OSUN 2026: Defection on Tinubu’s Vision 2027 and parable of a sinking ship
By BASHIR ADEFAKA
Much docile as Nigerians used to be especially in the Southern part, the revolutionary posture that this opposition coalition’s African Democratic Congress (ADC) is carrying to that 2027 will be too heavy for any Federal Might to bear.
A pool of regrets may have hit the house of Osun State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, as his defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Vision 2027 is becoming a nightmare for the dancing governor.
The albatross of the senator turned governor matured the moment Nigeria’s opposition coalition politicians started getting their footing and the African Democratic Congress (ADC), where Social Democratic Party (SDP) failed, provided the ground for that footing to sustain and the indisputable garrison commander of modern day Osun State politics, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, emerged the ADC’s National Secretary.
What this implies? Those who muted the idea of brining Aregbesola into the 2027 project for the rescue of Nigeria were the more realistic ‘master strategists’ and this credit goes more to the selfstyle celebrated “Mr Vatically Challenge”, Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, for his intellectual capability with which he was able to detect the success material that is embedded in the Ogbeni.
Aregbesola’s political giantess dates back to when he contested the Osun State governorship election in 2007 and won, but needed the court to actualise his victory, which did not happen until 2010. That was where those that claim Tinubu’s master strategism take their idolizing of the man in Bourdillon from, claiming “if not for him, Aregbesola would not have been governor”. They, however, failed to realise that election is not won in the court, likewise that court does not dash votes but that votes are earned through the ballots at the polling units.
His grace was that he won an election when election riggers still had a modicum of fear of God in that. Therefore, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola had no choice than to vacate office at the start of his second term for Aregbesola in Abere Governor’s Office and Okefia Government House.
But much later, Aregbesola’s star began to really shine as even the one mainly did what they called their magic wand in Lagos. That was when the Bourdillon landlord had dumped the platform that propped him up as Lagos State governor on May 29, 1999 – the Afenifere’s Alliance for Democracy (AD) – to form the Action Congress (AC) bringing in Alhaji Atiku Abubakar with him and who won the presidential primary election just at the tail end of their respective second term as governor and vice president, respectively, in 2007. The AC later metamorphosed into the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) with Bola Tinubu singlehandedly ensuring that Nuhu Ribadu, his current National Security Adviser (NSA), emerging the presidential candidate during the 2011 general elections.
The Bourdillon landlord had, before the 2011 election, failed Atiku when he dumped the same AC he invited him to be part of, since he knew the only path to winning a national election was to journey with visible involvement of a popular Northerner, and went to work with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, during the 2007 transitional election.
Whereas, in the 2011 election he overnight also dumped Nuhu Ribadu turning against his own ACN presidential candidate and went to work for PDP’s candidate Goodluck Ebelle Jonathan, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola as an ACN governor refused to do anti-party and his State of Osun became the only Nigeria’s state won by the pioneer Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
That was one year after his (Aregbesola’s) becoming the Osun State governor and that was the very period the political sagacity of the Baba Ijesha, who controlled the politics of Alimosho Local Government in Lagos State for many years, began to manifest as a state leader in his own constitutionally bestowed Federating unit.
He had refused to attempt Lagos State power control knowing that it was constitutionally unright for non-indigene to become Governor or hold political power that should be occupied by indigenes of the state – since no Nigeria is allowed by law to claim double indigeneship – and so he had to return to his home state of Osun before it was too late and he was fortunate, though not easy being all his life either in Ikare Akoko Ondo State and Egbeda in Alimosho, Lagos State, and he became comfortably the governor of his people in 2010.
In 2014, therefore, Aregbesola had garnered enough power and influence politically especially with administration policies tailored towards social justice and infrastructural development. Those policies helped him achieve security, peace, unity and development as religious rights for every religious group were ensured, hence the not-much-desired resurgence of occultism traditional religion practice, Isese, without the Christians losing their influence and dominance of the state power but the hitherto much deprived Muslims’ Islamic religion gained its freedom as enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
With Aregbesola working at Abere Governor’s Office and returning home daily in Okefia Government House to sleep, Osun State became a hugely transformed state capital in less than eight years that he spent as governor. It was not easy as he needed to make Osogbo the state capital under eight years what took Lagos State over 47 years to achieve. Those are all history today as Osun is no longer just the Ilu Oke, village place, as Lagos people used to call it but a big city.
Aregbesola can, therefore, better be called the Builder of modern day Osun State unlike the Builder of Lagos State, an attribution that remains controversial crediting to the other man of Lagos, a state that unarguably got its development under the Federal Government of Nigeria as Federal Capital Territory and indigenes of the state who were either military or civilian governors for instance Brigadier General Mobolaji Johnson (late), Group Captain Gbolahan Mudashiru (late), Alhaji Lateef Jakande (late) and Sir Michael Otedola (late).
What is happening now across Nigeria, the moment ADC became reorganized and restructured into the leadership grip of former Army signal General David Mark as its National Chairman and Rauf Aregbesola as National Secretary with Bolaji Abdullahi as its National Publicity Secretary, is a tsunami of people rushing to register as members of the newly energised opposition coalition party. That is having toll seriously in Ademola Adeleke’s Osun State that no amount of dancing by Mr. Governor and his nephew Davido will make the PDPAPC alliance retain the governorship seat in Okefia next year, not even with Federal Might that his wing of PDP went to embrace because he is allegedly ignorantly trusting that Bola Ahmed Tinubu can be so trusted to save him. With what? Police, INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) or thugs with the business as usual practice and after rigging asking the aggrieved to go to court?
Much docile as Nigerians used to be especially in the Southern part, the revolutionary posture that this opposition coalition’s African Democratic Congress (ADC) is carrying to that 2027 will be too heavy for any Federal Might to bear. The only way out to have a peaceful change is for Abuja to behave, live and let live. That is what Aregbesola’s return, not to the ballot but to enable emergence of a better governor, is in the movement to achieve in Osun State next year. That is also beginning to spread to Lagos State, Ondo State and other South West states.
How a Federal Might of less than 100,000 elites hopes to overturn popular votes of over 200 million Nigerians with pre-determined election results, use of police in a country where a police officer earns far less than his equivalent rank in the Nigerian Army and Nigerian soldier does not even fair better, it remains an episode to await in 2026 Osun and Ekiti and up to the general elections in 2027.
