‘We won’t allow Osun go back to the precipice’

Ayo Akinola is the coordinator of New Osun Renaissance, a mobilisation apparatus which worked for the emergence of the new governor, Gboyega Isiaka Oyetola. In this interview with Joseph Jibueze, the publisher, media strategist and aide to immediate past governor of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, makes a passionate appeal on well-meaning Osun citizens to join hands against a return to a sordid past. Excerpts

WHAT does your group stand for? We are an advocacy group that does political enlightenment from time to time, depending on the need. We actually started operation in Lagos under a different nomenclature during the reign of former Governor Raji Fashola. If you cast your mind back, Fashola was having it difficult because the opposition wanted to discredit his greening initiative. They claimed he was neglecting key areas of development and taking over land pieces and setbacks which were traditional but unallocated workplaces of mechanics and others. It was a deep battle and Fashola’s rating was waning through these falsehoods, especially among the grassroots. We came in because we knew that enlightenment could not be too much and our systemic approach worked. We have a publishing arm because we reckon that we cannot do these things effectively if we do not have our own medium of reaching out. The media houses on ground sometimes may not share your thoughts and you just have to push these ideas out.

At the end of the day, we published about three editions of our magazine, Development & Policy under the titles Lagos Wealth Report and The Lagos Environment. This was between 2011 and 2013, when another call of duty took us to Abuja and to the Southeast for another one year. In the case of Osun, during the trying days of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola’s regime, when the opposition, in 2014/2015 was doing all it could to malign his government, we used the popular media as well as other platforms to reach out to the grassroots and coined a slogan, Truth of the Matter, and we published the maiden edition titled, Osun: Truth of The Matter. This was a slogan we coined to showcase the facts as they were then. Just as the Oto ge slogan worked magic for Kwarans, Osun Truth of The Matter, as well as other government efforts exposed the opposition’s lies and presented the true situation.

You’ve painted a colourful picture of the legacies of the former government. Why then was it difficult for the party to have a smooth win in the September 2018 election?

The September 2018 election was won squarely by the APC despite what happened. It may seem otherwise for someone not familiar with the evil politics of a few people in Osun. I say this, bearing in mind that in any social situation, it is the evil minority that always make the loudest noise and create havoc, which are erroneously linked to the majority.

How do you connect that with what is happening now?

It is the same set of people described earlier and their associates who still want to hijack government now and get through the window, what they couldn’t get through the main door, which is the election. When the PDP were in power, the state was in a siege but the Aregbesola’s populist cyclone came and warded them off. You don’t expect them not to try to stage a comeback.

How do you mean?

The level of rigging and vote-buying by the opposition during the governorship election of September 2018 was legendary and horrifying. Osun people saw a desperate people trying to hijack power at all costs, leaving morality behind. You know that in any struggle, the gentleman player or fighter is sometimes the victim because he or she wants to be fair and play according to the rules while the crude fighter inflicts injury, in order to win at all costs. They bribed, bought votes, created chaos, killed, maimed and this situation snowballed into a rerun because there were truly no elections in those 17 polling units. That is exactly what is playing out today, especially as regards Gov. Gboyega Oyetola.

Running to the tribunal was what they thought could upturn the will of the people, but many see it as a mere face-saving activity, especially with the personality of the defeated candidate, his certificate saga and his party’s defeat at the Presidential and National Assembly polls in the State.

What is your advice on this impasse?

With the controversial majority verdict, which many Nigerians have condemned and the Tribunal Chairman’s minority verdict countering same and variously applauded, we believe that the judiciary is still the last hope of our democracy. We hope that the Appeal Court will do the needful and upturn the strange verdict. We cannot afford a stalemate and chaos at this time.  The mood of the people of Osun to this strange verdict is somber, culminating into popular demonstrations against their strange verdicts in major towns and cities last week.