Ogbeni: The Osun Renaissance Years

• BY OLAKUNLE ABIMBOLA

Ogbeni: The Osun Renaissance Years is a book written by a seasoned journalist and columnist, Mr Olakunle Abimbola, on the only two-term governor of Osun State and immediate past minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. The literary work, which will be launched soon, profiles Aregbesola; innovations, developmental strides and controversies that characterized his eight-year administration. A chapter of the book talks about how Aregbesola swam in the ocean of unfriendly media. 

Below is an excerpt from a chapter named ‘Media Hostility’

GENERALLY, the Aregbesola government endured a lot of skewed and horrible reporting; and hostile editorial articles by newspapers that should know better; and many times too, brazen and unfair commentaries from these adversarial segments.  But Aregbesola and his government would not be the first – or maybe even the last – to receive such treatment. 

In 1955, the Western Region, under Chief Obafemi Awolowo, started free, universal, and compulsory primary education.  But the hostile press tried to shoot down the scheme.  Though the programme came after intricate planning that dated back to 1952 when the proposal was first muted in Parliament, all the hostile media saw was increased taxes (to fund the scheme), which it whipped up in a frenzy.  It also spread deliberate falsehood: by that scheme, it claimed, the Awolowo Action Group (AG) government was denying farmer-parents critical farm hands. 

That was the government’s motive, it swore, by the regional law that made it compulsory for kids to attend free public schools.  West African Pilot led these negative campaigns.  It was the official voice of the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons (NCNC: later National Convention of Nigerian Citizens), the Western Region’s leading opposition party.  The AG would lose the first election after the introduction of free primary education (the federal parliamentary election of 1956) before the people realized the developmental potency of the scheme.

History repeated itself in the Second Republic (1 October 1979 – 31 December 1983), under Alhaji Lateef Jakande (1929 – 2021), newly elected Governor of Lagos State.  He had declared free education at all levels, in line with the four cardinal principles of his party, the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN); and had mobilized scarce resources to expand facilities.  But as it was under the Awolowo experiment, all a segment of the media saw were “poultry sheds”, in reference to the rather modest emergency classrooms, put together to kick-start the scheme. 

By the way, rather humble-looking school buildings were among the barbs the opposition NCNC and its media threw at the Awolowo scheme.  Beyond anger at “poultry sheds”, the media, from 1979, did not inform anyone that those structures were temporary, pending permanent ones in the works.  It would take the succeeding Air Commodore Gbolahan Mudashiru (1945 – 2003), Military Governor from January 1984 to August 1986, to start that project, in a raft of school villages all over Lagos State, after the overthrow of the Second Republic.

Even at the start of the Fourth Republic in 1999, when Governor Bola Tinubu, also of Lagos, embarked on a chain of reforms, all his government got, from a section of the media, was ridicule and scorn.  When Oracle – the digital public service pay solution – was being hatched to arrest notorious “ghost workers” and digitally secure public sector workers’ service records, the hostile media could not understand why Tinubu and his Alausa “oracle” were piling so much discomfort on the workers.  Also, the Tinubu government’s efforts to introduce refuse bagging for orderly collection, by the public waste disposal utility, only earned the experiment the tag of “Tinubu’s smelly bouquet of flowers” – or something like that.  Yet, that refuse-clearing reform rid Lagos of its notorious mountains of filth; while the Oracle pay system purged the Lagos public services of its age-old pay rackets.  

READ: Progressive Politics, Aregbesola And Posterity

So, all through Nigerian political history, each time a government had to do something fresh – what the Aregbesola order dubbed “Government Unusual” in Osun – the media often tried to shoot down the attempt.  There appear yet no conclusive sociological studies to establish why the media often frets when it senses the disruption of the conventional and the mundane by any government.  But it would appear media managers and the reporters under them often share the anxiety of their fellow elites – always the first to balk at any change, because they don’t know how that change would impact their settled lives.  But again, the same media that screeches and bawls at the change it did not initially understand – or was even too arrogant to even try to – is often the first to regale in its sweetness if it turned out well.  Nigerians, generally having short memories, easily forget things.  So, the media moves to its next mischief, knowing full well that hardly anyone would remember its last impassioned tantrums – no matter how brazen or shockingly misguided.

But even with this background, media hostility to the Aregbesola government was benumbing – maybe because the Governor himself was always ultra-passionate and zestfully dramatic in pushing his views.  He dubbed his administration “Government Unusual”.  He threw away the conventional prefix of “His Excellency” for the stark “Ogbeni” – simply Mr. Governor: no frills, no thrills; except with the hoi polloi in the streets, who claimed him as one of their own and always roared their approval at sighting him.  His combative intellectual jousting made him no friends, even among the band of rigorous thinkers — except the few that could stand their own. 

