There are moments in a nation’s political theatre when a single statement achieves the rare feat of being both self indicting and historically clarifying. Rauf Aregbesola’s recent declaration at the ADC convention, that after three years President Bola Tinubu is still promising renewed hope, belongs in that category. It is a masterpiece of unintended autobiography, a confession disguised as critique.
After all, this is the same Aregbesola who, upon being appointed Minister of Interior in 2019, told the national press he had no idea what the Ministry of Interior actually did. Not a metaphor. Not a joke. A literal admission of administrative amnesia. And yet, President Muhammadu Buhari left such a character in charge of that ministry for four years.
The results had the predictability and surefootedness of gravity, the kind that does not surprise you when it pulls a stone downward or a ministry into dysfunction:
• Jailbreaks like seasonal festivals
• A demoralised workforce
• A passport system that functioned like a national hazing ritual
• Borders so porous they could have been designed by a conceptual artist exploring the theme of absence
So when Aregbesola now claims that the Renewed Hope Agenda of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a scam, one must extend compassion. He is speaking from the limits of his own administrative imagination. He cannot see what he never understood.
THE MINISTRY HE LEFT BEHIND, THE MINISTRY HE CANNOT RECOGNISE
As part of the Renewed Hope agenda, President Tinubu appointed a young technocrat, Olubunmi Tunji Ojo, to clean up the ruins Aregbesola and his predecessors left behind. And the record shows that he did not merely clean. He rebuilt.
Key achievements of Olubunmi Tunji Ojo (as widely reported):
• Cleared a passport backlog of over 200,000 applications within weeks, ending years of systemic delays
• Launched automated passport processing, reducing human contact and corruption opportunities
• Upgraded border control systems, including e gates and biometric enhancements
• Reformed the Nigerian Correctional Service, initiating decongestion and modern security protocols
• Strengthened inter agency coordination across immigration, civil defence and correctional services
If Aregbesola cannot see this revolution, blame him not. One cannot fault a man for operating at the coping capacity of his acuity.
OSUN’S DESCENT UNDER HIS WATCH
Aregbesola’s difficulty recognising reform did not begin in Abuja. His eight years as Governor of Osun State left a fiscal footprint that still startles analysts. Before he left office in 2010, Olagunsoye Oyinlola publicly stated that he inherited a debt of 2.5 billion naira and that his administration took an additional loan of 18.3 billion naira, placing Osun’s obligations at a little over 20 billion naira before interest and other charges. By 2017, Osun’s debt stock had risen to 165.91 billion naira according to the state’s own financial disclosures, a level that placed it among the most indebted states in the federation. What is clear from the debt profile without any commensurate developmental strides is that Aregbesola presided over a state whose fiscal health deteriorated sharply. If this was his idea of economic stewardship, one begins to understand why he struggles to recognise reform even when it is happening in front of him.
THE SCAM THAT BUILT ROADS THAT WERE NOT THERE
