“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

Download and Share our Countdown Posters. It is 2 days to the Day Osun Decides. Who will you be voting for?  Share with us on Facebook (Government of the State of Osun) or Twitter @stateofosun

The Osun State Commissioner for Health, Mrs Titilayo Ilori, said on Wednesday that residents of the state  have been put on red alert to avert the spread of the Ebola virus.

Ilori told newsmen in Osogbo that  health education was crucial in checking the spread of  the disease.

The commissioner said that although the state had no record of the disease inspite of  its proximity to Lagos, it was important to put residents  on red alert.
She urged residents to be more proactive in terms of environmental hygiene since the disease could  easily be transmitted through the body fluid of an infected person.
Ilori also said that the state government was committed to healthy living in line with its unique health policy.
“It is indisputable that health education is highly germane for the promotion of health and reduction of diseases in any population. This  informed our efforts to embark on incessant awareness programmes. Inspite of  the fact that we have not recorded  incidence of the disease in our state, there is need for our people to be vigilant and more proactive in the area of personal and environmental hygiene. The means of transmission, which is basically through the body fluid  of the carrier,  makes  it compulsory for us to take our personal hygiene seriously,’’ she said.

Ilori, however, called on churches to be careful about keeping Ebola infected persons in their premises for spiritual healing, describing such act as  “dangerous and inimical.’’
“We are appealing to our men of God to quickly report any case of Ebola infected person to the appropriate authority and not keep such persons  in their churches  for miraculous healing. In as much as we are not doubting the power of God, the Ebola virus is too deadly for an infected person to be kept in a place without thorough medical attention,’’ she said.
She further advised residents to desist from eating bush meat for now, especially carriers of the disease like bats and monkeys. (NAN)

Incumbent Osun State governor, Rauf Aregbesola, is predicted  to be returned by as much as 65 per cent of vote counts in Saturday’s gubernatorial election in the state, a poll  on voter preference conducted by Upward BAO Consulting, a management consultancy research firm based in Lagos, with associate consultants across Nigerian and UK universities and research institutions has revealed.

The firm said it used survey data to predict voting patterns in Osun in the run-up to the election.

The state-wide opinion poll carried out between Sunday, July 27 and Saturday, August 2, 2014, and in 12 of the most populous cities and towns in the state, also revealed that Iyiola Omisore, candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), would most likely get 17 percent of the votes, while Fatai Akinbade, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), would get 10 percent.

According to the poll, the percentage of Osun residents who planned to vote for ‘others’ or remained undecided was eight percent.

“Methodologically, the poll was carried out in the 12 cities and towns, given the fact that Osun is a highly urbanised state with high population density concentrated in the cities and towns. The poll areas include Osogbo (with 110, 670 voters), Ile-Ife (mostly East and Central with 95,471 and 81, 430 voters respectively), Ilesha (East and West with 54, 746 and 52, 286 votes) and Ikire (53, 487 votes). Others are Ila-Orangun, Ede, Ikirun, Gbongan, Iwo, Ipetumodu Okuku and Modakeke. The 12 cities and towns cut across the three senatorial districts in Osun State,” it stated.

The poll, which also sought to know the respondents’ views on level of performance of the incumbent administration in the state, disclosed that “81percent of the respondents approved that the incumbent governor has performed creditably”, citing the school free feeding programme, farmers’ welfare, O-YES, road networks, and security of lives and property, as indicators of performance. A minority of 19percent believe otherwise.

“Yet, several of those who said they would vote for PDP or Labour said that the APC candidate was a better performer than his predecessors,” the poll revealed. 

 On the possible voter turnout, the survey shows that “a large voter turn-out is expected, as 88percent of the respondents said they would vote and around same percentage said they had permanent voters’ cards”.

 Based on the data collected, collated, coded and analysed, none of the other major candidates is said to have a chance of getting any appreciable number of votes.

Aregbesola is also shown by the survey to be very popular among the indigines and voters of Osun.

“If the election is free and fair, it is postulated that Aregbesola will get a second term, since the overwhelming majority of the electorate want him as a result of performance,” the poll further shows.

“The predictive value of the polling exercise for the forthcoming gubernatorial election is very high. With revelations from across the big cities and towns, having the highest percentage of the voters, conclusions from data analysis show clearly that all things being equal, the incumbent Governor Rauf Aregbesola of the All Progressives Congress (APC) will win decisively, to be distantly followed by Iyiola Omisore of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Fatai Akinbade of the Labour Party (LP) in that order. Several of the other candidates were not known to the people,” it maintained.