Aregbe, went the popular grumble, knew everything! Neither did his spare dressing style win him any fresh elite friends.  Nor did his beard: an unfazed stamp of his proud Muslim essence and heritage, which made not a few – most of whom did not even know him – to dub him an Islamic extremist.  Yet, as Governor, he ran the most liberal faith policy in the history of Osun – if not of any other state in Nigeria: equal state access and recognition to every faith and creed and their adherents. An unusual Governor, running a Government Unusual, cut the picture of an executive iconoclast.  That might well have put the media on the edge; and fuelled the condemnable bias against him, all through his eight-year tenure.  Yet, he ran the most audacious development government of his time, anywhere in the country, anchored on radical progressive principles.  His progressive strides and unapologetic pro-people policies and programmes were next only to the golden achievements of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as Premier of Western Region, in pre-Independence Nigeria. 

To put his O’School reforms in historical context: whereas the earlier experiments of Chief Awolowo and Alhaji Jakande started with truly humble schools, Aregbesola aimed at building ultra-modern schools to replace the ruins he met as Governor, in his grim race against time to give a new lease to Osun public education and its army of children from poor families.  What was more?  The old Western Region (one of the three giant regions in the parliamentary federation in which Chief Awolowo operated) and Lagos State (inheritor of the assets – and liabilities – of the former federal capital) had far better resources.  In contrast, the Osun public purse was far drier: Osun being a struggling upcountry state.  Yet, Aregbesola and his braves dared to dream; and to bequeath Osun glittering and futuristic public education facilities.

A writer touring Osun on a South West observation mission, sponsored by a body he called “a regional professional body”, wrote of Aregbesola’s O’School projects: “From what I saw in Osun, the schools built by the state Governor amazed me.  I have travelled to virtually all the states in Nigeria,” he noted. “[But] I do not know of any state government that has built such schools of such European standards.”  

The writer was Adewale Adeoye, a seasoned journalist on human rights, development, and allied beats.  He quoted local testimonies to back his eye-witness account: “I won’t deceive you.  We have never had it so good in Osun,” his source, who he simply called Akanni, told him at Ikire, a town in Osun and headquarters of the Irewole local government.  “When falsehood becomes a recurring decimal, it becomes the odd truth.”  Quoting the Partnership for Child Development, PCD’s endorsement of O’Meals (the Osun homegrown school feeding programme: the social infrastructure segment of the O’ School intervention), he gave the Osun budget for each child’s midday meal as N250.  That  drowned the N50 that Borno State budgeted for its own feeding programme.  PCD, by the way, is a famed development NGO based in the United Kingdom.

Yet, it is these same education reforms that Abimbola Adelakun, a columnist with The Punch, summarily dismissed, more in thunderous ignorance than in reasoned facts – perhaps re-echoing Adeoye’s source that “when falsehood becomes a recurring decimal, it becomes the odd truth”.  Adelakun wrote of the Aregbesola-era education reforms:

He expended a substantial amount of money on “Opon Imo”, computer tablets distributed to school children when the focus should have been on guaranteeing quality education for them in more efficient and innovative ways.  As it always turns out, the shiny electronic tablets serve the politicians who awarded the scandalous contracts far more than the school children and would be unsustainable in the long run.  Then he built mega schools, another gaudily coated set of jewels.  Some of those buildings he bequeathed his poor state at princely sums cannot pass an integrity test. 

The quality of the writer’s thinking would appear clear.  First, it was rich claiming that Opon Imo was not “efficient and innovative”.  Opon Imo had grabbed rave global review: as cutting-edge IT and possible solution to the crisis of mass education in developing countries.  That was partly because of its relative low cost and high efficiency.  But even if the writer had cause to doubt that claim, she did not proffer any superior alternative to justify her arrogant and sweeping dismissal.  

Again, “integrity tests”, for the mega schools, were at best marketplace rumours pushed out by Aregbesola’s successors.  The Gboyega Oyetola administration had been accused of wilfully letting the prime schools that Aregbesola built to waste and wither, on the altar of petty politics.  So, to promote clear bad faith to sacred facts, as Ms Adelakun did in her piece, not only showed the quality of the writer’s mind, it also questioned her sense of fairness.  

By the way, one of the mega schools that Ms Adelakun dismissed as “gaudily coated set of jewels” produced Nigeria’s best schoolboy scientist in Master Akintade Abdullahi, on 16 March 2020.  That was Osogbo Grammar School (then known as Osogbo Government High School); and the winner achieved that feat less than four years after the school opened its gates to pupils, on 1 September 2016.  Again, this clearly proves how writers’ arrogance and wilful ignorance often blight a column space, which otherwise should educate newspaper readers. 

The Adelakun article was written almost four years after Aregbesola’s exit from office.  But it stayed true to the bile and blind bias that The Punch, and many of its writers, hauled at Aregbesola and his government, just because they could.  Incidentally, Ms Adelakun regularly savaged Aregbesola and his government in her column.  Although both newspaper and columnist claimed they wrote and acted in the best tradition of rigorous public commentary, many had cause to doubt those claims.  

