by Demola Rewaju

 An ironical twist occured last week when Governor Aregbesola visited the NASFAT grounds for a programme and donated food items to the Islamic group; the venue was built for the body by Akinbade. 

I was never so good in Mathematics despite my father being a Maths teacher in St. Finbarrs at some point in his life – I never saw the relevance of the subject beyond Primary Six where one is expected to have learnt the usual arithmetic – addition, division, subtraction and multiplication. After those, every other thing is rarely adaptable to real life situations especially in those alphabetical algebraic equations where one has to find the x, y, z or a, b, c. Thank God I paid some attention to dad’s late night lessons though as I start a fresh political-writing assignment on Nigeria’s biggest online newspaper and I have to hit the ground running with my thoughts on the Osun elections. I predicted the outcome of the Ekiti election on my blog but it is yet too early to predict how Osun will vote.

The leading candidate of the media and by popular opinion outside the state itself is Engr. (?) Rauf Aregbesola who enjoys the advantage of incumbency…an advantage that was a disadvantage in the case of the soon to be ex-governor of Ekiti State. Rauf has a lot going for him in the state but also many similarities with Dr. Kayode Fayemi: he’s accused of preferring contractors from Lagos state and many of his local political aides feel alienated from government. Ironically, many of these local politicians who feel this way are those who were on ground for him during the struggle to reclaim his mandate from former Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola. Apart from this, Aregbesola’s refusal to conduct LG elections since he assumed power has made it difficult for the caretaker LG chairmen to build their own support structures; since the governor has the power to hire or fire them, they are seen as slaves to the emperor governor by their supporters. Just like in Ekiti, there are also rumblings within the civil service: unpaid salaries often do that to people in a state where many people look to the government in one way or the other.

Osun also has some unique problems: the very controversial merging of Christian and Muslims schools is one policy that is hard to explain up till date and left much of the Christian community in Osun deeply upset without necessarily pleasing the Muslim community. The decision to impose one school uniform on government schools in the state has never gone down well with many stakeholders in the state as only one contractor produces the uniforms and the governor’s wife is said to be somehow involved with this. With the Ekiti perspective in mind, protest votes are not unlikely but the alternative is not faring better….

If Omisore has taken to eating corn (roasted and popped) on the streets and in the markets of Osun, it has not helped perceptions of him on the streets just yet as some still see him as arrogant. Omisore is a tested politician who cut his teeth in the days of NRC before moving to GDM and following the Afenifere train from PDP to APP and finally to the Alliance for Democracy where although he was a major financier, he was asked by party elders like Chief Bola Ige to wait his turn at governorship position while deputising Chief Bisi Akande. When Akande decided to run for a second term, Omisore resisted and the disagreement led to a major crisis in the state that led to the death of Hon. Odunayo Olagbaju (a member of the Omisore camp) on Dec. 19^th 2001and Chief Ige’s death four days after. Omisore would find himself in prison for two years between 2002 and 2003 but managed to win Mojisoluwa Akinfenwa’s senatorial seat. Some weeks before Ige’s death, he had suffered some humiliation in Omisore’s Ile-Ife where his cap had been seized for a while and some thugs had harassed him. Omisore boasted that he was responsible for this in an interview with the now rested Tempo newspaper. The accusations of murder is one the senator has never been able to wash off as it haunted one of his prominent associates and now Minsiter of Police Affairs, Jelili Adesiyan who had to shed tears at his senate screening earlier this year before he got the ministerial appointment. Adesiyan had thrown a party in his Ode-Omu hometown the same week Bola Ige died.

While it appears that the elections will be a straight fight between Aregbesola and Omisore, a third candidate might prove to be the ‘x’ that may unbalance the equation. Alhaji Fatai Akinbade has been in politics since the second republic when he was the chairman of the NPN’s youth wing in Iwo North Local Government and later a chairmanship candidate of the NRC in Ola-Oluwa Local Government in 1990. He became a commissioner under the military government and was the only commissioner retained when Col. Uzoma Obi took over from Navy Captain Anthony Udofia. He resigned in 1998 to join the PDP and became the party state chairman in 2001. His constituency held the only state house of assembly member at the time he became party chairman but Akinbade is reputed to have masterminded PDP’s victory over the AD in the general election as PDP won all nine seats at the House of Representatives, three senatorial seats and the governorship. He consequently became the Secretary to the State Government under Oyinlola and further cemented his grassroots credentials.

While other candidates mobilise supporters from all local governments when going to campaign in one local government, one hears that Fatai Akinbade insists on having only supporters from each local government attending his political rallies. An ironical twist occured last week when Governor Aregbesola visited the NASFAT grounds for a programme and donated food items to the Islamic group; the venue was built for the body by Akinbade. While most muslims in the state are wary of Aregbesola’s association with traditional religion, Akinbade is accepted by them.

Gov-elect Ayo Fayose acknowledged the role of spoiler played by Labour Party aspirant Opeyemi Bamidele in the Ekiti election but that may not apply in the case of Osun State. Akinbade’s political machinery comprises mostly of those who see themselves as elder statesmen and the brains behind PDP’s success in Osun state till date. Running on the platform of the Labour Party means that Akinbade has to rebuild party political structures across the state but having been in politics longer than his opponents and being well-grounded in the art of local politicking and the role of the traditional rulers, Akinbade may well be the unknown factor that determines which way the elections swing.

With both Aregbesola and Omisore coming from the Osun East senatorial district and likely to split the votes there despite it being the largest of the three senatorial districts, Akinbade would do well to win as many votes as possible in his Osun West senatorial district. This may have played in the thoughts of the incumbent governor and the senator as Omisore picked his deputy Adejare Bello from the district while Aregbesola engineered the defection of former Governor Isiaka Adeleke from PDP to APC.

The proximity of Ekiti to Osun state makes the prospect of another voters’ revolution imminent but pundits must not forget that Osun was the only state where the ACN presidential candidate Nuhu Ribadu won an unpredicted victory in spite of the national and geopolitical trend. For now therefore, all bets on #OsunDecides should wait – if one day is a long time in politics then one month is a much longer period and a lot can still happen between now and then to make the elections go in any directions. All I can say for now is that Aregbesola will not be as easily defeated as Fayemi was; Omisore will not be as easily marketable as Fayose was; but Akinbade will be the unknown ‘x’ factor unlike MOB was. #OsunDecides will be a three way horse race.

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Demola Rewaju is a writer with a background in Nigeria’s political history, party tendencies and ideological activism developed during his days as a Students’ Union leader in the University of Ado Ekiti. He tweets from  @DemolaRewaju on twitter and leans heavily towards the Peoples’ Democratic Party. He is also a real estate consultant in Lagos.

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.