The Osun barometer

Residents of Osun State survived the electoral armada of 2018. They had turned the governorship election into a plebiscite on the performance of APC’s outgoing governor, Rauf Aregbesola. They almost buried Gboyega Oyetola in revenge! The opposition PDP missed a big chance to reclaim Osun. First, it presented a less-than-credible candidate without the necessary educational […]

Residents of Osun State survived the electoral armada of 2018. They had turned the governorship election into a plebiscite on the performance of APC’s outgoing governor, Rauf Aregbesola. They almost buried Gboyega Oyetola in revenge!

The opposition PDP missed a big chance to reclaim Osun. First, it presented a less-than-credible candidate without the necessary educational background to govern a state that very much needs intellectual rigour. Then, during the horse-trading with third place contestant, Senator Iyiola Omisore, the PDP somehow left the field open for APC bigwigs to seal a deal with the ex-PDP chieftain. It was as close as it could possibly be. Aregbesola’s party won, or did it?

The rerun election was opaque in some areas while a pinch of violence here and there led to charges of voter intimidation. The main election was quite credible, the rerun, not quite so. Desperation came to the party in all its array. Although one could understand why any disenfranchised voter would bitterly complain, one didn’t know what to make of the pronouncements of some envoys who observed the polls.

One envoy said he had received complaints about intimidation of journalists and election observers and that he called on stakeholders to remain calm while he investigated the claims. Now, that is taking it too far, don’t you think? Isn’t it presumptuous of the envoy to speak as if he had any hold on any stakeholder or that he was an electoral prefect of sorts? Would a Nigerian envoy in any European country or even the US or Canada speak that way?

About 1.25 million Osun residents collected their permanent voter’s cards out of the 1.68 million registered to vote. In the end only about 721,607 cast valid votes in both the main and rerun elections. APC’s Oyetola received endorsement from 35.41 percent of the voters against Ademola Adeleke’s 35.34 percent. Either way, the two leading contenders were endorsed by only about 15 percent of the total number of registered voters. Sometimes, democracy stultifies logic.

One Tokunbo AremoOdua took to social media to vent his feelings on what he called ‘absurdities or incongruities’: “You can contest elections, win and serve your country with an SSCE (WASC) which does not qualify you to serve the mandatory NYSC. But you cannot serve your country if you have a degree and you do not have the NYSC done”.

On his part, Prof. Owoeye warned as follows: “We should expect more pending school cert results from our schools. Only in Nigeria will Professors  be collating officers announcing illiterates as winners of election that will produce those to rule over them”

Sigh-inducing words all around!

To the discerning, Osun was a kind of barometer to gauge APC’s chances in the 2019 presidential elections. Mark my words, some states that have been chalked down as ‘safe’ for the two main parties, APC and PDP, may turn out to be cliffhangers. In spite of the phenomenon of stomach infrastructure, Nigerian voters are becoming more sophisticated by the day. Many years ago, APC, as the ruling party, would have swept the Osun polls by a mile. The fact that it found itself scrounging for votes and knocking on hitherto neglected doors to get a toehold indicates that voters are becoming shrewder by the day.

The 2019 elections will therefore be a plebiscite on President Buhari’s performance. That is the cross every incumbent will have to carry from now on. If Aregbesola believed his own lies that he was the best thing to have happened to Osun State since the invention of Akara Osu, he knows better now. Had his party recorded the projected landslide in Ijeshaland as it did when Aregbesola was getting into office, there would have been a buffer of more than 50,000 votes to separate APC from the nearest opponent. But the people showed that execution of fancy projects at the expense of staff salaries and pensioners’ entitlements is bad governance.

There are other Osun-type scenarios waiting to happen. Any strategist worth his salt would tell APC that 2019 is not done and dusted yet, except that PDP and its various emperors can’t fashion out a cohesive formula that would keep those on the reserve bench happy while fielding the first eleven.

POLARIS CONTROVERSY

We recently heard the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) declare Skye Bank healthy. Then, the CBN authorised a loan of N100 billion for the ‘healthy’ bank – “a guarantee line which ensures that withdrawals it suffered in the wake of undue panic recently does not adversely affect its operations”. Suddenly the ‘healthy’ bank was offloaded to a new owner, Polaris Limited.

Now, there are many questions regarding this sale and the CBN would do well to put the minds of many banking laymen such as this writer to rest:

Is it true that Polaris was just a limited liability company that was “registered with CAC on 14  June 2015?

Has the outfit any previous record as a player in the banking industry?

Is there any truth in the allegation that Polaris Limited only changed its name from Polaris Limited to Polaris Bank Limited on 14 September, 2018?

·Can a non-financial company be registered to take over a financial institution?

Who are those behind Polaris Bank Limited?

Does the federal government have hands in the deal or did CBN act alone?

How true is it that what is actually at stake is Nigeria’s 10% stake in the SAT-3 through Skye Bank’s ownership of NITEL, the backbone infrastructure for ICT in Nigeria?