Osun Polls as Tinubu’s Litmus Test

By Olusegun Adeniyi

In the build-up to 2003 when the then incumbent Governor Olusegun Osoba was seeking re-election on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and then incumbent President Olusegun Obasanjo was also seeking re-election on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) platform, the political slogan in Ogun State was ‘Segun L’oke, Segun Ni’sale’. The idea was for voters in the state to adopt a ‘bipartisan’ approach in exercising their franchise. Since the parties were arranged on the ballot paper in alphabetical order, voters were enjoined to ‘look up’ by voting AD during the governorship election and ‘look down’ (for PDP) while casting their ballot in the presidency. For the locals, the slogan was also translated as retaining one Segun at the top (in Abuja) and another Segun at home (in Abeokuta). As it would happen, it was only the Segun in Abuja who prevailed while the Segun in Abeokuta lost out. And the latter has always blamed the former for what he considered an act of betrayal.

While I do not want to dabble into the brouhaha between the two respected Egba Octogenarians, it is evident that political deals are always fraught with risks. It is indeed instructive that of all the five AD Governors in the Southwest at the time, the only one who won re-election was a certain Bola Tinubu in Lagos State whose own slogan was ‘Jeun Soke’. Crudely translated, it means only voters who ‘look up’ for the AD (without ‘looking down’ for any other party) were guaranteed reward. I recall that episode against the background of the upcoming Osun State gubernatorial election that is already throwing up a lot of controversy.

Apparently believing the mantra that one good turn deserves another, Governor Ademola Adeleke has publicly endorsed Tinubu for a second term ahead of his own re-election next week. “Our own son, father and leader”, according to Adeleke, deserves the support of Osun electorate, despite knowing fully well that the president will not be on the ballot until next year. “I am the governor of the ancestral birthplace of Mr. President. How can I have my own in the saddle and think twice before embracing him? I need no persuasion to act as I have declared repeatedly, our endorsement of Mr President.”

That open declaration of support means nothing to some APC supremos who seem to be going for broke and I fear they may have sold a self-serving idea to the president that the ruling party needs Osun for his re-election next year. “We must win Osun and nothing will stop us,” the APC National Chairman, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, boasted last week at the inauguration of the 276-member campaign council headed by Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State. “These are political heavyweights; it is like a trailer facing a Keke (bicycle). I do not know how the political party standing against us in Osun can withstand the strength of these people who are going there to mobilise and win the election,” Yilwatda declared rather exuberantly, before stating the reason for his seeming desperation. “This is the last election that will hold before the general election. This will be a litmus test. This will be our practising ground. This will be our rehearsal of the machinery we’re going to prepare for 2027.”

It is remarkable that just a few weeks ago in June, Yilwatda’sSpecial Adviser on Media and Strategy, Abimbola Tooki published what he said was his assessment of the chances of his party in the gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun States.He predicted that APC would win Ekiti easily (as it turned out to be); but Osun would prove difficult for the party. Writing on how he visited Osun State and the journalist in him could not resist conducting an informal field assessment, Tooki wrote, “…rather than relying solely on elite political conversations, I sought the opinions of ordinary voters whose ballots ultimately determine electoral outcomes. Over (a) few days, I boarded more than 20 commercial motorcycles and engaged the riders in conversations about the coming election.” Then Tooki delivered his bombshell: “The responses were striking. Approximately 16 of them openly declared their intention to vote for Governor Ademola Adeleke.” If Yilwatda’s own spokesman could make such an open deduction that the incumbent will most likely win—and he also explained his reasons—where then is the party’s confidence coming from?

There is even a larger issue here. The Osun State gubernatorial election, according to Yilwatda, will be a “rehearsal of the machinery we’re going to prepare for 2027.” That phrase raises an important question. A rehearsal is a practice session for a larger performance. So, what exactly is being rehearsed in Osun State? The answer matters to every Nigerian who cares about the future of our democracy. It should matter especially to Tinubu whose administration will ultimately be judged by the standard under which these elections are conducted. While the president has a right to support his party’s gubernatorial candidate in Osun State, he has even a bigger responsibility for law and order in the country.

