By. Pelumi Olajengbesi Esq.
There are moments in politics when a people must pause and ask a simple question. Are we still in a democracy, or are we drifting into the rule of force? Osun is standing at that junction today, and the signs are not comforting.
What is playing out around local government administration in Osun is not ordinary political rivalry. It is a civic crisis dressed in partisan clothing. Tenure has a meaning in a democracy. It is time-bound, it is regulated, and it is not extended by audacity. When the lawful window closes, authority closes with it. Anything after that becomes an argument against the idea of elections itself. It becomes a suggestion that votes and courts do not matter, only access to coercive power.
Yet, across Osun, local government secretariats have become contested territory, not administrative centres. People who insist they still hold office have remained within the premises under police cover, despite a legal and procedural atmosphere that points in the opposite direction. Workers who should be doing the daily work of government have been scared away, harassed, or intimidated. When civil servants are afraid to report to duty, that is no longer politics. That is occupation. And the message it sends to ordinary citizens is even more dangerous: that the law is negotiable once you have force behind you.
Local government is the closest layer of governance to the people. When it is captured or paralysed, it is not politicians who suffer first. It is teachers in public primary schools. It is health workers in primary health centres. It is local government staff and retirees who depend on a system that should not be dragged into warfare. When council activity is disrupted and the flow of resources becomes contested, the people carry the burden through delayed salaries, weakened services, and stalled community needs. In plain language, the grassroots bleeds first while politicians posture.
That is why my title writes itself this afternoon. Oyetola cannot win Osun by punishing Osun. Hardship is not a campaign plan. Siege is not mobilisation. The idea that you can squeeze a people into submission is not strategy; it is a misreading of Osun. Council secretariats do not vote. Bank accounts do not vote. Police barricades do not vote. People vote. And Osun has never been the kind of state that rewards anyone who approaches it with contempt for law and contempt for welfare.
More importantly, this approach drags federal institutions into local quarrels and risks making them look partisan. That is always a costly mistake, because institutions may be powerful today, but history is longer than power. In a democracy, security agencies must protect peace, not protect illegality. They must guard the public interest, not guard political desperation. Once institutions are perceived as tools, public confidence collapses. And when public confidence collapses, society becomes unstable. Nobody wins that game.
If anyone truly seeks power in Osun, the road remains the same road democracy provided: persuasion, structure, credible campaigning, and the ballot. Any other route may create noise, but it will also create anger. And anger, in Osun politics, has a memory.