BUSINESSDAY

I was greatly saddened to read the material written by Mr. Eyieyien urging “The Remnants” to vote out the current Governor of Osun State Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and vote in Chief Iyiola Omisore. I am also still somewhat puzzled as to how what appeared to be an opposition to a bond issue and other sundry allegations degenerated to the running down of the APC as an Islamic party, a propaganda tool notoriously deployed by the PDP through its various organs.

Are we as Christians now being urged to support the PDP or what exactly is the message? Reason, is one of the most important contributions of the Gospel to development. From it emerge the practical concepts of fairness and justice for all, especially our enemies. Which is why lynching, even of an intellectual kind is unacceptable

I am not an unbiased intervenor,   I had the good fortune of  serving in an AD/ACN government in Lagos State. The ACN is a major partner in the APC. I will come back to the PDP APC issue presently.

Also,  I have known Ogbeni  Rauf Aregbesola, Governor of the State of Osun,  since 1999. We served on the policy committees of the then newly elected AD governor of Lagos State. He served in the infrastructure sub-committee  and I, in the Justice sub-committee. I also served with him for 8 years in the government of Lagos State. He as Commissioner for Works and I as Attorney General. I developed a close personal relationship with him.  His early ideological belief was shaped by Marxist-Socialist thinking, which probably influences his left- of- centre world view in governance.  His first son Kabir went to university in Cuba on a scholarship. In 2005 when he graduated, only Rauf and I attended his graduation . He is a devout Muslim but liberal in his approach to other faiths. This is not unusual amongst the Yorubas largely because most families have  both Muslim and Christian members and have always interacted without rancour.  Of his six siblings only one other is a Muslim. All the others are Christians. His sister who is of the RCCG, is widowed ( her husband died a Christian) her two sons have lived with Rauf for years, he insists that they must practice their father’s faith faithfully. They both attend the RCCG.

He and I shared and still share a burden to provide honest, transparent, people-centered governance. He is a scrupulously honest person, as Commissioner for Works in Lagos State he left office without a home and no financial comforts. I know, because aside from my personal and official interaction with him, I coordinated his legal team for the reclamation of his mandate for over three years. I know first hand, his difficulties with sustaining his family, and a small staff for that period. Not surprisingly no one can accuse him in Osun State of corruption. He is just not wired that way.

Indeed,  in keeping with that commitment to serve the people with complete fidelity, his major projects have been solely directed at alleviating the suffering and deprivation of his people. The hiring of, now 40,000  unemployed graduates , the provision of free balanced meals for all primary school children, provision of free uniforms, the provision of  tablet computers for senior secondary school students containing all their textbooks, past jamb questions etc., monthly stipends to the elderly – all of these in a State that is the third poorest in Federal allocations and  currently gets N2.6 billion monthly, a  40 percent reduction from 2013, courtesy of the Federal government.  Mr. Eyieyien perhaps was not aware that even the 10 billion sukuk bond was  purely for the building of  24 model state-of the art schools, most of which are now completed. The Wole Soyinka led Osun education summit recommended the replacement of the  completely broken school infrastructure in Osun State  with schools capable of accommodating 1000 students with modern labs, classrooms, power  and sports facilities. The idea was to use economies of scale to benefit the largest number of students.

When Mr. Eyieyien describes him as “Sheikh” it is clearly to give the impression that he is an Islamic fundamentalist. The facts on the man completely belie this. First, as Commissioner for Works in Lagos State, he built the chapel at the State House Marina. Pastor Adeboye at the opening commended him and remarked that he would be a pastor soon! Within a year of coming into government, he commissioned in Ilesa the Open Heavens Christian Evangelical Arena , a purpose-built facility for evangelism which according to him was to celebrate the icons of the Christian faith who are from Osun namely- the Late  Apostle Babalola , the Late Apostle Obadare,  Pastor  E.A. Adeboye, Pastor W.F Kumuyi and  Pastor Mathew Ashimolowo . Today, his government supports the establishment of  five Christian universities in Osun, including  The Redeemers University at Ede, the Joseph Babalola University, Dominion University , and Bowen University.

