The victory of Governor Rauf Aregbesola of All Progressives Congress (APC) in last Saturday’s poll in Osun State has confirmed that his people still want his services. The renewal of his mandate has demonstrated that Ogbeni really worked in his first term. His victory is, indeed, a reward for hard work. In the keenly contested poll, Ogbeni defeated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Senator Iyiola Omisore, by 394,684 votes to 292,747 while Alhaji Fatai Akinbade of the Labour Party (LP) came third with  8, 898 votes.
Ogbeni’s victory notwithstanding, Omisore has blamed his loss on alleged irregularities by a former Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state and headed to the tribunal to contest the result. Ekiti and Osun polls have shown that the South-West can go to either APC or PDP. The defeat of APC in Ekiti has made some of their governors to change some of their anti-people policies. Ogbeni leveraged on this before the August 9 poll. Lagos has followed suit with reversion to old tuition regime in its university, LASU. Osun poll has shown that the Federal Government does not interfere in the electoral process. Therefore, any politician that loses an election should blame himself. Nigerian politicians should stop seeing rigging and scientific abracadabra whenever they lose election and see the hands of God whenever they win. We saw plenty of such absurdities in APC reactions to Ekiti poll.
Nevertheless, President Goodluck Jonathan has congratulated Aregbesola on his victory and pledged a good working relationship with him.
His victory has proved false the APC claim that the heavy security presence in the state, prior to the poll, was the PDP ploy to rig the election.
With this victory, it is becoming clearer in Nigeria that individuals and not political parties win elections. If a party fields a credible candidate, it is likely to win. All the talks about APC or PDP state are no longer realistic in winning polls.
Nigerian politicians should continue to draw inspirations from lessons thrown up by Ekiti and Osun polls. One veritable lesson is that no politician will be reelected simply based on development infrastructure alone. Politicians are now rated more on their relationship with the people, the electorate. Do the politicians see them as items to be used and dumped or assets that should be treated with care at all times and not necessarily during elections?
The Nigerian electorate is now more enlightened. They are very discerning and know exactly what they want. No politician should take them for a ride again. The voters now want both development infrastructure and their welfare or what some commentators have, for lack of better expression, called “stomach infrastructure.” If the politicians satisfy their own existential needs, they should extend such largesse to the voters as well.  The voters are aware that the primary function of every government is the security of lives and property as well as the welfare of the people.
Any development that neglects the welfare of the people is partial. Even if politicians construct good roads and build beautiful edifices, a hungry and angry populace will not care much for such things. Some may even deface the buildings and the roads in annoyance.
There is nothing wrong with providing physical infrastructure but there is everything wrong with neglecting the human factor in development. The greatest resource any nation can boast of is its human resource. Any politician that neglects it is doing so at his own peril.
While other resources are finite, the human resource is infinite. The citizenry should be educated and be provided with good jobs. They should have food, shelter, clothing, water and other basic human needs. Most of our politicians, the governors and legislators, shy away from these aspects of development. They even construct roads where they are least needed. Governors should involve communities in embarking in certain developmental projects.
Some of the structures erected by some state governments are ego-boosting and unnecessary waste of state funds. Why should some states build “gigantic” trade centres that have no commerce going on there? Why do they build new hospitals when existing ones are not well equipped? Why do they build new schools where existing ones are begging for attention?
Why do they abandon projects started by their predecessor in office? Is government no longer a continuum in Nigeria? Why do they embark in grandiose projects that add no value to people’s lives? Some governors have forgotten their route to power and started challenging their personal god, chi, to a wrestling contest. We shall see where such grandstanding will lead them to in 2015.
They will soon meet their waterloo in 2015 when the electorate will seek their pound of flesh. Come 2015, some incumbent governors and other politicians will lose election not because they did not build “high” quality roads, halls and gates. They will lose election because they have lost touch with the masses that voted them into power. They have abused their position and exploited the masses. They have provided their own welfare and neglected those of the masses. They will lose election because they have reneged on most of their promises to the people.
They will lose election simply because they have lost touch with the grassroots. I do not know why some politicians are playing God and thinking that they are the best thing that has happened in the nation’s political firmament and that without them nothing can be done. I pity such politicians that think that they are the best homosapiens God has created since Adam. Our politicians need to learn new lessons in governance. They should stop parading themselves as the Lords of the Manor in this Animal Farm called Nigeria.
I give kudos to INEC, the security agents and other agencies that ensured that the Osun poll went well. Politicians should stop the recourse to blame the electoral umpire whenever they lose election and applaud the process whenever they win. They should not heat up the polity with inflammatory statements and putting unnecessary fear into the populace during polls. Now that Ogbeni’s social contract with Osun people has been renewed for another four years, he should settle down to governance and use his second term to deliver more democracy dividends to his people.

The renewal of Aregbesola’s mandate