Osun: Crocodile tears can’t wash away Imole’s good record

In the words of our elders, “He who throws stones from a glass house should not forget the fragility of his own roof.” The latest tirade from one Adebayo Adedeji, APC’s self-appointed town crier, is not journalism but a poisoned dart dipped in hypocrisy. It reeks of selective amnesia.

The same party that bled Osun’s coffers dry now pretends to be a custodian of fiscal discipline. Mischief is being hawked as truth, but falsehood will never wear the robe of fact.

Governor Ademola Adeleke has been clear and consistent: under his watch, Osun runs no slush fund, no covert “security votes” in the sense Nigerians know them. Every naira for security is processed through the budget, vetted, approved, and documented. Yet Adedeji shuts his eyes to truth and opens his mouth to fiction—because truth, like bitter kola, is too hard for his party to chew.

The writer’s arithmetic acrobatics collapse under the weight of honesty. You cannot compare today’s transparent, audited allocations with the shadowy vaults of yesterday. Where Oyetola’s government painted walls and called it development, Adeleke’s government is building lives—paying salaries, clearing pension debts, sustaining peace, and still investing in infrastructure. As the proverb goes, “Empty barrels make the loudest noise,” and the APC’s noise is deafening only because their record is hollow.

Supporting Amotekun, quelling communal clashes, and safeguarding lives are not luxuries; they are lifelines. If rescue operations in 2024 required more funding, it is because Adeleke values every citizen’s life above political optics. The last administration treated human safety as a footnote; Adeleke treats it as the headline. After all, “When the shepherd counts his sheep, it is the lost one that pains him most.”

The irony is pungent: those who left Osun’s treasury bleeding now cry wolf because the people’s governor is spending openly and lawfully. Their lamentations are crocodile tears from political scavengers desperate to return to the banquet of public funds. Adeleke’s creation of a special project account to save FAAC windfalls is light years ahead of the previous era, when such funds vanished like harmattan dew.

Adedeji accuses Adeleke of falsehood while knee-deep in his party’s swamp of deceit. This is the same APC that promised heaven and earth but delivered potholes and debt. The people of Osun have not forgotten: “A man who burnt down the barn should not mock the one who pruned the trees.”

Governor Adeleke will not be distracted by the tantrums of those still nursing the wounds of electoral defeat. His focus remains fixed on roads, schools, hospitals, agriculture, salaries, pensions, and, above all, peace. While the APC dances naked in the marketplace of lies, Adeleke will keep dancing to the drumbeats of progress—and the people of Osun will keep clapping.

As Shakespeare wrote, “The truth will out.” And in Osun, the truth is simple: Adeleke governs for the people, by the people, and with the people, no matter how loudly the jackals howl in the night.