest for education a categorical imperative from which the people elicit their abiding strength for freedom. With education comes what Paulo Freire has called ‘transitive consciousness’ out of ‘semi-transitive consciousness’ underlined by a limited sphere of perception, resistance to challenges outside the sphere of biological vitals into the  former,  a world typified by “in-depth interpretation of problems”, acceptance of responsibility,  rejection of passivity, and embrace of rationality. This is why the dominant paradigm less explored by scholars and which I have explored in “My Politics in Western Nigeria” (forthcoming) is the development paradigm. It is the defining element of Yoruba politics; when it detracts from it, it has suffered consequences because those who often deviate from the course of freedom and development are usually lackeys of the irredentist centre aforementioned and they are often imposed by undemocratic means and they are not short in supply these days of politics being the only business in town.
Politics in western Nigeria much earlier in the 1950s demonstrated that politics was for philosopher-kings; to be in politics is to serve and to seek wealth in monetary terms is to be in business, a fact that is now stood on its head by irredentists and bashers of the Nigerian estate.
The challenge of development in the country today often draws its strength from what the state actors in this geopolitical zone have always done in the abiding faith and with Platonic conviction that justice inheres in the pursuit of the common good. As I have said elsewhere, western Nigeria is news, an event in the social order called Nigeria, always pointing up hitherto unimagined possibilities. It established the first television station in Africa, pursued a rigorous free education policy and sundry other innovations which feudal and conservatives forces elsewhere in the country would struggle to imitate. It was the Yorubas who introduced that competitive spirit into our development and governance universe. It is a fact that our country have always struggled on the edge of tyrannical order; the counteractive force against all dictatorial tendencies, arguably, has always come from the western Nigeria.
There is a general perception today among Nigerians that any Nigerian from any part of this country can now govern this country with the mandate of the people. This was not the assumption some years ago. When the June12, 1993 election was annulled, the logic was that the Lugardian architecture, which meant that power must always reside in the north, should never be altered. Chief M.K. O. Abiola paid the supreme price and many of us managed to be alive in that titanic struggle. The resistance altered the power succession process in the country. This has come to stay and any attempt to revert to status quo would result in consequences of unimaginable proportion. The transient nature of power is a value that we must all cultivate.
What is the plot of the irredentist centre under the watch of President Jonathan? The plot is to subvert the above values by huge monetary inducement, all foul stratagems and in particular the use of force, especially the military whose esprit de corps has been destroyed by past military regimes and are now be subjected to a re-enactment of the ‘Glover syndrome’ in which the citizens are perceived as the enemy (and we are already reaping the consequences in the so-called war against insurgency in northeastern Nigeria). The military is to protect the state and its citizens, not the government of the day because sovereignty, an essential element of the state, resides in the people.
The clarion call therefore is that the well-meaning people of western Nigeria must live up to those fine values of their history and ensure they are entrenched with a vote for the incumbent government of Osun state under the leadership of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. To lose Osun to a backward, disoriented, anti-development and irredentist central authorities is to deepen the misery and abjection of the good people of the southwest and Nigerians desirous of an alternative vision of development. Osun election matters, as the Europeans would say to the fascists, and we should say it loud and clear to the irredentists and anti-people forces in the saddle today that they shall not pass. Osun, Ipinle Omoluabi should not fall to known felons. The soul of the country is at stake and to lose is to halt social progress.
Dr. Akhaine is a visiting member of the Guardian Editorial Board.
THE NATION

Twenty candidates have been listed in the contest for Osun State governorship seat tomorrow. Only on Wednesday, nine of the candidates declared that they were withdrawing from the race to support the candidacy of Iyiola Omisore, the flag-bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party. The candidate to beat in the election, however, remains incumbent governor Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola of the All Progressives Congress.

The Ekiti gubernatorial poll seems to have notched up the contest in Osun since June 21 when the opposition candidate trounced the incumbent. For seven weeks now, both Aregbesola and Omisore have been trying to outwit and outdo each other in consolidating their hold on supporters and what has now become infamously known as “stomach infrastructure”.

Political strategy has also assumed the tenor of warfare and both sides riled each other with campaigns of calumny and name-calling. The governor’s schools’ reclassification policy has become an issue as much as Omisore’s controversial role in the death of the late attorney-general of the federation and Second Republic governor of old Oyo State, Bola Ige. High-profile politicians switch allegiance like the chameleon changes its colour and the aura of insecurity permeates the entire landscape, making a prescription of do or die a probability.

The jibes from the higher echelons of both parties are also lurid. From the centre, military men, armed mobile and regular policemen, operatives of the Civil Defence Corps and the Directorate of State Services (DSS) are in all the nooks and crannies of the state, ostensibly to prevent a breakdown of law and order. This does not portray a picture of democratic society. It simply has the undertone of institutional intimidation; it is a sign that does not inspire confidence in the general populace.

