What Aregbesola Told Me About Tinubu, Akande – Salaam

Dr. Najeem Salaam, a political scientist and former speaker, Osun State House of Assembly (2011-2019), in this special interview to mark his 60th birthday, spoke to YUSUF OKETOLA on politics, governance and his journey in the last six decades. Excerpts:

HOW do you feel attaining 60th birthday anniversary on earth?

Just like a normal human being, when you are growing, you should be happy, and you have so many reasons to thank your God for all that he has done for you over the years. When I look right, left, front and back, I have cause to glorify his holy name for being what he is to me. God has been so wonderful, kind and merciful to me in my journey of life up to this moment. I am very happy and it is a happy moment for me; I thank God for that, for giving me the grace to witness six decades on earth.

This is uncommon grace. Not everybody has the opportunity to grow and clock sixty. People die before attaining such age while some die at birth.

How does life look like losing both parents at a tender age?

When you lose your parents at a tender age, your history may not be even complete because you depend on hearsay from the people around. I have a sister who is 55 years old now. My mom died when she was nursing her, while my father died in December 1976. So, from 1976 till date I do not have both parents. For people who do have parents, it is God that takes care of everybody.

Our parents are powerless without the support and mercy of God. But at the same time, there is blood attachment from the mother, especially, and the father that every child wants to enjoy even when you are old. How will it be if my father and mother are alive to witness their child growing to this level and the celebration of this day. 

It saddens my heart always when I remember them but I keep thanking God for giving me the life I have. Maybe if I have them, I may not be where I am today, I don’t know. And if I want to joke with people, I will say perhaps, losing the two at that age is a reason I am where I am today because they kept on praying for me that they are here and not leaving me. That is another way to console myself about their demise. 

It is a mixed feeling for me that I do not have the opportunity to give back to them the sacrifice of the mother carrying you for nine months and the efforts of the father for that short period. And what has become general, when you attain a ceertain position in life, you will like to show off your parents, celebrate them and showcase their faces. But I don’t have that opportunity. Nevertheless, I am happy that God made me the way he wants me to be.

During your tenure as the speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly, you made some remarkable records, yet some people still see the house under you as a rubber-stamp of the executive. What can you say to this claim?

You know the system of governance in Nigeria is a borrowed one, and the theory of separation of power does not say each arm of government should fight other arms. In theory, what we learnt is a kind of watertight separation between the arms of government. We work together and do other things together. People will say anything, insofar you are not at the floor of the house, raising your voice that you are about to impeach the governor and fighting the governor or any of the executives openly. That is what people call rubber-stamp. I keep on saying that if the executive complies to governance norms, the system should not be unnecessarily ruffled.

The role of the house is to peruse the budget from the executive and oversee governance. If the executive did not go out of all budgetary provisions for the year, there is no way you can offend the house. Secondly, there is the need for the house to check how funds are being allocated for projects and know how solid the projects are.

There was a time I sent my members to check the 10-Kilometres roads constructed in all the local government areas in the state. I instructed them not to take a dime from any of the contractors so it won’t be as a form of bribery because if we are there today, we won’t be there tomorrow. The legacy we built will be there forever. We are not in the house today, but if we have compromised on the quality of the roads for the people, it will be haunting us today. My team went as far as checking the depth of the road to know how many inches deep they were. We did all these things to ascertain if the executive complied with what was specified in the budget and within the context of the project they are doing, I don’t think there should be issues. 

Then there were instances we would  see the executives and frown; we did that behind the scenes. Insofar they stick to provisions of the budget and constitution, there is no need for unnecessary rancour in the chamber. What people expect is to have commotions in the house. No, that is not the essence of democracy. Democracy is to bring dividends to the people.

I have instances that I can refer. It happened to our colleagues in Ekiti State; if our people want to be sincere with it. There was a time where both the executive and the state assembly members were at loggerheads. For months, the governor of the state ensured assembly members could not assess the house. In fact, we hosted them in Osun for them to sit here as parliaments. What did they gain? If you ask them today that if they have the opportunity of going back to the house, they will not do that kind of a thing. They will tell you there is nothing they gained. One, they cannot checkmate the excesses of the governor from afar. They could not even assess the judiciary for oversight functions.

