EDITORIAL: Will Omisore Ever Apologise?

Nothing better illustrates the pathetic base politics of Osun PDP than the fatuous claim by Senator Iyiola Omisore that the United Nations Educational and Scientific Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) gave Osun State government over 70 per cent of the amount spent to reconstruct the Olaiya-Ita Olokan Road – the road that leads to the sacred Osun Groove. In an apparent bid to disprove the statement made by the governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, while inaugurating the 2.8 kilometre road on Tuesday, March 6, said that the state got the money to construct the road from the Omoluabi Infrastructure Conservation Fund with the approval of the state House of Assembly, he claimed that the global body largely provided the funds.

His words: “It is an open secret and matter in the domain of the public that the Osun State government had assessed counterpart funds from UNESCO, which is in excess of over 70 per cent following the designation of the Osun Osogbo Groove by the world body as one of the World Heritage sites for local and international tourists.

“This is not new and practical efforts, which climaxed in the attraction of such funds to Osun, began during the regime of the Peoples Democratic Party. But, it is a statement of fact that Aregbesola received counterpart funds from UNESCO”.

Coming from an individual, albeit a serial loser, who once aspired to govern the State of Osun, such fiction in the name of politicking obviously takes him and his party to a new low. The truth however is that UNESCO provided no such funds to the state government. UNESCO in a statement issued by its Communication Consultant (Regional Office) Olusola Macaulay was emphatic: “UNESCO did not contribute any fund to the construction of the road that leads to Osun Grove. And there was no time the Osun State government or its agencies approached UNESCO to support the project or contribute anything to it. We didn’t pay 70 per cent or any other fraction to the project, as being peddled. As I speak to you, we have no project we are undertaking in Osun State.”

It is bad enough that Omisore will drag the respectable international body into his kind of politics. Sadder still is that UNESCO’s swift rebuttal of the barefaced lie has changed nothing as far as Omisore and his PDP are concerned. No apologies to the Rauf Aregbesola administration that he so callously maligned; none to the good people of Osun that he irresponsibly tried to mislead; and certainly no word of contrition for the lies spewed forth about the global body. Rather, he has since moved on ostensibly convinced that lies, big or small, do not matter.

Well, Osun people have a rare chance to prove that true-telling does matter. It is in fact the hallmarks of an Omoluabi. Now, they know better than to entrust their destinies to the hands of those who choose to call darkness light; characters who put out falsehood as truth. Time to get ready for the soulless fellows as they will soon come begging for their votes. Time to show them the true masters.