- By Olakunle Abimbola
Salamatu Sule, the refined moderator at the book discourse, tried her genteel best to stress the session would focus on development, not politics. Nice try!
Leading lights of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) were there in numbers, to support their national secretary! But also there was an “A”-list of Abuja book lovers.
In the end, Madam Moderator, both in her chat with the author; and from comments later by the interactive audience, more or less achieved her aim.
Well, politics wasn’t exactly kept at bay. But whatever politics that gate-crashed the show wasn’t toxic. That was a big win!
It was at the formal introduction to the bibliophile, at the RovingHeights, Garki, Abuja, marvelous book grotto, of Ogbeni: The Osun Renaissance Years, by Olakunle Abimbola — yours truly!
Indeed, Ogbeni shows that taut tension between politics, on one hand; and legacy and development, on the other.
Legacy and development aren’t unlike crisp sausage — that sweet aftermath of power, near-eternally savoured by a grateful people, whose lives had been touched and changed for the better, by a particular government.
But politics, dirty and toxic, often bakes that sausage — with all its messy stuffing of the meat into the flour; and the grinding of the seasoning and allied condiments!
Before legacy, you must win power, via democratic elections. To win power, you must play politics, warts and all. Out-foxing the partisan opposition is tough enough!
But what if a “civil war” broke out in your own victorious camp, with none of the sides, hitherto ardent friends, now turned bitter foes, taking prisoners! That was the toxic politics that had snared Ogbeni — till its eventual September 3 Abuja introduction.
Ogbeni, published by Safari Books, Ibadan, was released in February 2024, after three years of intensive research and writing.
It’s less the biography of Rauf Aregbesola, its main character. It’s rather more about the Aregbesola government’s pro-poor focus, during his Osun gubernatorial years (2010-2018), with its many discrete social safety nets.
OYES (for youth jobs), Agba Osun and O’Ambulance (the organic Osun elders’ care and welfare scheme), O’School (the most sweeping public school infrastructural rebirth in Osun history), O’Meal (the Ogbeni-era school feeding scheme, in which the state fed pupils in the first four years of formal learning), and Opon Imo (the audacious computer tablet. It not only took care of free e-textbooks for high school students, it also provided “tutorials” in grills and drills, using past WAEC/NECO questions, to prepare the students Osun was presenting for these two crucial terminal examinations).
Now, all of these specific, core development schemes are gone, to the chagrin of the Osun poor! But that’s not the focus of this piece.
The focus rather is when Ogbeni was released, catastrophe had hit the Aregbesola arm of the Asiwaju School of Politics, the proud inheritors of the Awolowo Progressive School.
The protégée had fallen out with his long-term political mentor! The once-upon-a-time comrades were bearing down on one another, snarling that biblical whoop: who is not for us is against us! A bruising civil war couldn’t be nastier!
In such an emotive — and combustible setting — staying loyal to your avowed faction is no crime. Indeed, for the loyalists, it’s a badge of honour, when emotions run high and mutual ire — and its temporary insanity — is the top-most logic!
But who stays loyal to the creed — the pristine noble call that bound them all, before a tiff turned the most innocuous of songs into the most toxic of innuendoes, as the Yoruba say: “ija lode t’orin d’owe!”
Indeed, loyalty to the creed would appear the sanest, after the hurly-burly is done — to parody Shakespeare in Macbeth — and the battle of instant anger is lost and lost! There can be no win in anger!
The truth is: the current split mutually diminishes all of the combatants — and the August 15 Osun election loss is a living proof! APC has no business struggling to win in Osun. But can a house divided against itself stand? HireGrant Writers
Indeed, after the Awolowo-Akintola blowout of the First Republic (1960-1966), the current Tinubu-Aregbesola tiff is not good for South West politics, particularly now that Asiwaju Tinubu is President of Nigeria.
That’s why lovers of both — among whom I count myself — must not tire of pushing for reconciliation, instead of enlisting as merry cannon fodders for political hustlers and conflict entrepreneurs.
Indeed, that toxic season — with its ruthless zealots’ politics of identity, hare-brained gossips, vile rumours and rich conspiracy theories — had kept Ogbeni in the can for too long. Yet, the work should have been a merry harvest of what a united and determined South West progressive phalanx can achieve!
But the Abuja RovingHeights book show broke that jinx. It is only the first of many, though, to pitch development experts, agencies and institutions: Ogbeni: The Osun Renaissance Years, is a practical pointer to other African countries.
These specific policies had been tested in Osun, between 2010 and 2018 — and they worked splendidly. There’s no reason they won’t work in other African — and even Caribbean — countries, in a hurry to spread development.
That was the long and short of if all, as Madam Moderator engaged the author on the dais, with the audience, among them Ogbeni Aregbesola himself, paying rapt attention.
But as the session ran on, I had a sudden epiphany: beyond its practical development crow, might Ogbeni remind the now estranged combatants how it was when the house was united, and the Asiwaju-led Action Congress (AC) fought a near-four-year battle to retrieve its stolen mandates in Edo, Ekiti and Osun, not to forget the helping hand it gave Segun Mimiko’s Labour Party in Ondo?
Such strength and bliss in amity! It’s never too late to shun war and hug unity!
Meanwhile, special thanks to Her Excellency, Ana Flavia, the outgoing Deputy Ambassador, Embassy of Cuba in Nigeria, for gracing the show. She could have passed for a Nigerian!
(Culled from The Nation Newspaper of September 8, 2026)
- Abimbola is a columnist and author of Ogbeni: The Osun Renaissance Years
The opinions expressed in this publication are solely those of the author. It does not represent the editorial position or opinion of OSUN DEFENDER.
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