Prof. Niyi Akinnaso, ironically a former back page columnist with The Punch, put the newspaper’s anti-Aregbesola combativeness in the context of the general media conspiracy, against the Ogbeni and his government, in a valedictory article which The Punch published on 29 January 2019:

Led by a leading newspaper [no prize for guessing which!] the press immediately pounced on him, and never let go until he left office.  I was initially co-opted into the negative press corps, leading to my cautionary article, entitled “Ogbeni … softly, softly” (The Punch, 27 November 2012).  However, the more I looked into Aregbesola’s activities and projects at close quarters, the more I realized that the press was wrong about him most of the time.  This is not to say that he was above board.  He surely deserved criticism for his excesses and failures, to which I will return later.  Nevertheless, the baby need not be thrown out with the bathwater.

Even more succinctly, this Akinnaso article placed its fingers on the oft-media penchant for bland, blind and sweeping condemnation of what they do not even understand.  Ms Adelakun saw, as wanton wastes, both Opon Imo and the mega schools that the Aregbesola government built.  But Akinnaso, who seemed to understand the matter better, saw Opon Imo as prime, if not priceless, asset: 

“Rather than purchase textbooks,” Akinnaso wrote of the innovation, “he introduced Opon Imo, the Tablet of Knowledge, in which textbooks and other educational resources were stored.  He quickly suffered the fate of innovators, by being attacked by the press.  There is nothing wrong in being critical of innovation,” the professor admitted.  “But something is wrong with not taking time to study it and identifying its advantages.”  That was the long-and-short of the anti-Opon Imo hysteria in the media.

Yet, the professor was not done:

Virtually every project initiated by the Aregbesola administration was attacked by the press, mostly for the wrong reasons.  For example, the reorganization of the educational system to accommodate the feeding of vulnerable six to nine year-old kids in Elementary Grades 1-4, was wrongly viewed as a contravention of the nation’s 6-3-3-4 system; while the introduction of free school uniforms for easy identification of school kids was drowned by a politically motivated hijab crisis and an Islamization agenda.  Nobody cared about the garment factory and the employment it generated.  

Take yet another adversarial editorial that The Punch wrote, entitled “Aregbesola’s misguided church project”, and published on 21 January 2014.  The opening paragraph of the editorial:

Rauf Aregbesola, the Governor of Osun State, appears impervious to moderation in matters religious.  His latest misadventure is to purchase a piece of land to build a church as part of his queer concept of “development”.  But building a church, by whatever name, should not be the responsibility of a government in a secular or multi-religious society.  It is another disturbing example of poor public finance management.  This obvious insult to the people’s intelligence should be rejected outright.   

Among others, Prof. Sola Adeyeye, then a senator of the Federal Republic representing Osun Central, picked holes in the hectoring editorial, in a piece of his own that he called “Church and State in Osun”, published by Premium Times, the online newspaper, on 25 January 2014.  

Following its opener, the editorial accused the Aregbesola government of dabbling into faith matters by its plan to put in place a 200, 000-capacity interdenominational crusade arena, using the pull of some Christianity icons, living or dead, native to the Ijesa area of the state.  The Osun government claimed its motive was to use Christian evangelizing, to push religious tourism, to boost the Osun economy.  The Punch countered that the Aregbesola government had crossed into dangerous borders of the state dabbling into religion.  

But aside from the facts of the matter, what first riled Senator Adeyeye was the intemperate language that The Punch editorial deployed:

The language was intemperate and disrespectful of the office and person of the Governor and a poor attempt at ridiculing him before his constituents and in decent gathering.  Such words like ‘misguided’, ‘misadventure’, ‘queer concept’, ‘obtuse thinking’, ‘oddity’, ‘Greek gift’, ‘a shocking lack of understanding of what constitute the core functions of government’, ‘a bribe’, ‘baleful political gimmick’, ‘hypocritical dalliance in religion’ etc. were freely used.

Indeed, so riled was the professor, at the harsh language, that he even gave a tutorial – and rightly so: “An editorial is the voice of the newspaper – what the owners are saying on any issue and it carries the biggest weight.  That is why,” he lectured, “it is often very thoughtful, incisive, well researched, well-argued and written in persuasive and diplomatic language.  Regrettably,” he rued, “these are clearly missing in this particular editorial.”

But away from the language, Adeyeye also accused the newspaper of rushing to roast the Governor without even understanding the issue at hand.  It charged The Punch with rushing off to write and thunder, without first carrying out due diligence – “how could the Governor be accused of acting in bad faith, by fulfilling a campaign promise, in a democracy?” he queried.  He explained that the crusade arena, a religious tourism and local economic booster, was a campaign promise, well fulfilled by the Governor.  He also pooh-poohed the claim by The Punch that the Osun government bought any land to fulfil that promise.  He said the land was free donations from the host communities, though the government decided to pay them a token compensation for their noble gestures.

