Musings on Sule Lamido’s Presidential Ambition

The biggest undoing of Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State is pride. This is why the state has been in a big mess, with so much poverty and huge unpaid salaries. The good people of this state are seething. For many, Aregbesola represents pain and deceit. That was why the people of Osun state voted against his candidate in the July 8 Osun West Senatorial election. People trying to interrogate the rejection of the APC should not look far. Aregbesola should examine himself. He should blame himself. The way and manner he treated the first civilian governor of the state, the late Senator Isiaka Adeleke, in death is despicable. Yet, Serubawon was the one who rescued him from the jaws of imminent defeat in 2014. What did he get in return after his death? Aregbesola went on the rostrum, castigating him, saying it was the APC that rescued Adeleke from political humiliation by his PDP; that it was the late Adeleke that needed APC then and not the other way round. Haba! Aregbesola said more unprintable things that are distasteful to recount here, lest one joins this insensitive man.

The good thing is that the people paid him back in his currency. They dealt with him and his protégé, Mudashir Hussain. And they did this in a humiliating way. Of the 10 LGAs in Osun West, Aregbesola and his boy only won in one - Ejigbo where Hussain hails from. And even in that Ejigbo, PDP and Serubawon’s brother, the vivacious and bubbly Ademola Adeleke, made a good showing. Truth is that the election was a referendum on Aregbesola and the governor lost the vote. The spineless Osun House of Assembly can go on from now till 2018, passing a vote of confidence in him.

However, if the APC wants to rebound in 2018 and take its right of place in Osun, then, the party should do away with Aregbesola’s brand of politics that promoted his many amorphous groups like O’Rauf, Mandate Group, State Boys, etc at the expense of the party machinery. This governor alienated the party hierarchy and made it redundant in Osun. Not only that, he carried on arrogantly, believing in his fabled ascendancy as a leader. Yet, this is the same man who appointed commissioners almost three years after he assumed office and only on the eve of that Osun West poll. Aregbesola has more time poking his nose and finger into Lagos politics than in Osun where he was elected to superintend. If APC is desirous of retaining Osun, they need a new arrowhead, a new rallying point today, not the gregarious Aregbesola with his political baggage.

For now, the good people of Osun State are earnestly waiting for 2018 to kick out this governor and his cronies. Seething civil servants and pensioners have spent most of the last seven years protesting huge unpaid salaries, gratuities and pensions. They have also accused Aregbesola of diverting bailout and Paris Club funds meant for payment of salaries and pensions. The chairman of the retirees, Omoniyi Ilesanmi revealed recently that more than 2,000 retirees had died waiting for pension and gratuity, while many others were down with various ailments. “Many of our members are married to their wheelchairs till God knows when. Their children are out of school because of inability to pay fees. The untimely and avoidable deaths continue unabated among us because of non-payment of our benefits,” remarked Ilesanmi.

Instead of addressing issues raised by these retirees, the government mischievously sponsored a faction of the union to counter the protest. Aregbesola has also been pushing out a lot of falsehoods about payments to these senior citizens. This is the height of man’s inhumanity to man. Few weeks back, medical doctors in the state’s public hospitals were on the streets demonstrating against payment of incomplete salaries. Both serving and retired civil servants are going through hell. Anybody remotely connected to Aregbesola in the 2018 election is simply digging his grave.

Former governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State wants to be the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in 2019. He has been doing a lot of underground work. This is the same party he openly worked against during the 2015 Presidential election. During the campaign for Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election, Lamido gave tacit support to Buhari, candidate of the then-opposition APC. His style of politics is frightening. Many will not forget in a hurry how he was appointed the North-west Presidential Campaign Coordinator for Jonathan, but suddenly turned around to mortify his party. His words are still fresh in my memory. Lamido remarked then: “As far as I am concerned, I have not been appointed Jonathan’s campaign coordinator at any level. As I am talking to you, there is no official letter in any form served to me in respect of this appointment you are talking about. I am not Jonathan’s campaign coordinator, only what I know is I saw my name in the newspapers, period.” Lamido ensured that none of the campaign vehicles used by his candidates throughout Jigawa State carried Jonathan’s picture. This is clearly not how to be a loyal party member. The wages of vanity is clearly waiting for this ex-Jigawa governor as he continues dreaming of 2019.