How about the composition of government in Osun State? You will notice that his critics are never able to say that Christians are marginalised in government, why ? Because only Muslims can make that allegation! In the Cabinet of Osun State there are 10 more Christians than Muslims. In addition,  the largest Ministries are headed by Christians-  Ministries of Finance, Justice, Education, Health, Environment , Agriculture, Physical Planning and Youth and Sports . The Legislature (House of Assembly), which came into office after he won back his mandate  in  court in November 2010, has a majority of Christian members – 18 Christians and 8 Muslims. Everyone knows that at that level if the Governor does not support your nomination by the party your ambitions are dead in the water.

The State Judiciary is headed by a Christian who he appointed although he had preferred and proposed a judge from Lagos Justice Olubunmi Oyewole also a non-Muslim. Of over 30 new Permanent Secretaries appointed by him 22 are Christians. If  the majority of your cabinet, ( including your Attorney-General), your  Legislature,  Judiciary and top echelon of your civil service are  Christians  how can we in truth say that such a person has an Islamisation  agenda? Surely the least a “Sheikh” with an Islamisation agenda  should do to achieve his objective is to populate the structure that can achieve that objective with Muslims!  It is also entirely false that he patronizes or uses “TAAWUN” guards for his security. It is common knowledge that he hardly even uses any security at all, except for a couple of SSS men, his monthly LIFE WALKS , where he walks alongside his people for kilometres without any significant security cordon was commended recently by a former Governor in the South East.  It is incredible what prejudice can do to us. Everyone in Osun knows that the State was nicknamed “State of the Living Spring” in reference to the Osun River after which the State  is named.  Renaming the State “the Omoluabi  State ” – meaning “the State of children born of God” or “the State of men and women of virtue” certainly gives greater glory to God.

To suggest that benefiting from a   Sukuk bond to better the lives of his  people of all faiths, is  enough to justify the grave allegation of an Islamisation agenda,  is with all due respect , calling a dog a bad name simply to hang it.  I agree that it may have served the politics of religion better not to take the bond, but it is a fairer judgment of his motives, knowing him,  that this was borne out of his desire to serve his people well. The 24 mega schools  with state-of -the art facilities is a quantum leap  in education for the majority of children of the poor who before now schooled in what the Soyinka committee saw as scandalous. The alternative was not to build the schools.

When a man who is doing right by the poor and deprived people  he governs, is being condemned by those of us who are called to serve the poor, the sick, , the naked, and the hungry then it is fair to ask what the values in governance we really intend to promote are? In any event the alternative is Chief Iyiola Omisore whose antecedents we ought,  to put it delicately, be cautious  to associate with.

A problem with uncritically accepting as useful advice  this viciously anti-APC  propaganda,  is that  it throws the baby out with the bath water. So we are now expected to reject the landmark achievements in Lagos, in Ogun ( the huge infrastructural developments), Oyo ( which for the first time most admit is making real progress) , Edo, and Ekiti ( where almost everyone agrees the governor did a good job but Fayose understood stomach infrastructure better!) Or now Kano or Rivers ( where a REAL rail service is about to begin; Lagos is also about to complete a rail service amongst other exemplary achievements )!

It is  also   false that the APC’s new executive reserved its top positions for Muslims! The Chairman  of the party Chief John Odigie-Oyegun is a Christian,  the Deputy National Chairman (South) Engr. Segun Oni is a Christian, so are the National Organizing Secretary Senator Osita Izunaso,  Deputy National Secretary Hon.  Orji Ugofa and Chief Pius Akinyelure , the Vice Chairman of the South West. For what it is worth, there are 22 Muslims and 21 Christians in the APC National Executive Committee.

Regarding the rather thinly veiled  ‘support the PDP/ JONATHAN’  message,  it is incredible that we are invited to ignore the cynical manner that our President Goodluck Jonathan uses Christianity and the church to further his political ambitions. Why are we being urged to support a PDP/Jonathan bid again? The platform has largely on account of its tragic failure to perform, decided to exploit Nigeria’s religious fault lines in the most cynical manner  to win support,  in the process he continues to divide Nigeria in by  the far most extreme manner in our history.

I have worked with many brethren since 2002 on issues around Islamization in Nigeria, in particular with Revd. Ladi Thompson of the Macedonian Initiative and the Omoluabi network. It is clear that Al Qaeda, ISIS , and more recently Boko Haram and their splinters are committed to an Islamization agenda. Their  symphathisers certainly cut across all boundaries. The Late General Azazi, then NSA, pointedly accused the PDP of being behind the escalation of Boko Haram, I have that statement on DVD. The President, also openly lamented the infiltration of his cabinet by  the Boko Haram.

