The Battle Ahead for Osun APC

Nigeria is out of recession! So, let all men of goodwill clink glasses in celebration of the valuable worth of a country that will neither wear out nor rust out!

Having said that, to say that all is well with party politics in Nigeria, especially, as 2019 draws nearer, depends on which side the observer is looking at. Like Siamese twins, things are scarily looking up for the ruling party and the opposition is closer to fire than it is to frying pan.  The political lion and the economic bear are strategizing; even the wolves and the hyenas of our ethno-religious belongingness are waiting in the wings, desperately hoping to devour whatever remains of the country called Nigeria. It is therefore time Nigeria’s David woke up to the responsibility of killing the uncircumcised Philistines before they kill Nigeria dead. In my considered opinion, such an important task must start from the State of Osun!

With only one year to the end of the Rauf Aregbesola-led administration as governor of Osun, it’s  expected that the party in government at the national level would have examined all its cards in the overall interest of retaining power in the state. The challenge of power-shift, the sudden death of ‘Serubawon’ and the replacement of Adeleke with Adeleke, among others, have further underscored what needs to be done to rescue its Israel from losing focus of what lies ahead.

From the look of things, the configurations are somehow unsynchronized and, if the permutations are not carefully handled, they may lead to conflagrations of unimaginable proportions which one can only pray would not consume the party. For all I care, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) brought us to this sorry pass and it shouldn’t be allowed to take us for collective amnesiacs. Essentially therefore, genuine plans by All Progressives Congress (APC) to remain in Aso Rock in 2019 should start with retaining Osun for the party in 2018.

On the road to this all-important victory, there may be some thistles and thorns which must be clinically uprooted before things get out of hand. For the constraint of time and space, I will restrict myself to only a few.

First is the issue of salary, pensions and allowances of its workers which must be proactively resolved in order to prevent the ravenous, drained and docile opposition from wickedly feasting on a national miasma to rubbish Aregbesola’s achievements. Apart from the fact that more than 20 other states in the country are also caught in this web, the recently-held “peaceful protest” by retired military pensioners in Abuja to, among other things, demand “the payment of balance of gratuities of contributory pensions”;  even the recently-held “peaceful protest” by. policemen in Kaduna “over non-payment of two months’ salaries” are indications that the challenges being faced by Nigeria’s workers are not limited to Osun. Also in this group are Academic Staff Union of  Universities (ASUU), National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) and Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU).

For obvious reasons, our position on issues relating to values is more often than not in contrast to realities.  To be fair to hm, Aregbesola saw this coming as far back as 2013 and immediately took measures to confront it through salary apportionment. Through this bold step, workers from Grade  Level   (GL) 1 – 7, comprising the largest chunk of the state’s workforce, are being paid their full salaries. Those on GL 8 – 11 (about 21,624 of them):  75%; and those  on GL 12 -17:  50%. Similarly, pensioners, on N1, 000 – N20, 000 collect their allowances in full; those on N20, 001 – N80, 000: N75%; and pensioners on N80, 001:  50 %. So far, so fair! The state has  been found  to  be up-to-date in meeting   its   obligations to its active and passive workers!  But, rather than appreciate his prescience, the governor was needlessly vilified and unnecessarily pilloried for the purpose of gaining cheap political mileage. As Nigerians can now see, the road once forthrightly  travelled by Osun is what is now giving   states like Kogi, Ondo,  Bayelsa  and  others a lot of hassles.

Secondly, APC must avoid becoming a  victim of its own wrong choice. All over the world, cutting the nose to spite the face as a way of resolving differences has never been found to work wonders. Again,  this is where those  who  are insisting that Aregbesola should “play aloof” in the succession battle but are in turn hobnobbing  with men of questionable characters who spend more time in the courtrooms, attending to one allegation of impropriety or the other than they do to their constitutionally-assigned responsibilities, also owe Nigerians some explanations!

Thirdly, APC  leaders  and  elders must always bear in mind that there is no success without a worthy successor and that  the  time  to  prepare  for  war  is  during  peacetime! So, complacency at a time like this may be dangerous, both for the ruling party and Nigerians.

Fourthly, the realness or otherwise of the claim that empowerment has always been a scarce commodity within the progressive camp must be critically looked into in the interest of the party. For instance, a casual survey of radio stations in the Southwest reveals that most of their owners were empowered one way or the other by reactionary and perfunctory leaders. In any case, this shouldn’t be the case, taking  into  consideration  the roles of the media in politics. While mindset determines one’s life settings, the greatest enemy of faith  remains doubt. The progressive camp therefore  owes it a duty  to make Nigeria  work so as not to confer any undue advantage on the opposition.

At a time like this, regular meetings and wide consultations aimed at gestating and fertilizing ideas on how to move the party forward  cannot be said to be  unimportant. Impliedly, if the government has not been blowing its trumpet well enough, it is time  the Esther in APC who  first  saw  herself as a mere housewife  was  woken  up by its Mordecai. And this is where the involvement of committed  foot soldiers, especially, the youth, comes  in.

But all about Osun is not a tale of woes. As a matter of fact, the state has gone too far to look back and credit must be given to the forward-looking governor. Within a very short period of seven years, Aregbesola has given a new hope of a state gloriously conquering, not miserably failing! For example, while the state continues to pay sufficient attention to the education of its students,  every teacher on its payroll now knows that he or she has the potentials to rise up to the topmost level of his or her career. Through activities of the Osun Broilers Outgrowers Programme Scheme, aka OBOPS, the state has not only “placed Osun second to Oyo State in broiler production in the country”, “about 1,000 farmers and over-3,000 food vendors” have also been gainfully employed. In Osun,  cases of Poliomyelitis are now consigned to the past due to the administration’s effective and extensive immunization initiatives. It will also interest readers to know that the  state came 9th in the just-concluded National Youth Games with 9 Gold (including 3 Non-Scoring), 5 Silver and 4 Bronze medals, the first of its kind in a long while.

In ‘Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears’, Tom Lutz wrote: “Professional mourners have not so much disappeared over the last millennium; they have simply donned robes and stopped crying.”  To be fair to posterity, it is because of who we are that we are where we are!  For example, even if APC is  such “a coat of many clouds”  and PDP,  “a blind giant groping in the dark”,  have we ever tasked those  condemning the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to contemplate  Nigeria’s present state had Goodluck Jonathan remained in power  beyond  2015? On the other hand, how do we draw a healthy line of distinction between social welfare and ‘stomach infrastructure’ and why should a man with the handkerchief be found in a sweating mode? Again,  who is  a  better politician: one who builds bridges across  the  Niger  through  massive investment in his people’s  future or one who merely ‘constructs bridges’  across the stomach?

Well, Aregbesola’s strides in the midst of the opposition’s brickbats bring to memory the Story of the Twelve Spies. Of the twelve sent out to “explore the Promised Land and give a report to Moses and  the  people”,  only two  –  Joshua and Caleb  –  actually came back with a report of hope and possession as contrasted with the frightening arrogation of largeness, fortification and power to the city and its occupants by the other explorers. But then, God’s promise of giving the land to His chosen ones was not unfulfilled. Even at that, my Bible didn’t tell me that the spies’ return to the Wilderness of Paran at the end of their assignment put a lid on the plight of the Israelites on their way to New Jerusalem.

May principalities and powers, assigned to rubbish our leaders’ efforts, backfire!