We call on all agencies, institutions and persons associated with this to be perceptive about the future of the state after the election. Security officers are enjoined to defuse tension or make prompt arrest of electoral offenders without taking sides. It will also be to their eternal credit if they do not intimidate voters and allow Osun people to exercise their franchise en masse.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has promised a level-playing field for all contestants. We want to see it consolidate on the new technical and logistics devices to forestall electoral fraud. The leadership of INEC and party community leaders would do well to walk their talk by ensuring that missing registers and names, ballot swapping, box stuffing, violence, alteration and allocation of results and sabotaging materials from getting to the right destinations do not become major features of the Osun election. INEC is standing on the threshold of history. Never before has it been so tough for two gladiators in a state election.

We expect the two leading candidates to know that there can only be one governor at a time in the state. The attention that Osun has attracted in the last few weeks should not be turned into sour grape after Saturday. Like good sportsmen, they have professed to be God-fearing persons; we would not like them to march to the Government House on the blood of innocent citizens of Osun. The people’s vote must count and their wish respected.

LEADERSHIP

The governorship election in Osun State tomorrow is do or die all over again. Maybe not exactly in the sense in which former president Olusegun Obasanjo used the words in 2007, when he inferred that the general election was for the criminals in his party to lose. Yet, the two major parties – the APC and the PDP – have had such a slugfest that the outcome could truly be a turning point for 2015.

Ekiti was a wake-up call. Most people, especially aliens like me, predicted a clear win for APC’s Governor Kayode Fayemi. In four years, he had repaired the roads or built new ones, fixed the schools and a number of hospitals, put the aged on a stipend and re-energised the Ekiti spirit of noblesse.

Even if Fayemi had done nothing in four years and had only been a one-eyed king in the town of the blind, his opponent, Ayodele Fayose, had less than an eye. He seemed like an effigy from a past to which the people would never return. The shock result from the election, which returned Fayose by a landslide, is not only a lesson in how to fix an election; it’s also a big lesson in how not to lose one.

That’s precisely what the APC is rallying to avoid in Osun. Where the party was taking things easy, leaving Fayemi to do his gentleman-style campaigns in Ado and elsewhere, and Lai Mohammed to issue press statements, the APC has launched a blitz in Osun. Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola has gone from door to door, cornered clerics across faith lines and surfed open-air vans to get voters on his side.

He has reminded them of his sterling record of the last four years. He has spoken to them in their own idioms and metaphors, quoting generously from the Quran, the Bible and Ifa-dom to connect with the last doubter of his liberal credential. Where infighting and bad blood undermined the APC in Ekiti, Aregbesola has managed to build one of the most astonishing partnerships of former foes.

Say what you like about Ogbeni, you cannot take away his steadfastness to a cause or commitment to service. I saw these qualities when Osun voted ACN presidential candidate, Nuhu Ribadu, in 2011, against the tide in the south-west. I saw these qualities in his days as commissioner of works in Lagos and they have not changed in his years as governor in Osun.

His passion to make Osogbo the country’s next commercial hub, which led him to revive the rail lines and fix the moribund coaches; his vision to leapfrog the state by putting the youths to work and giving children modern tools at school make him a voter’s dream and a rival’s nightmare.

A man who has earned my respect for his constancy, I was a bit shaken on Tuesday to find him sharing a soapbox – and even dancing – with Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Isiaka Adeleke, his implacable foes. If these men could, they might have killed themselves at the height of their feud five or six years ago. I never thought their paths would cross again and I bet followers on all sides would have stuck out their necks thinking the same. But as Hillary Clinton suggested in her book, Hard Choices, on Barack Obama’s invitation to her to become secretary of state after one of the bitterest contests, it’s in the nature of politics never to say never.

The coalition leaves the PDP on the ropes. It’s not just their names; it’s the potential electoral value of these former enemies, who collectively come from constituencies that could account for over 60 per cent of the 1.4million votes in the state.

Unlike in Ekiti where President Goodluck Jonathan promised not to interfere only to lock down the state three days to the elections and deploy troops in numbers fit for Sambisa forest, the APC is wiser now. Instead of sitting on their hands and complaining about a monstrous federal government intent on swallowing up another opposition state, the party’s rank and file have embedded in Osogbo, days ahead of the election. Its officials at different levels have given themselves over to the campaign, showing voters why they should vote and how.

The PDP has not been an onlooker. A party used to stitching together its Humpty Dumpty, it has been inspired by its success with Fayose to try to give Iyiola Omisore a new lease on life. I thought the senator was more comfortable with life in the country’s sterile capital in the last four years than he could ever be in Osogbo where his detractors never fail to remind him of the death of Bola Ige. But he is not giving up the fight, throwing in everything he has to re-energise his base.

It’s not Omisore’s mojo alone that the PDP has going for it in Osun. The victory in Ekiti and the coup in Adamawa, which restored the latter state to its original PDP fold, have also been huge incentives for the party. With the party now far better organised, it needs Osun to prove that Ekiti was not a monument to scientific rigging.

Which is precisely why the APC also needs a win – to prove that Ekiti was a fluke and that the creeping fear of a domino effect among its followers is exaggerated.

