{BACK PAGE} Observation: Bridging Integrity Gap In Governance

By Sulaimon Salawudeen

The victory of Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola, of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the Governor-elect in Osun was largely expected, though it came after the supplementary elections in seven polling units. Prior and all through his campaigns, revelations abounded each day that he was the candidate to beat among the throng of contenders across party divides to clinch the highest political seat in Osun.

While the announcement early morning of Friday, 28 September 2018 by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) spurred jubilations across the entire length of the state, against the backdrop of anxiety prompted by misdemeanours contrived by the opposition parties which prompted a supplementary election the preceding day, keen and sincere watchers of events as they unfolded knew the conclusion that what dramatists would regard as resolution/denouement, would be Oyetola’s win. For such category of individuals, there could not have been much news in the news! From parleys with various stakeholders, during which groups in their hundreds pledged love, loyalty and block votes, and the acceptability of the candidate himself, not quite a few could have doubted and indeed knew well in advance what the outcome of the election would be.

Monarchs of all categories across three zones of the state, either individually or in groups, were not left out in the pledge of loyalty and run of endorsements. Such meetings entailed some of them expressly directed their subjects to accept and vote the then candidate Oyetola. Muslim clerics, Christian leaders and leaders of other faiths, did not just come visiting the APC torchbearer, they organised open and well promoted prayer sessions for him, telling God their preference, even as they directed their congregations where they should go and how they must vote.

Aware of consequences of an otherwise outcome, they bonded in unilateral rejection of unwanted fate. Copious references were made to years of blatant blackouts, not just physically when refusal by The Executive to procure mere transformers, sentenced residents across the state to years of benighted darkness, curtailing them, including those in Osogbo, a major electricity distribution point in the entire southwest, from accessing light, but more particularly in terms of roads, especially in the capital, which they claimed were just too extremely bad to be describable. Journeys and movements at the time which should not have taken beyond minutes had then lasted hours!

One of the clerics, in drumming home critical necessity for ‘continuity’, once waxed: “We have light today, our children are going to good, fine schools and they eat free meals every day of the week; our roads, at least major ones, are not just good, but are dual carriage ways. The bridges, better than you can see in most places in the southwest here have removed bottlenecks in vehicular operations. With the complementary significance of the bridges, road users now easily access every part of the capital.”

Attention in the heat of campaigns amongst opposition elements shifted from Rauf Aregbesola on the very butt of scurrilous jokes and derisive attacks, to Oyetola. References got made of a candidate who is an “Ajele (foreigner/usurper)”, a stingy person, an invidious schemer who had penciled down sack of workers as solution to so-called half-salary debacle, all trumped to de-market him. Upon INEC’s announcement that the election of 22 September was inconclusive, the schemers upped their die-let-live art, promoting a misconception that Oyetola was no longer interested in the race and he had parted ways with Aregbesola!

But the candidate, now governor-elect, himself, who soon enough assumed his elemental/seminal best, dismissed all in well publicised channels on conventional and new media platforms, allaying the fears and telling a tale which, in clarity of delivery and credibility of content, roused and rallied the citizenry more to his side, returning entire lies to and turning them against peddlers of propaganda. Oyetola, vaulting over really formidable wiles, polled a total of 255,505 to defeat, with a margin of 482, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and its candidate, Ademola Adeleke, who scored 255,023.

Oyetola’s campaigns, in revealing his simplicity as a person, saw him admitting that, despite commendable performance of the outgoing governor, quite a lot still remained to be done, particularly on roads, a number of which he explained had been listed for immediate renovation. According to him, continuity involves accepting gains and pains, credits and liabilities, pledging, in regard of owed arrears of salaries, to pay outstanding months soon upon assuming office. He equally promised to sustain O’YES, O’MEAL, OÁMBULANCE, O’REAP, AGBA OSUN and many other programmes of the outgoing administration and finetune some to bring them to serving humans and communities better.

On purported planned to sack workers, the governor-elect noted if outgoing administration did not lay off workers, even in the thick of now largely escaped financial crunch, his own administration would find more ways to survive better, even as, according to him, the situation has now significantly eased. He indeed pledged to prioritise people’s health and well-being, adding that efforts would be directed at improving the state’s internally generated revenue, without introducing new taxes.

There are quick lessons to draw from the Aregbesola/Oyetola success story. One is the need for incumbents to have actual, not pretended legacies and execute projects upon which to place ‘continuity’. In Osun, one marvels each new day how much volume of work – solid projects – roads, bridges, school buildings, all of which were beautifully completed – got packed into an eight-year period by an Aregbe whose vision was laid out early and clearly enough, and whose mission got so thoroughly accomplished that no one could have been left in much doubt of needs for a successor with enough guts and heart to develop the state further. Everywhere you turn in Osun today, irrespective and regardless of noxious comments of opposition elements, as quite often parroted by their agents, ‘continuity’ must be atop your mind, and for a governor to genuinely sustain the run of glory in governance and devotion to politics only as channel to masses-centric revolutionary interventions, Osun indeed does not deserve less than it got in the just ended baton-transfer exercise!

Another is incumbents serving out their terms must be decisive, evince clarity of vision and display unusual candour regarding successor choice. While the emergence of Oyetola through direct primaries – the first of its kind in recent times in Nigeria – which soon got the nod, rather than endorsement, of Governor Aregbesola, threw up dusts at party level which is just getting settled, many would have admitted in the silence of inner recesses that he indeed deserved the crown, not only with his towering humility, mellifluous elocution and rare intelligent, analytical prowess, but his unsurpassed integrity, a trait which shined forth quite early in his unapologetic consistency as a thoroughgoing progressive. He himself did say: “My philosophy/guide words are integrity, accountability, industry.”

Since 1999 when he donated buses for the use of Alliance for Democracy and making other contributions to party, as it morphed through Action Congress (AC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and now APC, he had never sought or vied for any political office, until his appointment eight years ago, as Chief of Staff (CoS) by one of those who luckily had been nurtured by his rare brotherly love and kingly largesses.

Aregesola is about vacating the seat and handing over a state irreversibly set upon the plinth of progress and development, ranked as the most secure state in Nigeria, and one of the most economically stable and viable in the country. Aregbe’s Osun, must have been so ranked due to physical infrastructure, bold signposts of which have been well harvested, and more particularly the social safety net programmes which have reversed and remedied quite staggering number of lives directly and indirectly through O’YES, O’MEAL, O’AMBULANCE, O’REAP, AGBA OSUN, programme for widows, among others.

Indeed, delivering promises and accomplishing set goals are correlates of integrity, especially on the part of leadership, whose stewardships. In Osun, it is clear that governance is essentially a business of integrity, a pact on social contract to deliver redemptive services to the people based on prior pledge, regardless of excuses which are often too earnest in coming! In sticking to his words, Aregbe is an example, following well in the footsteps of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his begotten successors of our day and times. It is definitely not possible to work so clearly hard and well and not make spirited efforts to ensure emergence of a better or at least, an equally competent successor to keep the work going. From Senator Bola Tinubu to Raji Fasola and Akinwumi Ambode, Lagos state’s is an admirable ‘continuity’ story which a serious state like Osun is set to replicate.

Integrity must not be mouthed, it must be acted, and Aregbe, with his now INEC certified choice of Oyetola, has proven that it is possible to say it and do it. That is the way to close integrity gap in governance.