The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Osun State has noted that the state Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, eight years in office is the worst that the state has ever had since the return of democratic rule in 1999.
The party position was stated in a statement issued in Osogbo yesterday by the state Chairman of the PDP, Hon Soji Adagunodo.
The party equally described the outgoing governor as a legendary failure who is leaving the state worse than it was when he took over in 2010.
While berating Aregbesola for engaging in a childish self-glorification in an all-night programme held last Friday, Adagunodo said the governor and his ‘herd of clappers’ should understand that the people of Osun State whose lives have been made miserable by the governor’s misrule will continue to pray that there would be no repeat of the mistake that brought the APC into governance in the first instance.
The party said there are no better indications of the governor’s failure than the dysfunctional educational system, comatose healthcare, gargantuan debt, collapsed road and water infrastructure and several other negatives which the governor is bequeathing to his successor.
According to him “It is already on record that it is during the tenure of Aregbesola that Osun was ranked by BUDGIT as one of the four most indebted states and the least fiscally responsible state in Nigeria.
“It was during these same years that the state found itself on the lowest rung of performance of students in public examinations; a situation which made us a laughing stock even among states hitherto considered educationally disadvantaged in Nigeria.
“Human life and development had never been this compromised as medical doctors, other health workers, lecturers, and civil servants embarked on strikes for a cumulative period of not less than three and a half years during Aregbesola’s administration.”
On the claim of the governor that he built more roads than previous governors, the PDP said Aregbesola ought to be ashamed of the death traps which township roads in Ejigbo, Iwo, Ede, Ikirun, Ila Orangun, Ilobu and other cities in the state have become in the last eight years.
The party chairman said the roads from Osogbo to Ila-Odo, Akoda-Gbongan, Orile Owu to Ijebu-Igbo, Iwo to Ejigbo and several others which the governor used as cover to obtain various huge loans have been abandoned at stage between 15 and 40 percent completion.
He said: “The road from Osogbo through Iwo to Ibadan which the governor boasted would be rehabilitated by Julius Berger in 2012 was never started and is today rank among the worst roads in Nigeria.
“It is similarly on record that a recent survey by an international organisation ranked Osun as one of the three dirtiest states in Nigeria. This is in spite of the billions of naira siphoned by local and state government officials in the guise of environmental sanitation.
“Our party notes that while the state is very happy that the reign of Aregbesola is coming to an end, the people are rather sad at the legacy of impunity and fraud that the governor and his party introduced to our political landscape as exemplified in the September 22 and 27 governorship election in the state. It is one ugly legacy which has put the name of our dear state on the dark spot of political discourse within and outside Nigeria.”
He expressed its hope in the judiciary to do justice and restore the mandate freely given to Senator Ademola Adeleke as the rightful successor to Aregbesola.
The PDP however joined the people of the state to keep on praying that the inglorious reign of the APC would soon be terminated and a new lease of prosperous life be injected into the state of the living spring.