Recently a Nigerian pastor in a widely circulated CD, speaking on the Jihadist agenda accused General Babangida of funding the Islamization agenda from his days as President. Today President Jonathan’s most influential Northern supporter is General Babangida. His narrative unfortunately gives no credit to Gen Buhari, and his deputy Gen Idiagbon (also a muslim) who refused to join the OIC despite pressures. Or that Gen Buhari remains the one head of State who was able to defeat an extremist insurgency, the Maitatsine.

How can we fail to see that the  incredible corruption, incompetence, poverty of 2/3 of our people after almost seven years of the present government is unsupportable? How is it that   Diezani’s use of  10billion Naira to run her private jet ( the same amount of money for the building of 24 mega schools in Osun!) and the complete silence of the President on this travesty does not lead to calling for him to be voted out in 2015?

So the allegation of the missing or unaccounted for 20.8 billion USD with 110 million desperately poor, should be dismissed as pure propaganda? So it doesn’t make a difference to us that under the PDP Nigeria has fallen behind in every human development indicator?  55,000 women dying yearly of maternal related ailments, only recently Stanford’s Professor Larry Diamond compared the yearly deaths of over  300,000 children  yearly in Nigeria to the killing of 800, 000 mainly Tutsis in Rwanda. The latter was described as genocide, what is the description to give to mass deaths of infants caused by grand corruption?

We discredit our treasured platforms such as this when we mask our political preferences with a religious veil.  The vast majority of our people need to be delivered from  terrible want and deprivation, what is required now are capable, honest men and women of all faiths, who know that this country may not long survive the daily punishment of its own people.

