Osun election: Victory for the people – The Osun victory is not Ademola Adeleke’s victory. It is the victory of the people against the growing economic calamity unleashed on Nigerians by the ruling party.
By Promise Adiele
The result of the just-concluded governorship election in Osun State still resonates across the country at deafening decibels. Everybody is celebrating the Accord Party’s victory and the defeat of the self-styled behemoth All Progressives Congress (APC). It was a political tsunami for the ruling party, which prides itself on being the all-conquering proverbial bull in a China shop in Nigeria’s politics. Besides the brutal, merciless pummelling of the ruling party, the victory signals a collective revival of optimism in Nigeria’s political atmosphere dominated by demons and monsters from the netherworld. After all, all hope is not lost. The power of the people is supreme when the people decide to use it. Democracy is still alive in Nigeria, maybe, just maybe.
Osun people should be celebrated. What could not happen in different parts of Nigeria during any of the off-cycle elections happened in Osun State. They are the undisputed champions of Nigeria’s current democracy, at least for now, until other parts of the country join them in 2027. It was a classic example of ‘power to the people’. Besides the Osun electorate who voted on the day of the election, credit must also go to Osun indigenes across the world who, in one way or another, through social media, influenced their compatriots back home to decimate the APC-orchestrated political contraption. Democracy prevailed not because INEC allowed it or the APC permitted it, but because the people, through sheer grit and determination, at the risk of their lives, insisted on proving a point, and they did in style.
To properly appreciate the victory of Osun people in the last governorship election, we must situate it against the backdrop of that tragic avowal by Mr President that “all is fair in politics”. By that statement, the Commander-in-Chief surreptitiously designed a template for destroying any opposition on his way to capturing power or extending his political territory. He was subtly validating all manner of vices as ‘fair’, including killing, snatching of ballot boxes, vote buying, intimidation, and alteration of election figures. To Mr President, all these vices are fair. Nothing could be more tragic. That presidential declaration summarily exposed the psychological condition of the man who occupies Aso Rock. It calls into question his claims as a democrat and his convictions as a leader, and number-one citizen in a country of over 200 million people. It was a summons to anarchy, and it came from the president.
It was that same “all is fair in politics” mindset that inspired the APC to unleash the malleable Senate President, Godswill Akpabio; the Senate Leader, Bamidele Opeyemi; many other Senators; 30 governors; many House of Representatives members; ministers; and other presidential aides on Osun State. Their charge was straightforward and unambiguous: Remember, “all is fair in politics”, therefore, “grab Osun, steal it, and run with it”. We must at once resist succumbing to the facile propaganda that the APC never wanted to win the Osun election. That is a misleading falsehood from the pit of hellfire. The APC did everything known and unknown to humanity to win that election. No party will deploy that kind of procession to a state where they had no intention of winning. But the people of Osun State battered them beyond repair. Hiding their faces in shame, the APC bigwigs left the state amid loud boos from the people.
We must also quickly correct the erroneous impression that Ademola Adeleke won the election due to his stellar performance as governor. To be sure, there is nothing about Ademola Adeleke that won that election for the Accord Party – not his personality, not his achievements and certainly not his known ideological convictions. He won the election because the people rejected APC, that is all. It was a bold statement by the Osun people to prove to APC that even if “all is fair in politics”, the voice of the people is supreme. It was also a case of “the devil you know is better than the angel you don’t know”. That was why other candidates in the election also lost. So Mr President lost an election in his state of origin. His people rejected him the same way Lagos, his fiefdom, rejected him in 2023. Divine powers upheld that symbolism.
But overall, it was an unspoken rejection of APC, a party that has impoverished Nigerians, lied to the people, manipulated every structure of governance and perpetuated the highest level of fraud in political documentation in the history of the country. Therefore, when people say that the Accord Party won because APC wanted it to win, I laugh in French. It is the kind of reverse psychology imbibed by a hungry monkey after several failed attempts to grab a banana. Then the monkey says, “I didn’t want the banana because it was rotten”. APC actually thinks Nigerians are dumb. But of course, a battered and bruised man must give an excuse for the defeat, even if it is out of shame to save face.
I will once again task students and scholars of Political Science to give us the proper nomenclature that describes a situation where voters collect huge money from politicians and turn around to vote against the same politicians. There must be a name for that situation, and no one can convince me otherwise. We must quickly add it to our linguistic registers because we will need it in 2027. Collect their money and vote against them. The money is your money, taxpayers’ money. Indeed, Osun people are smart. A colleague who teaches at Osun State University, a Marxist to the core, reliably informed me that many people collected as much as N50,000 on election day but voted against the APC. E sweet me die. I personally looked for some Osun people after the election to celebrate with them in my little way. I only met three, and I did my best for them. We must also discard the very offensive notion that APC lost because Adeleke made a deal with them to hand over the state in the next presidential election. To believe such inanity is to undermine the power of the Osun people, and that is pure delusion. No deal was made; APC desperately wanted Osun State, Adeleke was helpless, but the people prevailed.
The Osun victory is not Ademola Adeleke’s victory. It is the victory of the people against the growing economic calamity unleashed on Nigerians by the ruling party. Before the election, I did not regard Adeleke as a political force. I never liked him as a governor because he trivialises that exalted office with his constant jesting. He, like many Nigerian governors, lacks convictions about anything. To them, governance is all about frolicking in ostentation, photo-ops, and the reckless allocation of public resources. Immediately after the election, he did not disappoint my interpretation of his character. He quickly endorsed Bola Tinubu for a second term, the same man who did everything in the book to pull the rug from under his feet. Some people are irredeemable. Instead of thanking the Osun people, pointing the way forward to equitable governance, the governor shamelessly returned to his tormentor-in-chief and thanked him.
Adeleke’s behaviour after the election is a huge insult to all the Osun people who defied all odds to vote for the Accord Party. His utterances strengthen the master-slave dialectics in Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot. Lucky is a willing slave to Pozzo. Despite all the punishment and ill-treatment from Pozzo, Lucky willingly submits himself to him, making no effort to break from servitude. Why would Ademola Adeleke thank Bola Tinubu after the people of Osun won an election for the governor? Is it in Tinubu’s place to determine who wins an election in Nigeria? It is a narrative sustained by those who benefit from the rot in the system – the president has the power to make and unmake. But the Osun election demystified him.
As 2027 approaches with unrelenting vigour, Nigerians must borrow a leaf from the people of Osun. What seemed impossible is doable. Troop out in millions to vote, protect your votes, collect their money if they offer it, but vote according to your convictions, and ensure that the votes count. Osun did it. Nigerians can do it. Osun made it impossible for the electoral umpire to manipulate the process. The votes were counted and immediately uploaded to the IREV, giving no room for glitches and manipulations. The old, the youth and the very young were all involved. It was a collective rejection of systemic assault on the body politic. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Millions of Nigerians who have lost hope in the country’s democratic journey must be salivating at the prospect of redemption in 2027. It is a huge opportunity for the impoverished masses to take their destinies into their hands and decide. All the governors who defected to APC, thinking that victory was a foregone conclusion, must all be jittery now. Power belongs to the people and not to any demagogue from Mars. What happened in Osun can happen in any state and at the centre. Nigerians, get ready for action.
