The enthusiasm and dedication with which you pursue the causes you believe in is now well-known. Tunde Fagbenle had drawn our attention to this attribute: “It must be said”, he wrote, “that Ogbeni is an activist, nay, a revolutionary of the classical mould; and if he has a fault, it is in the zest he brings to what he believes in and does”. But Fagbenle did not stop at praise-singing. He also cautioned: “As in all revolutionary cases, too, he is oft given to overflow that draws the call for restraint” (The PUNCH, March 11, 2012). Having observed or read about the demonstration of your enthusiasm on several occasions, I thought it was time to emphasise the need for restraint. This is necessary because, as a state executive, your job is not limited to directing the affairs of the state. You are also expected to be a role model to millions of citizens in Osun and beyond. That’s why you need to carry everyone along in your policies and public statements, regardless of partisan, religious, and other affiliations.
Please, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that you should curb your enthusiasm on all occasions. For example, I found quite positive the enthusiastic passion with which you discussed your administration’s education programme during my last visit to your office in Osogbo. You even invited me on that occasion to join the discussion of a customised tablet for Osun schools being manufactured by a Chinese company with input from your administration’s IT experts. Your administration’s education blueprint, which you gave to me on that day, was quite impressive.
However, when we subsequently discussed the subject of regional integration, it was becoming clear to me that your emotional and cognitive investment in the project was so total that your ideas were becoming unrealistic. For example, your vision included the integration of existing state universities in the South-West as Schools and Colleges under a single umbrella institution that you referred to, in our conversation, as “something like The Great Western University”. Utopian and impractical as this suggestion might seem, I did not doubt your sincerity of purpose. However, the need to reconcile your ideas with historical, social, cultural, economic, and political realities should always be central to your consideration.
It has since become apparent that your deep-rooted political investment in the regional integration project led you to become the spokesperson on the project for the Action Congress of Nigeria. This is apparent from (a) public statements by you and your surrogates on the need for regional integration, as reported in various newspapers; (b) your tirade on the Ondo State Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, during the presentation of the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria, to which he sent a representative even when he was not carried along in the preparation of the document; and (c) newspaper descriptions of you during the Ondo governorship election as the “arrowhead” of the “take-over” of the state, pursuant to the advertised agenda of regional integration. I would be surprised if you failed to notice the public’s negative reactions to these actions. At least you would recall that you were cautioned even at the venue where the DAWN document was presented. The project’s declining status today owes in part to your abrasive approach.
You also brought the same excessive zeal to the expression of your gratitude to the National Leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria and former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu, for making you who you are today. There are other ways you could express your gratitude than the way you put it last month at a campaign rally in Ondo. By publicly citing Tinubu as the architect of your governorship, you inadvertently foregrounded godfatherism in the ACN politics, while also leaving out Osun voters in the equation.
I know, of course, that you want the best for Osun and its people. It is also clear that you want Osun to be distinguished from other states. But, again, you went too far with your desire by relabelling your state as “the State of Osun”, instead of the customary “Osun State”. Remember the reaction it provoked?: Aregbesola is a rebel. He is leading Osun to secede. He wants to carve a kingdom for himself. The State Security Service should monitor him. … These are reactions that could have been avoided by focusing on distinguishing your state through unique programmes and projects that would make positive impact on its people.
The latest in your exuberant display of “zest” is the public holiday you declared in Osun on November 15 to celebrate Hejira, the beginning of the Muslim lunar calendar, on the argument that it is what “Muslim faithful use for their programmes and should be accorded its due respect like the first day of January.” I am sure you must have read various commentaries on this unilateral declaration in various newspapers, particularly The PUNCH editorial of November 20, 2012.
Let me spell out the argument in a nutshell: Not only are you the first state executive in Nigeria to declareHejira a public holiday, you are the first, and remain the only one, in the entire Muslim world to have done so. The implication, then, is: If Saudi Arabia, where Islam was founded and where its holiest sites reside, has never declared a public holiday for Hejira, why are you crying louder than the bereaved? Even more importantly, how many religious holidays will you declare in Osun in order to satisfy the various religious faithfuls in the state, including Osun Osogbo worshippers?
Let me bring my point home. You are not the only enthusiastic and passionate Governor in Nigeria. I know at least three others. If you care, I will name them: Babatunde Fashola of Lagos; Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo; and Adams Oshiomhole of Edo. Rather than engage in outlandish declarations and controversial statements, they’ve directed their energies toward people-oriented projects. As you well know, those projects, more than anything else, won them re-election against all odds.
Finally, in case you are not aware, there is a beer parlour gossip about you that I tried hard to dispel when I first learnt about it. You are being compared to the proverbial pot lid, which never thought it could partake in the stew inside the pot until it was used as its cover. This is the kind of gossip that should never have been floated about a true Omoluwabi.