The senator also warned of the grave danger of reckless newspapering in a democracy – a warning which spoke to the generally harsh attacks on the Aregbesola government, without prejudice to constitutional duty of the Fourth Estate to call the first three estates of the Realm to citizen-question: 

A newspaper can be as tyrannical as an evil government; it can hide under a seemingly noble mission to perpetrate evil.  It can project a lie as truth and a truth as a lie.  It can also foster its own agenda on the public and masquerade it as an altruistic public service.  A newspaper can hoist and sustain an evil government as well as seek to pull down a good one.  These are not postulations.  They are complex issues that emanate from the contradictions of media practice in any society.

Femi Odere, in another reaction to this same editorial in The Punch, cautioned the paper to be fairer and more professional in its takes next time. 

“While The Punch newspaper, as society’s watchdog, is professionally and ethically bound to put government activity and policies under close scrutiny,” he noted, “criticizing the government of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola just for its sake smacks of unethical professional practice.  The newspaper,” he warned, “would do well to provide proof to its readers in its attacks of the Governor the next time; otherwise it should stop these needless attacks.”

This warning would ring true of the general media scapegoating of Aregbesola’s Osun government on the salary crisis, which really was a national emergency.  Again, it was Prof. Akinnaso, ironically then writing for The Punch, who rose to Aregbesola’s rescue, by putting the issues in their proper perspectives.  This time, the piece was in The Guardian, a newspaper not known to be involved in the anti-Aregbesola media conspiracy.  Yet, Adejumo Amzat, The Guardian’s feature editor, wrote a piece that Prof. Akinnaso argued was a garbled, if not entirely fictive, account of the salary situation in Osun.

“Piggybacking on this negative press [on the salary scapegoating] came the ‘mother of negativity’ – an … article, written by Ajibola Amzat, the Features Editor of The Guardian, entitled, ‘State of the Living Spring gasps for breath’ (The Guardian, 13 March 2016),” the writer opened. “Relying on unverified, third-party, documents and statements generated by political opponents and detractors, Amzat recycled numerous false allegations and conjectures, some of which are contradictory and illogical.” 

Akinnaso accused Amuzat of fictive and “classic hatchet” journalism: 

For example, in two consecutive paragraphs, Amzat debited the Osun State Government with various loans totalling N764.4 billion!  He even transmuted a letter of request for a loan into the real loan, even when it did not materialize!  Realizing that his figures might be unrealistic, he added a caveat: “The Guardian was unable to verify these claims from the mentioned banks before publication.” Classic hatchet journalism!  What is worse, Amzat claimed that he conducted his research for over six months and visited Osun at its commencement in August 2015 but he never came across a state official and no state official saw him.  He never inspected any official record; nor did he interview relevant officials to cross-check facts and figures.  The closest he came to the government was a single telephone conversation he claimed he had with the Director, Bureau of Communications and Strategy, Semiu Okanlawon, who nevertheless told him that his claims were unfounded. 

Akinnaso wrote that following Amzat’s report, he travelled to Osun.  He not only found most of Amzat’s claims fictive, Akinnaso’s findings corroborated the official information, on the salary question, that the Osun government had put in the public space. He collated his facts from the requisite workers unions.  He interviewed members of the Alhaji Hassan Sunmonu-chaired Osun Fund Allocation Committee, starting with the chairman himself.  He also poured cold water on Amuzat’s claims that Osun ongoing projects had ground to a halt.  He itemized projects still ongoing, particularly those funded by the Sukuk and other bonds, tied to specific projects.  However, he confirmed that generally sourced sundry projects had slowed down, because of the funding challenge.  

If Amuzat’s piece was really as bad as Prof. Akinnaso claimed, one would wonder how it made it through the ordinarily rigorous grind of The Guardian.  But again, it underscored the peril of media scapegoating of citizens and governments, to the extent that during that dangerous season, the media can put out anything, knowing that the gullible, hurting and emotionally charged people would lap it up.

Even then, the Aregbesola scapegoating, powered by wild lies and a merry traducement of his person, did not start with the salary crisis.  It started at the very beginning, though it became more reckless and much more brazen as his tenure wore on.  Political foes, working with their media confederates, grabbed every straw to pull the Governor down; and divert attention from his audacious development policies, which they rightly guessed might mean their death knell at the next election season – and beyond.  

Ironically, Tunde Odesola, The Punch Osun correspondent in Osogbo, in a 20 March 2011 report, already noticed this trend: how the Osun opposition scoffed at Aregbesola’s initial use of Oranmiyan House, his Campaign Headquarters, as temporary office, pending the readying of the Bola Ige House Governor’s Office complex; and growled that he chose to stay at a private facility in his Ilesa hometown, instead of immediately moving into Government House, Oke-Fia GRA, Osogbo.  But the Osun re-branding, which was inaugurated on 16 March 2011 – the new government’s 101st day in office – would trigger wilder and more hare-brained rumours, which would herald the sign of media recklessness to come.  