Prof. Yemi Osinbajo SAN

Emboldened by the performance of their party in the June 21st governorship election in Ekiti State, members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have been eager to draw, and even force, parallels between Ekiti and Osun States. The PDP folks, understandably, have since been ecstatic about the possibility of unseating — through the ballot box — another incumbent governor of the All Progressives Congress (APC), about redrawing the political map of the South-west once again, and about changing the permutations for the 2015 election significantly in their party’s favour.
They can smell blood already and, like hyenas, they are feverishly going for the kill. However, their Osun war strategy (yes, that is what it is) is flawed because it pivots around the assumed similarities between Ekiti and Osun States or on using the Ekiti template for Osun. And it is a flawed assumption not just because no two states are exactly alike, but more so because the dynamics in the two states are remarkably different. My considered conclusion is: Osun is not Ekiti.
Before expatiating, I want to dispense with two issues. The first is personal disclosure. I am from Osun State and I am a Muslim from a proudly multi-religious family (my mum, my wife and one of my siblings are practising Christians). I have never met or even discussed on the phone with any of the three leading candidates in the August 9 election, including the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), who is actually from my neck of the wood. I am mightily proud of my regional/religious identities, but they do not define me as I passionately believe that the interests of all will be better served in a prosperous and just Nigeria. I make these disclosures because we live in a desperate and dangerous time when some people’s sole survival strategy is impugning motives for positions that do not square with theirs.
The second issue is that there has been a very disturbing attempt to insert religion into the politics of Osun State as part of the 2015 game. Fore-shadowed two years ago by a tendentious and clearly Islamophobic ‘security report’, a major marker on this low-road was the attempt to hang a religious tag on the policy on re-classifying public schools in Osun State. The high-point of this was the orchestrated drama of students of Baptist High School, Iwo coming to school in hijab, choir gowns and masquerade outfits. (Incidentally I did my A’ Levels in the same school between 1984 and 1986). I am sure there are many serious grounds to savage the school re-classification policy. But that would require a lot of rigour and would not be as sexy as flashing the religious card. And it is not surprising that attempts have been made to turn this into a hot-button issue in this election. But it is not flying.
This lazy but dangerous attempt to politicise religion doesn’t take adequate cognizance of the place of religion in Yorubaland. While it is important to be sensitive, religion is not politically mobilisable in Osun State and among the Yorubas in general. Let me start with Iwo, the site of that high school drama. I am from Iwo, one of the towns with the highest concentrations of Muslims in Yorubaland. Iwo used to have a sharia court, presently has a sharia college, still has a whole compound named after sharia judges (Ile Alkali) and is the birthplace of an ultra-conservative Islamic sect called Islaudeen. But this same town has a huge population of Christians and traditionalists.
In my own immediate family, we have a generous mixture of all. Though my side of the family is mostly Muslim, I went to Sunday school as a kid and did Christian Religious Studies till A’ Levels. My Christian cousins feel comfortable in the mosque the same way I feel in a church. We even had an uncle who was a babalawo, had an imposing shrine of Esu in front of his house, and had his own masquerade. In Iwo, the same way people travel home for Ileya and Christmas is how they troop home for Egungun festival (Odun Eegun). And there is this common knowledge that if you unmask a masquerade, most likely the man behind the mask will be a Suraju or a Sunday. That’s Iwo and most of Yorubaland for you!
By nature, Yorubas are polytheists and any attempt to manufacture religious tension among these religiously liberal people does not show a deep understanding of and enough respect for the people. Pre-Abrahamic religion, a Yoruba man who was a farmer during the day, a hunter at night and a diviner in his spare time would worship Orisa Oko, Ogun, and Orunmila without any conflict, while his wife could be a worshipper of Osun and husband and wife would eagerly support each other during the festivities for their various gods. Centuries after the introduction of Islam and Christianity (in that order) to Yorubaland, not much has changed.
It is very convenient for the religious entrepreneurs to forget, but the immediate past administration in Osun State had Christians as governor and deputy governor in a state that has at least equal number of Muslims and Christians (if not more Muslims), and not once was it an issue. For those desperate for something to mobilise especially for 2015, my free advice: don’t impose your atomized and competitive view of religion on a different context.
Now to the main issue.  I think Osun is different from Ekiti for five reasons. One, PDP is going into the Osun election fractured. Senator Isiaka Adeleke, former governor of the state is now with APC. (This is the man who the Minister of Police Affairs, Mr. Jelili Adesiyan, has threatened to beat up when he leaves office.) Chief Olagunsoye Oyinlola, former governor of the state and displaced National-Secretary of PDP, is definitely not actively campaigning for PDP. Alhaji Fatai Akinbade, former secretary to the state government and once a major pillar of PDP in the state, is now the candidate of LP. All these will chip away at the traditional base of PDP, and politics is a game of addition not subtraction.
Two, the APC candidate (as pointed out by Simon Kolawole on this page yesterday) has had enough time to address his vulnerabilities. The Osun government is thrashing about to pay pension and salary arrears and compensations and trying hard to pacify the disaffected. The PDP campaign is legitimately interrogating where the money came from and the possibility of future default. But it is doubtful if the PDP is getting traction on this. More effort seems to be invested on the ill-advised religious tag (which, if anything, will work more in favour of the incumbent). Attempts have also been made to explore the lukewarm relationship between the governor/his god-father and traditional rulers. But while the Yorubas respect their Obas, they don’t generally wait for them to tell them who to vote for.
Three, the demographics favour the incumbent, unlike the situation in Ekiti. Majority of the voters are young people who have benefited from a phalanx of job-creation initiatives of the incumbent. You can argue about the quality of jobs and level of compensation, but for most of this class of voters it will be a question of the bird in hand versus the one in the bush. Apart from the school kids, the major beneficiaries of the O’Meals scheme of the incumbent are women and women are known to be loyal voters.
Four, the major deciding factor in Ekiti was that PDP featured a very popular candidate. Despite having been a deputy governor and a senator and having gained some bounce from the Ekiti effect and from federal support, Senator Iyiola Omisore is yet to command massive following beyond a few of the 30 local government areas of the state. His recent corn stunt and his party’s huge war chest have not transformed him overnight into a man of the people. Then there is the not-so-small matter of the dark shadows that the gruesome murder of Chief Bola Ige casts around him, even when he and his associates have not been found culpable by the courts. In Osun, Ige is still a factor.
Five, and most important, the PDP machine is ranged against a genuinely popular candidate. Definitely cut from a different cloth from our current crop of staid politicians, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola effortlessly combines a bit of the rhetorical flourish of Chief Ladoke Akintola with the street smarts of Alhaji Busari Adelakun and the common touch of Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu (Penkelemesi). Beyond his achievements (Opon Imo, for one, is simply sui generis), he is a real politician: persuasive and tactical, simple and tough, intellectual and populist. This doesn’t necessarily mean the election will be a cakewalk for him. But if PDP, armed with federal muscle and money, thinks it has found another easy target, it needs a serious rethink.
THIS DAY