For months, the Osun Commissioner of Police, Mr Ibrahim Gotan, has been at the centre of accusations from opposition parties and civil society groups who see him more as an APC enforcer than a man whose primary duty is to ensure law and order in the state. And yesterday, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) entered the fray by placing a ‘Post-No-Debit’ on the Osun State Government Statutory Allocation account. “We are supposed to be in a democracy, where the rule of law must always prevail,” Adeleke said in a statement that questions both the legality and timing of the EFCC action. “We will not accept a situation where federal agencies trample on the constitutional rights of subnational governments.” But the EFCC explained last night that the action was part of its preventive mandate, and taken in public interest, to halt recent suspicious “transfers of funds into different corporate entities.”

Meanwhile, following growing public pressure, the Inspector-General of Police, Olatunji Disu has deployed a new officer, Samuel Erale Etaifo, to superintend the election security for the Osun polls. That is a concession of sorts and an admission of a lack of trust in Gotan’s neutrality. But read the fine print: the same police statement announcing Etaifo’s deployment also noted that Gotan “will remain the substantive head” of the Osun Command, receiving “administrative and operational support” from the new arrival. For those who had called for Gotan’s redeployment, this arrangement is unlikely to resolve the underlying concerns. Where confidence in institutional neutrality has already been weakened, partial administrative adjustments rarely provide sufficient reassurance.

But we must also be fair to Gotan. For more than two decades, Osun State gubernatorial elections have become the stage on which Nigeria’s electoral institutions are usually tested. That the pattern keeps recurring at every election cycle in the same state suggests the problem is not just about one troublesome police commissioner. Nigerians with long memories will recall the electoral tribunal battles of 2007 and 2014, as well as the dramatic collation disputes of 2018 between former Governor Adegboyega Oyetola (the current Minister for Blue Economy) and Adeleke on which I wrote Osun and the 3,498 ‘Super Delegates’ – THISDAYLIVE. And then we had another protracted contest between Oyetola and Adeleke in 2022 in which the latter prevailed. What is remarkable in all these elections is that the current president was a bit part actor in the drama—first, as National Leader of the Action Congress (AC) and later, that of the APC.

It is noteworthy that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) appears to have done its own homework ahead of the Osun gubernatorial polls. The Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mrs Oluwatoyin Babalola, has spent recent weeks running radio jingles and partnering with civil society groups, traditional rulers and transport unions for a credible election next week Saturday. But all of that work comes to nothing if voters conclude, rightly or wrongly, that the police personnel standing at their polling units answer to a political party rather than to the law.

This then brings me back to Yilwatda’s words. The APC national chairman is entitled to want his party’s gubernatorial candidate, Mr Bola Oyebamiji, to win in Osun. And there is nothing improper in the APC deploying governors, ministers, National Assembly leadership and the full weight of its national structure behind Oyebamiji. But the ruling party should also understand the implications of getting this “rehearsal” wrong. In his Democracy Day broadcast in June, speaking directly on Ekiti and Osun, the president urged INEC, security agencies and all parties to keep the elections “peaceful and credible.” Those were his own words. The question Osun now puts to him, with barely nine days to go, is whether his party intends to be held to that declaration.

I do not believe Tinubu is trying to manipulate Osun State gubernatorial election in his party’s favour and it would be unfair to suggest that. And to be honest, the president doesn’t have much riding on this election, as it would most likely have no bearing on how Osun people vote next year. But there is an old saying that the morning shows the day. The Osun election at the tail end of the current season of off-cycle governorship polls, and the very start of serious positioning for 2027, is that morning. Since his own party’s national chairman has publicly framed what happens next week Saturday as an important precursor to 2027, that inevitably places additional responsibility on the president to ensure that the election is beyond reproach.

What the president must understand is that if this election ends up with allegations of intimidation and lingering doubts about institutional neutrality, it will inevitably influence public expectations of what lies ahead. Yet it doesn’t have to go that way. The next few days can still be deployed to reinforce the political neutrality of security agencies, strengthen public confidence in presidential leadership and demonstrate that electoral competition will be governed by the rule of law and public decency. Doing so will go beyond improving the credibility of one governorship election. It will establish the democratic precedent upon which the legitimacy of the 2027 general election will ultimately rest.

Rackets. Not Budgets!

