Categories: Op-EdOsun

Editorial: Acknowledging A Pivotal Figure

Gboyega Oyetola

As The Torch Is Passed On

History is made under pre-existing conditions and not under the conditions that a change agent would have wanted or wished for. It is from this perspective that we salute the positive intervention of Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola in the affairs of the State of Osun.

Operating largely under very difficult conditions, Aregbesola has reenacted the progressive politics and social democracy largely associated with Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Action Group (AG) and the Unity Party of Nigeria. By implementing a myriad of social intervention programmes, he has in the last seven and a half years in effect, run a government of popular unity.

The government has been clearly pro-people. The free school meals programme to use one example actually went straight into tackling the structural roots of deep seated poverty. In one fell swoop, nutritional needs of the downtrodden were mixed up with the empowerment of farmers into one decisive thrust. The verdict of history will be positive on his intervention in so many areas. In Osun, if we seek to see the positive impact of what he has done, let us look around us.

Two roads now appear before the good people of Osun. To stay on course, or to regress back into a dismal past. The latter route will be ill-advised and will subject a generation to underachievement. The APC governorship candidate Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola is clearly in the managerialist mood usually preferred to be chosen as the successor to a philosopher king. This has worked in Lagos and will work in Osun.

Straddling both the public and private sectors, Oyetola has the acumen, in addition to the diligence required to pay attention to minute details which will take Osun to the next level. This framework has worked demonstrably well in Lagos and it should be the preferred route here.

We therefore reiterate that the voters must look deeper, beyond vacuous postulations in making a pivotal choice. In terms of capacity, that choice in our considered opinion is clearly Gboyega Oyetola.