Review & Outlook: Aregbesola Revisited

 

BY KANMI ADEMILUYI 

FOR the maestros of the pay-per-sentence crowd, recent events in the State of Osun have proved to be a very good payday as in Christmas come early. Good for them, as in all in a day’s work.

In a more critical context, the political crises in Osun go beyond what a former British Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, in a not dissimilar situation described as “just a little local difficulty”. Trivialising the crises cannot mask the fact that in Osun, there is a clear diversion of opinion as to the interpretation of the issue of party supremacy and the ideological core of the party.

Perhaps there was an inevitability about the tussle. For many of the party apparatchiks, the All Progressives Congress (APC) formed out of the merger of various political tendencies in 2014 will always remain a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). There is a reflection here of the inability of the party itself having obtained power at the center to coalesce into an ideologically coherent political formation. The divergence of opinion is reflected in the State of Osun.

For the hangers on who gravitate towards wherever power is, there is no need for ideological orientation than just share the booty. This is clearly the operating basis in Nigeria’s rent collecting political economy. Rauf Aregbesola for long associated with a different perspective of the interpretation of politics expectedly holds a different position. Politics as a vocation must be anchored on a clear ideological orientation, in his case that the essence of politics is to ensure benefits to the overwhelming majority of the population and their families. Or in the eternal battle cry of the Action Group in the early nineteen-fifties, the quest to “make life more abundant” is the sauce, the raison d’etre for political activity.

This is where the divergence lies and history will be on the side of Aregbesola for assiduously maintaining his interpretation of politics.

As an activist in the pitched battles for the restoration of democracy in Nigeria and as a very innovative pro-people governor of the State of Osun, Aregbesola embodied the position of the Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci that “the key essence of politics is to change the direction, the territory of the political debate in favour of one’s own position “. This he did with great determination and aplomb.

He emerged as a countervailing force to the established anti-people current of the now largely discredited Structural Adjustments Program (SAP). By using the levers of the state, a framework could and indeed was created in Osun to protect living standards and at the same time expand output in the economy in the process inducing a remarkable synergy of direct benefits to the majority. 

Examples of the efficacy of this policy direction includes the widely applauded and imitated schools feeding program as well as informal pension benefits for the senior citizens.

The atmosphere created through this redirection was used by the nascent APC in 2014 to show that there was a clear alternative position to the hardly beneficial social and economic policies of the then government in office at the center. The shift continues to resonate. Aregbesola is correctly regarded as symbolising the emergence of this “alternative perspective”.

Paid hacks vilifying Aregbesola cannot obscure the real issue. This is that the core beliefs of the progressive movement must be reignited as the country faces stormy weather ahead and even existential threats on a number of fronts.

Rauf Aregbesola has made history in preexisting conditions and not in situations he will necessarily have wanted. He deserves kudos for redefining the political territory in thought and action. He continues and will remain relevant for decades to come.