Osun State has returned to national prominence as a template, not a cautionary tale. Under Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party, the state secured sixth place nationally with 53% in the 2025 Subnational Audit Efficacy Index — a metric that is dispositive: it repudiates a preceding decade defined by fiscal asphyxiation and institutional fragility.
The contrast is empirical. Under the All Progressives Congress tenures of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola (2010-2018) and Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola (2018-2022), Osun’s fiscal profile deteriorated on multiple fronts: domestic debt rose from _₦28.6bn in 2012 to over ₦147bn by 2018_ according to DMO data; external debt exposure compounded servicing costs; salary obligations devolved into the “half-salary” paradigm with arrears spanning over 30 months for some categories of workers; pension backlogs ran into tens of billions; and successive Auditor-General reports flagged recurrent infractions, unretired advances, and procurement opacity. Capital projects stalled, IGR stagnated below ₦10bn annually pre-2018, and public trust atrophied.
The Adeleke administration inherited this encumbrance and reversed the gradient. Within 30 months: salary payments were regularized and ₦28bn+ in inherited salary/pension arrears paid; IGR expanded to ₦29.4bn in 2023 and ₦38.6bn in 2024 per NBS data; over 120km of roads were reconstructed across 30 LGAs; primary healthcare centres and 31 schools were rehabilitated; and the state’s audit compliance vaulted Osun into the top six on the 2025 SAE Index. Patronage capitulated to procedure. Rhetoric capitulated to receipts.
Critically, these deliverables were executed despite the federal withholding of local government allocation funds — a constriction designed to asphyxiate subnational autonomy. Where lesser administrations would plead paralysis, Adeleke’s government recalibrated, leveraged IGR expansion, enforced expenditure efficiency, and still delivered visible infrastructure, wage fidelity, and social investment. Resilience under federal fiscal hostility is not commonplace; it is a governing credential.
This is the crux of the continuity argument. The 2025 SAE ranking is not happenstance but the dividend of deliberate divergence from the APC years. It evidences a transition from discretionary excesses under Aregbesola and Oyetola to procedural rigor under Adeleke. Reversion is regression. To abandon this trajectory would be developmental malpractice. Interrupting a system that paid down inherited arrears, grew IGR 3x, and maintained delivery amid withheld LG funds risks relapse into the impunity and inertia Osun repudiated in 2022.
Governance is consolidation. The institutional remediation of a debt-and-arrears legacy is nascent and must be protected. For Osun’s citizenry, the dichotomy is binary and brutal: APC 2010-2022 = debt spiral, half-salary, audit exceptions, and stalled works versus PDP 2022-2026 = arrears liquidation, IGR surge, audit efficacy, and delivery despite federal sabotage.
Osun’s 2025 SAE performance is, therefore, more than an accolade. It is a line of demarcation between insolvency and solvency, between excuse and execution. That Governor Ademola Adeleke delivered despite withheld allocations is not merely commendable — it is the preeminent reason his mandate must be renewed. Continuity is no longer politics — it is preservation.
E-signed: Hon. Comrade James Onifade
Advocate for Good Governance and A Better Judicial System