Ever since the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) scandal involving Mr Adeniyi Adeyemi broke, there have been a focus on the annual budget of the federal government, especially given the N1.3 billion allocated to an agency that has been declared as fake. While Nigerians are being regaled with sordid tales from the House of Representatives ad hoc committee probe, many people have called for a reform of the budgeting process. I won’t hold my breath on that. I am almost certain that at the end of the day, nothing will be done because too many people in both the executive and legislature benefit from the current opaque budgeting regime. I made that clear in my column of 13 October 2022, titled, ‘When Budget Becomes Racket’. Below are a few excerpts from the piece.

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Last Friday, President Muhammadu Buhari presented the 2023 Appropriation bill to the National Assembly. It is his last and final one in office. The estimated expenditure for the 2023 fiscal year is N19.7 trillion with a proposed deficit of N10.78 trillion, representing 4.78 per cent of the estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is above the 3 percent per cent threshold set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007. While I leave experts to continue their dissection, it may be important to look back before we leap forward. That way, we will understand that we don’t do budget in Nigeria. We simply share money.   

In the 2022 budget, for instance, the federal government featured a line item for the office of ‘Retired National Assembly Clerks and Permanent Secretaries’ where over N581 million was allocated contrary to the Pension Reform Act 2004 (as amended in 2014). Ordinarily, these are/were career civil servants who for 30 to 35 years have been contributing to their pension account. Suddenly, they exit the scheme and begin to enjoy full life benefit at public expense. But who can blame them in a country where a governor who had served five months was deemed to have occupied office illegally by the Supreme Court but awarded an annual pension of a hundred million Naira?  

Meanwhile, in the service wide provision of N1.93 trillion in the 2022 budget, ‘Monitoring of Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS)’ has a provision of N1 billion. Despite that jumbo sum of money, these ‘monitors’ could still allow the Accountant General of the Federation to ‘misapply’ N108 billion without detection!   

Looking at the capital component of the 2022 budget, several programmes are captured under capital projects. A good example is the ‘Annual National Local Government Summit’—an ‘ongoing’ capital project in the Ministry of Special Duties—although one can say that the sum of N10.029 million budgeted for it is small potato. The ‘National Veterinary Infrastructure and Abbattoirs/Slaughter Houses Development Programme’ is also captured as capital project in the sum of N310 million under the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.  

In some cases, the budget provisions do not make any sense. For instance, in the Michael Imoudu Institute of Labour Studies under the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, the sums of N19 million, N14.25 million and N107.75 million were budgeted for the construction of office building, residential building and provision of electricity respectively. The question then is, what type of office can N19 million build or what kind of residential building can be executed with N14.25 million in today’s Nigeria? Such ridiculous provisions are replicated in virtually all the MDAs.  

Under the Ministry of Works, several ongoing projects are allocated ridiculously low amounts. The construction and rehabilitation of Lokoja-Obajana-Kabba-Ilorin Road, described as ongoing, has a provision of N3.35 million. Yes, N3.35 million! Meanwhile, allocating equal funds to projects without regard to their scope, complexity and level of completion raises serious questions. The same amount of N208 million was allocated to both ongoing and new roads in Kano, Enugu, Kwara States with only N13.4 million for rehabilitation of Lafia-Obi-Awe-Tunga Road in Nasarawa State. All new projects in Akwa Ibom, Delta, Cross River, Kwara States also have equal provision of N50 million Naira each. What kind of new road can N50 million deliver?  

I can go on and on to list numerous aspects of the ongoing 2022 budget that make little sense. But I believe my point is made. Ordinarily, a national budget should reflect the federal government’s fiscal and monetary policies that are targeted at economic development. That is not the case in Nigeria. Indeed, if the main objective of a budget is to reduce inequalities by mobilising and allocating resources for investment in the public sector, then what we operationalize annually in Nigeria is more of a racket than a budget!   

ENDNOTE: I wrote the foregoing four years ago and it is just one of the more than a dozen columns I have done on what we call budget in Nigeria. As I concluded in one of them in November 2017, “given that the dire economic situation has pushed the nation in the direction of an aggressive tax drive, which is where we ought to have started in the first place, the authorities should also be aware that such monies are meant to fund critical infrastructure and social services, not pay for the indulgence of public servants who continue to live large at the expense of poor citizens.”

I am almost certain that by the time the 2027 budget is out, we will still be talking about the same issues. In Nigeria, we hardly learn from any experience!

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com