After that event, wild rumours started making the rounds.  The rebranding featured the “renaming” of Osun from “Osun State” to “State of Osun”; the change of its moniker, from “The State of the Living Spring” to “Land of the Virtuous” or Ipinle Omoluwabi (in Yoruba); and the release of the Osun Coat of Arms. (But that really was a slight alteration of the old Western Region coat of arms.  The original plan, by the way, was to make the crest a common one for the South West, in the spirit of regional integration.  But that plan did not work out, necessitating Osun to adopt the crest alone: See Chapter 7).  A State of Osun Anthem was also released – which was, again, an adaptation of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Second Republic Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) party anthem.  The State of Osun flag completed the re-branding process.  The flag sought to link the essence of Osun people to the general features of the African and Black people of the world.  

The Osun re-branding was unveiled in March 2011.  Between that time and a year later in March 2012, that Aregbesola was dead serious on “Islamizing” Osun had joined the cocktail of dangerous lies that his political foes freely peddled; and which their media friends busily amplified.  That was after earlier insinuations – ludicrous as they sounded – that the Osun re-branding meant that the Ogbeni wanted to pull his land-locked, economically struggling state out of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  

Things got to a head in April 2012, when wide media reports claimed the State Security Service (SSS, now Department of State Services, DSS) was closely monitoring Aregbesola, over his alleged “secessionist” agenda.  The DSS alleged dossiers, as quoted in the media, listed some of the claimed subversive activities to “include the alleged change of the name of the state from ‘Osun State’ to ‘The State of Osun’; and the alleged replacement of Nigeria’s Coat of Arms with the Osun State Coat of Arms in the Government House in Osogbo.”  That allegation, however, was not true: the Osun Coat of Arm did not replace the Nigerian Coat of Arms any more than the Osun Anthem displaced the Nigerian National Anthem.  Both crests and anthems were incorporated in such a way that the national symbol had greater prominence than the Osun insignia at official state events and functions.

Even then, the rumours and their quasi-official validation were so rife and so rampant that Governor Aregbesola felt obliged, on 14 April 2012, to make an official broadcast dispelling the “patently false and laughable” reports. 

“It is appalling that there is a semantic misunderstanding of the difference between ‘Osun State’ and the ‘State of Osun’ which we have adopted,” he told Osun people in his broadcast.  “This grammatical hair-splitting will be considered laughable in an elementary English language class.”

On the hue and cry over the Osun Coat of Arms, the Governor insisted: “Our crest is a reflection of our history and proud heritage.  Indeed, all the states of Nigeria had their separate crests until 1975 when the military embarked on a more unitarist state policy.  Even now, other states and regions have their emblems, crests, flags and slogans.”  That was true: all the 12 states created by General Yakubu Gowon, on the virtual eve of the Nigeria Civil War in 1967, had own crests and flags.  It was only when the regime of Gen. Murtala Muhammed created 19 states in 1975 that these state insignia receded into the background.  Still, the 12 legacy states never formally abandoned them. 

On the reported DSS dossier, Aregbesola assured his people that it was nothing but a storm in a tea cup.  “I want to assure you therefore that there is no cause for alarm.  What you are seeing,” he explained, “is the handiwork of an overzealous and misguided leadership of a security agency that has mixed up allegiance to the Constitution, the Nigerian people and their welfare with the partisan interest of a transient occupier of state office.” 

On alleged Islamization plot, the Ogbeni’s refutation was no less emphatic. “In our state here, we have large populations of members of all religious groups, including traditional, who have lived in harmony in the past 150 years at least.  It is therefore impracticable,” he stressed, “for any religious group to lord it over anyone or for a particular government to Islamize the state as alleged.  As a Governor,” he insisted, “I am not in a position to promote one religion over another.  My cabinet, as is apparent to all,” he reminded his audience, “is dominated by Christians.”

Still, The Punch literarily went gaga after the Osun 15 November 2012 declaration of Hijra, the Muslim New Year, as a yearly public holiday.  In its editorial, published on 20 November 2012, the newspaper roared and growled, screamed and seethed, suggesting that indeed Aregbesola could have an Islamization agenda.  In its characteristic editorial bullying, it dismissed the declaration as “Aregbesola’s strange holiday in Osun” – the title of the editorial.  Still, beyond editorial hectoring and a free and reckless throw of Islamic scarecrows, there was pretty little to the editorial.

First, the newspaper admitted that the Governor was empowered by law to declare public holidays.  It quoted the Public Holidays Act and what it states: “Subject to section 1 of this Act and subsection (1) of this section, the Governor of a State may by public notice appoint a special day to be kept as a public holiday in the State concerned or in any part thereof, and any day so appointed shall be kept as a public holiday.”  So, by law, the Governor did nothing wrong.  But the big deal was that The Punch, furious and all-mighty, disagreed.  So, it lectured with an air of sweeping finality: “such powers should not be used to further religious interests.”  

