Osun State stands at a familiar crossroads. It is very important that we do not return to a political brand that many residents associate with hardship, unpaid or half-paid salaries, and governance that left workers and pensioners struggling. The presence of certain figures on the campaign trail only sharpens the warning.
A former or current governor from Kogi State is helping to lead the APC effort, while the governor of Edo State has joined the fray with characteristic theatrics. These are not neutral endorsements. They bring the record of administrations that have themselves faced serious questions about workers’ entitlements and fiscal credibility.
When a governor who is still finding it difficult to settle the legitimate dues of his own civil servants is presented as a model or mobiliser for Osun, the message is clear: the APC’s idea of leadership remains continuity of struggle rather than relief.
The central fear is the reintroduction of the half-salary regime that defined a painful chapter under previous APC administrations in Osun.
Between 2015 and later years, modulated salaries left higher-grade workers receiving half or three-quarters of their pay. Families went into debt. Dignity was eroded. Workers begged. The current APC candidate, Asiwaju Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji (AMBO), served as Commissioner for Finance during part of that era and under the subsequent Oyetola government. Party spokesmen now try to distance him from the policy’s origin, but the association sticks in the public mind for good reason. Osun workers remember who was in the room when the pain was institutionalised.
Governor Ademola Adeleke’s administration has made workers’ welfare a stated priority. Arrears have been addressed, the new minimum wage implemented, and the culture of delayed or truncated pay challenged. That record is imperfect and contested, as all records in Nigerian politics are.
Yet the contrast with the half-salary years is real enough that the slogan “Never Again” carries force. Returning to that model would not be progress; it would be regression dressed up as renewal.
Osun people have seen the political theatre that accompanies campaigns run by outsiders whose own states have not escaped similar fiscal controversies. They are entitled to demand better than a return to that script.
AMBO’s candidacy and the heavy deployment of governors from Kogi and Edo are attempts to paper over a credibility gap.
Experience in public finance is claimed; the lived memory of half-pay is what voters actually carry. Campaigners can mock dancing or promise prosperity, but they cannot erase the record of workers who once could not feed their families on time or in full.
Osun’s workers, pensioners, and ordinary residents do not need another experiment in hardship governance. They need continuity of the priority that treats their entitlements as non-negotiable. Rejecting failure is not mere partisanship; it is self-preservation.
The choice on 15 August is whether to lock in the gains of the present or gamble on a return to the half-salary past.
Signed:
Comrade James Onifade
Advocate for Good Governance and Judicial Reform