It is good to be in the house, see things and correct them on how to do it. If that is what people call rubber-stamp, I am afraid if we can have a better Osun house of assembly that I presided over. We put in our best. Most we denied ourselves a lot of things that the parliament will always want to make money from. But we have the legacy on ground.

Let me say this, the governor of the state then, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, had been relating with the house of assembly members before he became the governor of Osun. He knew the way to relate well. He has not for once gone beyond boundary. He respects the other two arms of government. 

Of course, the control that the executive has makes it look like the house is rubber-stamp all over the country. The reason assembly members fight the executive mostly is because they want to get money from the governor. The people of the state will not even know that it is their resources that is suffering for it. 

There was a report done by Society now on March 16, 2017, that former governor Rauf Aregbesola and now the National Secretary of African Democratic Congress (ADC) annointed you as his successor. How true is this?

WE are now in 2025. So, it has never happened. I don’t know how they got the report. Even if he wants me and there is someone superior to him that said “no! This is the way I want it” and he complied and obeyed him. There is nothing he could do. Whether he wanted it, I do not know. Ogbeni is someone that respects the leadership of the party a lot, especially the persons of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Chief Bisi Akande. 

I went to him around that time to seek his blessing for my ambition, but he told me to go and meet Baba Akande and Asiwaju that it was their interest that would prevail. He said  he was just their errand boy. I don’t know what research study somebody might have conducted but this is what I have heard from him “Go and meet Baba Akande and Asiwaju”, that they are the one to show him the direction. At the end of the day, that was what played out. His interest did not count. He listened to his leaders, I guess you all know the story today.

Who is Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola to you. What can you say about his style of politics and governance?

If you want to say things about Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, a 300 pages of book cannot be enough to exhaust his political capacity and sagacity. He is a man that is well talented and respects the rule of law. He loves his people and the state. If Aregbesola should have his way, what he plans for Osun is to turn it to Dubai. In him, I see a man that is very loyal to the people he believes are his leaders. 

This is the man I know that served all the leaders that he believed in, the likes of Asiwaju, Baba Akande and even the late sages, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Bola Ige. Even in death, Rauf Aregbesola still respects them till today. Rauf is a one-in-a-million man people would love to work with everyday. Every encounter with him is a sort of political science lecture; you have to go with your pen and paper to listen to him. He reads widely. That experience shows very much. 

In politics, I have seen him as someone who does not like anything that will tarnish his name. He did not value material things. All of us see the way he was before leaving the governor seat for eight years. He didn’t look like a governor for those of us that want to believe in him. As at that time, he was the poorest governor in Nigeria that I knew. Some of his leaders knew that and there is nobody that will say this is what he did in office that was very wrong. That is why he remains one of the very few ex-governors not on the radar of government anti-graft agencies like EFCC or ICPC. 

I am not saying every other person under him cannot perform things but direct from Rauf, there is no way and up till today with what is going on in Nigeria today, if Rauf has any skeleton in his cupboard, they will try a lot to implicate him because he has always been a careful politician and he doesn’t value what other politicians value while in office. He is a very contended man. He prioritise service to humanity above self-aggrandisement. All other things politicians do around, Aregbesola doesn’t do them. He is a man full of energy.

I know that all the people fighting him know him well more than I do. They know what he can do and what he has done. They know what extent he can go and what he will never do in life. Politics is just a funny thing that when it happens people say a lot of negative things about you. They leave the positive side of you completely as if it never happened. When Aregbesola entered the politics of Osun, the political environment changed. People now know what politics is all about. A lot of narrative changed and lives of so many people changed as well.

Aregbesola is a fighter; he doesn’t look back when he believes in a cause. He will pursue it to the end no matter what happens. It started from the time he became the governor. He fought for three and a half years. How many people can withstand that kind of stress? It is Rauf Aregbesola that God used to change the progressive structure in Osun State. He introduced general participation in Osun State and taught us how to mobilise from the unit level to the state level. 

As a former speaker and an important figure in Osun politics, did you tried to reconcile the warring parties within the All Progressives Congress (APC) before you left the party?