In truth, that could be a golden counsel, in a terrain where faith matters are very sensitive.  But the newspaper could not prove any charge of “furthering religious interests” under a government that gave equal treatment, recognition and access to the three main faiths in Osun.  As part of that access, the Osun government would later, on 20 August 2013, declare a yearly Isese Day, as a public holiday for traditional worshippers – the most repressed of the three adherents, all over Nigeria.  

To ram home its Islamic scare tactics, The Punch resorted to sweeping claims, which nevertheless were only partly true:

Interestingly, many predominantly Muslim states do not even have public holidays for Hejira.  Saudi Arabia, home of Islam’s founder and whose king is the custodian of its holiest sites, does not.  Similarly, Iran whose supreme law and supreme political authority flow from Islamic religion does not.  Nor does Qatar, another Persian Gulf state, observe a work-free day for Hejira.  In Turkey, only Eid-el-Fitri and Eid-el-Adha are public holidays. What was Aregbesola’s interest …?

At best, however, these claims are not as sweeping as this counter document would prove:

According to www.schoolholidaysguide.com, Egypt, Malaysia (marked as Awal Muharram), Indonesia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates (UAE) have Hijra as public holidays, though all of these countries, except Egypt, also observe January 1 as public holiday.  Saudi Arabia runs an official Islamic calendar but does not declare Hijra a public holiday.  Neither does it declare January 1.  Hijra is no public holiday in Pakistan.  But it also only observes January 1 as “banker’s holiday”, according to information on this website.

So, The Punch’s claim was only true in part; and the newspaper could be fairly charged with stacking its cards to win an argument on the spur of the moment, in its chosen “Islamization” row with the Governor.  Many Muslim countries declare Hijra as public holiday.  Many too do not.  So, that point is neither here nor there.

However, Egypt would appear a better model for what Osun was trying to achieve, in terms of fairness to all faiths, in a multi-faith society: 

The Nigerian case is even more interesting when compared with Egypt, a secular state with a Muslim majority and a sizeable Coptic Christian minority.  Egypt, each year, celebrates the Coptic Christmas (January 7), Orthodox Easter (April 25, this year).  For the Muslim festivals of Eid-al-Fatr, it sets aside three days of public holiday, and four days for Qurban (Eid-al-Adha).  It also observes a public holiday for Al-Hijra, the Islamic New Year, but only recognizes what, in most of the Arab world is called the international New Year’s Day, January 1, though on that day, offices remain open.  

Osun has a good mix of Christians, Muslims and traditional worshippers.  The Yoruba are famously liberal and tolerant in faith matters.  So, why fix what was not broken?  That is a fair and legitimate question: why did the Aregbesola government go activist on faith rights, when there were no open complaints over the status quo?  First, intelligence available to governments might not be apparent in the public space.  Then, strategic thinking demands that governments move to tackle matters before they assume crisis proportions.  

Besides, the reaction to the Hijra declaration in Osun did not validate the Armageddon that The Punch, and other media alarmists were stoking.  The Osun Muslims took their Hijra holiday with gusto, which perhaps suggested eons of repressed rights.  But there was no evidence of any serious inter-faith rancour till date – not even on the Isese yearly public holiday, at which some condescending Muslims and Christians first scoffed.  On the whole, it would appear a triumph of Osun citizens, in the Aregbesola government’s fairness and equity to all, in faith matters.   That ought to be a plus, not a minus, as the hostile media was trumpeting.

That must have led Mohammed Haruna, a syndicated columnist with The Nation and Abuja-based Daily Trust, to later wonder: “How the declaration by the Governor of a holiday to celebrate a new Islamic year is ‘strange’, in a state where more than half the population are Muslims; and where such a holiday detracts nothing from non-Muslims, The Punch did not demonstrate convincingly.”  

Still, it is only fair to say that Haruna, a Muslim himself, could have harboured pro-Muslim sympathies – as much as The Punch was exhibiting anti-Muslim antipathies – a reality that The Punch seemed to have glossed over, with utter insensitivity, while waging its self-imposed crusading for zero faith expression; even after admitting that Nigeria was a multi-religious state, though officially tagged “secular”.

From the Hijra controversy, the next media battle would move to Hijab – and again, The Punch was in the vortex of it all.  If it was not writing hasty editorials on the Osun “Hijab crisis”, it was flashing seductive front-page colour photos, of “Christian” pupils donning own religious robes to counter a court verdict that Muslim girls could wear the Hijab scarf, atop their uniforms, in public schools.

In “Osun and the Aregbesola legacy”, The Punch announced, rather breathlessly, in another condescending editorial:

The drama is still on.  Triggered by a quirky decision by an Osogbo High Court judge, that wearing hijab to public primary and secondary schools is a constitutional right for female Muslim pupils, some Christian pupils have also decided to enjoy those rights by wearing ceremonial religious robes to classes.  The judgment was the outcome of a suit filed three years ago by Muslim groups in response to the refusal of school heads to allow some pupils wear hijab, insisting that all students, irrespective of faith, should wear only the approved school uniform.