May the rigging side lose!

LEADERSHIP

The stage is set for the electoral battle royale tomorrow between the incumbent Governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, and the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Iyiola Omisore. The atmosphere is already tense, as anyone that has a reason to pass through Osogbo this week can attest to, as the ruling party in the state, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the national ruling parties, PDP, are poised for what they deem a game-changer.
Political pundits and electoral star gazers have already been projecting the outcome of the election and most of the fore-casting favours the incumbent Governor. This is understandable against the background of the achievements that the Government of Ogbeni Aregbesola has recorded in the acclaimed State of the Living Spring over the past four years when his stolen electoral mandate was judicially and judiciously restored.
But beyond the well-known achievements of the Governor in education, infrastructural development, social welfare (for the students and the elderly) and others, there are five factors to my mind that ordinarily give Aregbesola an edge over his co-contenders for the coveted Governor’s Office in Osun. These factors, for the people of Osun State that I know, are more appealing than what is known of other contestants especially where one voter, one vote really counts.
First, the saying that the Devil you know is better than the angel you don’t know applies to the situation. Given people’s familiarity with Aregbesola’s programmes, there is no doubt that people would want to give him another opportunity as human beings generally have the fear of the unknown. Aregbesola has been tried and tested, others have not; he therefore stands a better chance.
Secondly, there is something striking in the simplicity and humility of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. In a culture where politicians try to grandstand and decorate their irrelevant personalities with supposedly relevant, even if sometimes bogus titles, Aregbesola is unique. His adoption of the “ordinary” title of “Ogbeni” or “Mr” is a mark of simplicity. According to Mozart, “simplicity is the true mark of genius.” It is not what you call yourself that matters, it is who you are.
There is also humility in the carriage and comportment of Aregbesola such that he is strikes you as a true man of the people. I think this is why many people identify with him. I once watched him acknowledge on a Lagos TV programme that his Deputy is older than he is and he would accord her due respect as a Yoruba man. He invited her to speak and Mrs. Grace Laoye-Tomori also displayed humility in kind.  The mercurial poet, T. S. Elliot tells us in memorable words, “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire/ Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”
Thirdly, Aregbesola is the type of what is referred to in literature as a dynamic character; he is not a flat one. People connect easily with those who are perceived to be dynamic, not the flat, lame duck type. He is certainly controversial but that is true of dynamic personalities. He takes risks and as the legendary Muhammed Ali, once said, “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
For example, the whole world knows who actually won the Friday May 24, 2013 election of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) through the ingenuity of Aregbesola. Knowing well that the powers that be had strategised that the preferred candidate of the Governors would not “win”, he smelt a rat when the Governors were not allowed to go into the venue of the election with their mobile phones. Aregbesola “smuggled” a pen camera in and secretly recorded the election. It was that video that exposed the “democratic credentials” of our contemporary “democrats”.
Then, Aregbesola appears as a person committed to social justice, one virtue that is lacking in the polity, where leaders trample roughshod on others. While giving Muslims their demanded Hijrah public holiday, stirring the hornet’s nest for which hagiographers spew venom on him, he shocked even Muslims by declaring another public holiday, “Isese Day”, for the traditional religionists. Around the same time, he controversially contributed the princely sum of N35 million to the burial of a prominent Christian cleric, Prophet Timothy Obadare. It was as if he was saying that at least everybody had something and those who did not like it should leave it.
Lastly, one masterstroke that favours Aregbesola is how he has been able to rally the past leaders of the State behind him, including the strategically important former National Secretary of the People’s Democratic Party and the same Governor that was ousted for him to assume office, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola. With the array of those opinion leaders and political actors, it is difficult not to win if there is a commitment to one voter, one vote principle.
However, in our brand of democracy, things are not that simple and no one will be taken aback if the popular candidate eventually loses. This is because Sociologist Stahwood Cobb could have had Nigerian democracy in mind when he wrote several years ago thus:
“Democracy claims to be ‘Government of the people by the people for the people’. But at its best it is oligarchy, and soon turns to dictatorship of an individual. It claims to aim at ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. In fact, it gives rise to frustration, failure, anxiety, misery. It encourages altruism and a social conscience in its rhetoric, but its policies are selfishness run riot, with no regard for the fate of others. Individuals and groups that get in the way are trampled ruthlessly underfoot. This age surpasses all others known to history in exploitation, profiteering and power-hunger.”
Ultimately, what is of utmost importance is for the state of “Omoluabi”, as the state is now branded, to be true to the spirit of the term. As the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Prof. Abdul Ganiyu Ambali, once conceived it, among the Yoruba, “an Omoluabi is someone of excellent character and s/he is someone who is hard working, diligent, responsible, serious-minded, fair, honest, trust-worthy, kind, respectful and Godly in all his activities.  An Omoluabi values good name more than gold and s/he is a symbol of everything good and admirable.”
As Osun decides, let everyone involved be Omoluabi by making one voter, one vote principle work.
Mahfouz A. Adedimej – DAILY NEWSWATCH