There are so many efforts that have turned out to be wasted efforts. Firstly, we did not join any party before now. We are just there talking to our people and people that don’t want to see us as well. It got to a time before 2022 elections that I addressed the press, dissolving all the structures and said that we should go back to the APC to work for the same party. What we heard thereafter was that anybody that wanted to join the party should go back to his ward as a new member as if we were never members. We kept on watching them.

Aregbesola himself was in Osun State when we received him back when he finished his tenure as the Interior Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in June 2023. Openly, at Freedom Park, he sought forgiveness from whoever thinks we have offended them. But nobody listened to us. There was a particular moment that I should not forget, President Tinubu sent some people to Aregbesola in Abuja. Fortunately for me, I was in his office that particular day. Then, he asked me to be part of the discussion. In the long run, I told Ogbeni that this matter is not about him. It is about the people of Osun State. If these people mean business and need good reconciliation, they must go back to our people in Osun State. I told him if he take any decision there, it would bounce back on him and it will not be good for him. They all agreed with me that day. 

The present National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and the former National Welfare Secretary of the APC, Mr Ibrahim Masari, myself and Ogbeni were in the room. They declined coming to Osun, but sent message to all stakeholders. Everyone assembled at Abuja for the crucial meeting. Unfortunately, Ribadu could not join us that night but Masari was with us. 

We started the meeting around 8pm and ended around 3am. The likes of Kolapo Alimi, Salinsile, Gbenga Akano and others were there. That day, some agreements were reached but the other party did not fulfil till date. What else can we do? It was after that we read on the pages of newspapers and blogs that they had expelled us from the party. They didn’t talk to us and later accused us as the cause of their failure after losing the election. How could that be. Someone that you didn’t talk to. Several efforts were made which later turned to wasted efforts.

 As we have seen in the case of Rivers State during the last crisis between the minister of the Federal Capital Territory and Governor Siminalaye Fubara and the Lagos State House of Assembly crises, President Tinubu had to intervene. Did he make any personal efforts in settling crisis within the Osun APC? 

If at all he made any effort, it was one-sided, not our side and effort to just get out of the party. The president cannot claim not to know what is going on in Osun. Had it been he put half of efforts he put into Rivers State on Osun, Osun State will not be like this. But I think it is a game played by some people, I think, he has interest in.

What does the future hold for Dr. Najeem Salaam in politics. Our readers will like to know if you have interest in Osun 2026?

The people of Osun will determine that, but I am ready to serve in any capacity people want me to serve. I leave my fate to God and believe so much in the power of the people of the state. They are the one to say go this way. I am not someone who doesn’t have ambition. But I only look up to God for direction, then do what the people of Osun State want. It is the people who see things. We are very ready to serve them in  any way. 

What is your advise to the people of Osun ahead of the 2026 election in the state?

Not only in Osun, it is Nigeria. Things are getting worse day by day. For some people who can still afford three daily meals, some cannot even afford one now. It is not the country that is bad, it is the leadership that is very wrong. They feel less concerned about the welfare of the citizens of this country. Things are getting worse. 

We appreciate the President giving out dollars to the Super Falcons, but is it possible for the president to mention the equivalent of that amount and announce it on national television that he is giving them N150,000,000 each. Is it not a criminal thing for us to be spending in dollars within the country? It is even more pathetic that such an aberration and absurdity is being committed by the man at the apex of affairs of the country.

We should be thinking about the people. We are not saying no to appreciating the players, but there are two major things that are very wrong there. My advice to Nigerians, and especially Osun people is this, they should shine their eyes and think deeply. N10,000, N50,000 on election day does not cover the suffering of four years. If the country is like this for the first term, we can think of what second term will be.

How did you get the name ‘Iwaloye’ and is it a nickname?

It was given to me by an elderly woman from my mother’s side. People think it is a nickname. No, it just became relevant recently. I have always had the name. You know, the people of the yesteryears see a lot of things. That is the name the woman called me till she died. She did not know me by any other name. Oluomo was the title given to me by the Ogiyan of Ejigboland after completing eight years in office as the speaker. I think it is a way of appreciating me that I didn’t disgrace them. The Oluomo title has never been given to anyone in Ejigboland before me. Oluomo is a chieftaincy title. The two are my name and title.