In its characteristic bullying, it went on an emotional binge; and found the Governor culpable for what the newspaper had earlier admitted was a “quirky decision” by the Osun judiciary.  Was the Governor now part of the Judiciary, in a presidential system with rigid separation of powers?  Even if the decision were “quirky”, was it the editorial thunder of a biased newspaper that would correct it – or a civil advice, to the involved parties, to appeal the case and pursue the possibility of higher courts setting aside the judgment?  But apparently, the newspaper was too angry to think of such civil niceties, as it barked:

We hold Aregbesola primarily responsible for the trajectory of events that have culminated in the recent absurdity that is casting a proud, resourceful and principled people in poor light.  The sinister hand of the administration is revealed in the ruling of the judge that students should wear the hijab ‘in the colour’ prescribed by the state government.  Contrary to his current protestations, Aregbesola is seen as an interested party that had shown his hand as a man with religious agenda since he became Governor.  It is absurd for a secular government to be prescribing colour or any other detail for religious apparel in public schools.  And what happens to adherents of other faiths with conspicuous religious symbols, including bracelets and turbans by Sikhs and skull-caps by Jews?  This is a legitimate concern. 

Again, it would appear licentious, if not outright reckless for a newspaper, in its most sacred corporate column, to freely levy accusations without backing them with any proof – except, of course, its own thick bias.  Besides,  banalizing the issue in the passion of the moment – “bracelets and turbans by Sikhs and skull-caps by Jews” – would appear another fair and legitimate worry for the official voice of a newspaper, which ought to be an epitome of solemnity and gravity.

It would take another writer, writing ironically for the same newspaper, to expose the Osun organized chaos in the name of Hijab.  In “Osun hijab ‘crisis’, with statistics”, Prof. Niyi Akinnaso opened his piece: “The word ‘crisis’ in the above title is put within inverted commas, because there really was never a hijab crisis, truly so-called, in Osun schools; and there is none today.  At least, that was the main claim in my article, entitled, ‘The true story about hijab in Osun’ (The Punch, 28 June 2016).”

Akinnaso beamed his x-ray on the genesis of the Hijab excitement, vis-à-vis its splash in the media.

Until a reporter instigated the principal of the Christ African Middle School, Osogbo, to allow her female Muslim students to wear hijab, in accordance with a court judgment, the so-called hijab crisis had occurred only in one single school throughout the entire state, namely, the Baptist High School, Iwo.  Government officials and Muslim leaders quickly intervened in the Osogbo case, and that was the end of it.

Then, he went into the nitty-gritty on the particular 4 February 2014 excitement, on which The Punch wrote its arrogant editorial, after earlier making a splash of pupils in different Christian robes, apparently goaded by religious fanatic or activist parents and guardians, in the anti-hijab showdown:

The incident occurred on Tuesday, 4 February 2014 and it involved 353 students out of a total student population of 2, 123, over 50 per cent of whom are female.  On that day, a total of 261 female Muslim students wore hijab, while a total of 92 Christian students (male and female) wore various robes, including choir outfits, revealing their religious affiliations.  The BHS was the only school throughout the entire state, where such an incident occurred.  Hijab wearing continued, without any hoopla, in the rest of the state, including the other secondary schools in Iwo town.

To be sure, the optics of such an uproar was bad, even if the cold statistics, as gleaned from this extract, somewhat mellowed its effect.  Still, the writer gave a crucial background to understanding the not-so-glaring politics and religious sentiments at play – and on the virtual eve of the 2014 gubernatorial election too:

But let’s look closely inside the Baptist High School, in order to understand the true nature of the controversy there.  As indicated last week, BHS houses five merged secondary schools, namely BHS, Baptist Grammar School, United Methodist, St. Mary’s, and St. Anthony’s.  The last three of these schools came into the merger with hijab-wearing female Muslim students. 

This background information clearly showed that the showdown was not the simplistic clash of pro-hijab against anti-hijab forces.  It was also a move, by hijab-wearing girls from some of the merged schools, to sustain their privilege, since hijab or no hijab was no issue in their legacy schools.  

But here also, you could also see a newspaper on self-trial: on one hand, its most sacred article rushed to thunderous judgment (24 June 2016), simply because it had an axe to grind with the Governor and it felt it could bully its way through by sheer emotions.  On the other, a “mere” columnist, in the same newspaper, intervened 11 days later (5 July 2016); and seized the high ground of reason to introduce facts and sobriety to the same issue that the newspaper itself had treated with gung-go anger and contempt.  Is sobriety not supposed to be the forte of newspaper editorials?  Nevertheless, The Punch editorial/columnist opinion contrast could also be flipped as editorial liberalism by a newspaper that allows a myriad of opinions, even when such differ from its official voice.

