Last week, the media reported
the British Deputy High Commissioner as saying that the State of Osun is a
viable destination for any investor who is looking for a safe place to put his
money in Nigeria because, according to him, “the State is peaceful”.
The High Commissioner did not stop at that; he said, “within three years of his administration, what the government of Ogbeni Aregbesola has done in terms of infrastructural development and how the governor has been attracting businesses and industries is IMPRESSIVE, PRAISEWORTHY AND BOASTFUL for FUTURE of the State”, (emphasis mine).
The High Commissioner did not stop at that; he said, “within three years of his administration, what the government of Ogbeni Aregbesola has done in terms of infrastructural development and how the governor has been attracting businesses and industries is IMPRESSIVE, PRAISEWORTHY AND BOASTFUL for FUTURE of the State”, (emphasis mine).
For a country now accustomed to
negative stories from mischievous quarters, painting the State of Osun in the
most unfavourable light, this statement from Mr. Peter Carter, Britain’s Deputy
High Commissioner in Nigeria should put the lie to the misinformation and
disinformation fed to and promoted by a section of the media.
The truth could not be more
clearly stated. What’s going on in the State of Osun in virtually all
departments is really and truly “giant strides” in development. However, a
vocal minority enamoured of and sated by the miserableness of conditions that
Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola met, are getting serious and sizeable media attention as
they hysterically demand a return to the status quo created by their People
Democratic Party (PDP) friends.
These people live in the past
and they have practically lost their legitimacy as “promoters of the good” for
at each stage of the Aregbesola revolution every step taken by the governor was
viciously condemned, his person maligned and the State placed in the dumps by
the opposition party and their surrogate. In fact, many respectable citizens
who were misled to buy into the false stories coming out of Osun got a sense
that a radical Islamists had emerged in Osogbo who must be checkmated.
That was some two years ago. We
had worked as hard as we could to change the pathetic image which the PDP and
their friends tried disingenuously to create of the State of Osun. As you read
this, that strainous effort is not over, because there are people in high and
low places who have a preference for lies and continue to buy into the falasies
that PDP and their surrogate tell about Osun. They keep the negative stories
alive and they swear by their goddess of lies that Aregbesola is destroying
Osun.
Some people, awfully limited in
their perceptive ability, call that politics; blind, deaf and unenlightened
politics perhaps. When you sit back in the fraudulently acquired opulence of
your wealth to tell senseless lies about your own state, or you junket media
houses with utterly false stories about how the state is being run, all for the
purpose of tarnishing the image of the government in power, in the long run you
qualify to be described as a terrorist.
You are in the business of
mentally terrorizing your community. That is not politics; it is crime!! But
the good thing is that these lies and those who take pleasure in propagating
them have not succeeded even in fooling ordinary people in the state who see,
hear, feel and delight in the incredible level of progress that the All
Progressives Congress (APC) government led by Ogbeni Rauf Aragbesola, continues
to make in Osun.
People who know what is
happening, whose source of information is not the political illiterates
assembled in the opposition party, will tell you that the state is making giant
strides. And no less a personality than the British Deputy High Commissioner
has said just that. Let the enemies of progress bow their heads in shame.
They
have eyes to see what is going on in their country but they deny what they see.
However, their denial has changed nothing and will stop nothing.
Giant strides in Osun continue.
The world is acknowledging it. The people are delighting in it. The streets of
our cities tell the story. Business is bubbling. The pace of commercial
activities in the last three years has more than doubled. There is no single
family in Osun today that is not positively affected by the giant strides which
the Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola led government is taking. The scare-mongering of the
opposition, the lies of their surrogate, and the evil machination of their
supporters from distant lands cannot and will not be allowed to stop these
giant strides.
Finally, a word of warning and
advice: Those who seek to undo these giant strides which the people of Osun
cherish should be prepared to face the wrath of the people. In Yorubaland, they
should understand what that means. They should think again in their own best
interest.
*Mr Oyatomi is the Director of
Publicity, Research and Strategy, All Progressives Congress (APC), State of
Osun.
Vanguard
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