But far more injurious to the Iwo community: of all the 11 high-capacity schools that the Aregbesola government built, only the one sited in Iwo was left incomplete, as at the time Aregbesola left office in November 2018.  As at April 2022 – almost three-and-a-half years after – the project was still at 80 per cent completion stage: where the former Governor left it.  Because of religious politics, therefore, Iwo schooling teens had been short-changed, in comparison with their peers in other towns where those schools were completed and put to use.  Again, it is another condemnable case of adults, playing religious and sundry politics, sacrificing the future of their own children, but blaming others for their folly. 

Such needless short-change comes with extremist – and most times, unreasonable – stand on faith matters.  In September 2017, even after Sukuk had been used to deliver some of the Osun futuristic schools, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) was still insisting that the Islamic bond was a ploy to “Islamize” Nigeria “through the back door”. 

CAN, via a news release by the Reverend Musa Asake, its secretary general, declared: “The Christian Association of Nigeria has been protesting against this aberration since the Osun State Government, under Governor Rauf Aregbesola, embarked on this violation of the Constitution.  The recent floating of Sukuk bond is not only sectional,” it claimed, “but illegal and a violation of the Constitution.  Every law that has been promulgated to back Sukuk issuance and promote an Islamic banking system in Nigeria,” it thundered, “is ultra vires, illegal, null and void.”  

Yet, at that time, it was clear that the Federal Government had too little cash, from its coffers, to bridge Nigeria’s huge infrastructure deficits.   So, some creative financial engineering was called for.  Osun had already built public schools, by accessing Sukuk bonds – and there was absolutely no discrimination, against any of its army of youth beneficiaries, numbering in their thousands, on the basis of faith.  As at when CAN came out with these allegations, the Federal Government was deploying the Sukuk to build and rehabilitate toll-less roads, plied by everyone: Christians, Muslims, traditional adherents.  Had the government not thought out of the box to raise funds, these same faith lobbies, “speaking truth to power”, would mount the pulpit to rue the poverty and infrastructure decay in the land and blame those in power to no end.

“Sukuk is not an attempt to Islamize Nigeria in any form,” Alhaji Lai Mohammad, President Muhammadu Buhari’s Minister of Information and Culture, said in response to the CAN charge. “On the contrary, it is an attempt at financial inclusiveness.  The difference between Sukuk and other bonds,” he explained, “is that if you invest in Sukuk bond, you earn no interest.”    

In other words, Sukuk can accommodate, in the financial market, Muslim individuals and corporates that have disposable funds but balk at the usury behind the conventional banking system.  That way, investible funds are greatly expanded and everyone is a winner.

In 2020, more than one year after he left office, Aregbesola himself, in an article published by The Guardian, gave a brilliant insight into his philosophy, by the Sukuk and allied borrowing: 

“One of the most significant innovations of human civilization is the creation of credit, which grants us the ability to move money between the present and the future.  This simple innovation means,” he explained, “that today’s spending is not constrained by today’s income.  If I can borrow from the future, then I can spend a lot more today.”

In June 2020, the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers (CIS) described the “Federal Government’s Sukuk bond as a wealth creation strategy in this period of COVID-19 pandemic.”  A CIS statement, which its President, Mr. Tunde Amolegbe and Registrar/Chief Executive, Mr. Adedeji Ajadi signed, further explained:

Sukuk is highly sought after by ethical investors.  It provides a regular bi-annual tax-free payment for the period of the instrument while the principal will be paid at the end of the maturity period of seven years … Sukuk helps in redistribution of wealth.  It is a risk management instrument, which is ideal for both speculators and investors.  Speculators can sell before maturity.  The instrument will help the government to finance large projects.” 

However, such dispassionate explanation of financial instruments often falls on deaf ears, in the circle of rival and mutually antagonistic religious lobbies.  That intemperate temper appeared to have gained ascendancy in Iwo.  The Baptist Mission there stalled on a futuristic school project to benefit Iwo youths and generations to come.  The parents and guardians goaded their impressionable children and wards to a Christian anti-Hijab showdown, when they could have appealed the Hijab court verdict.  The result was the still-birth Iwo mega school project, while other communities were enjoying a similar facility.

That local loss of opportunity was bad enough, even if limited.  But the real tragedy was the media swooping in to magnify the crisis, even after knowing that much of it was staged for some nefarious ends, as a section of the media did during the Aregbesola administration.  That was tantamount to giving the period a skewed image.  Coming generations of researchers, 100 years down the line, would take such toxic reports and jaundiced editorials on their face value; cock sure that the media of that era could be trusted with fair, accurate and factual reports, with piercing and illuminating background materials to boot.  But lo!  

That was the grave injustice that a section of the media did Aregbesola and his government – braves that should otherwise be toasted for brilliant ideas and doughty efforts to develop their cash-challenged state and its long-suffering people.

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not represent the opinions or views of OSUN DEFENDER.