Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, has dismissed a speech by the former Minister of Interior and National Secretary of the African Democratic Congress at the ADC national convention as the rant of a man with a failed record in public office.
Onanuga was reacting on X on Tuesday to remarks Aregbesola made at the party’s eighth national convention in Abuja, where the former minister declared, “The ruling party never had a vision; its Renewed Hope agenda was a scam!”
Speaking at the convention during the presentation of the secretariat report, Aregbesola said the ADC was “on a rescue mission to pry the country from the strangulating grasp of the ruling party.”
He attacked the APC for enacting what he described as an electoral law that decriminalised forgery in electoral documents, saying the ruling party was “decriminalizing criminality.”
On the economy, Aregbesola cited the naira’s fall from roughly N700 to the dollar when the Tinubu administration took office in 2023 to about N1,400, describing it as a 100 per cent devaluation that was “devastating” for an import-dependent economy.
“The government’s claim that the recent reduction in the exchange rate shows its mastery of economics is false,” he said.
“Before this administration, the cost of a litre of fuel was between N185 and N238, depending on which part of the country you were in; now it is about N1,400 per litre and still rising. The cost of transportation is now so prohibitive that it has become unrealistic for some workers to go to work,” he said.
He also cited deteriorating power supply, saying some parts of the country received an average of two hours of electricity daily while others had been “in darkness for weeks and months at a stretch.”
“The administration told Nigerians that if it does not solve the power problem by providing a constant power supply, it should not be voted for a second term. Today, power supply is far worse,” Aregbesola said.
Aregbesola called on Tinubu to step down, saying: “Ordinarily, having made such a promise and failed woefully, an honest president should simply step down and not seek reelection.”
He added that what Nigerians were witnessing instead was “the most desperate attempt by a candidate in Nigerian electoral history to retain power at all costs, even if it means bringing down the entire democratic system.”
Responding, Onanuga said Aregbesola had no moral authority to criticise the Tinubu administration, given what he described as a dismal record across two stints in public office.
“Unfortunately, Aregbesola did not undertake any honest self-reflection on his own record in public office — as governor or as Minister of Interior,” Onanuga wrote.
He said Aregbesola’s eight years as governor of Osun State had been “characterised by unmitigated hardship”, with civil servants going unpaid for months and pensioners dying because they could not receive their payments.
“It is to Aregbesola’s infamy that Osun became known as a state receiving negative federal allocation and paying just 20 to 30 per cent of normal salaries. It was worse for pensioners in Aregbesola’s Osun State. Many pensioners who relied on their meagre monthly payments died because they were not paid at all,” Onanuga said.
He added that Aregbesola’s immediate successor, Governor Adegboyega Oyetola, “worked hard to clean up much of the mess left behind,” and that Governor Ademola Adeleke was “still dealing with the consequences.”
Onanuga also attacked Aregbesola’s record as Minister of Interior under former President Muhammadu Buhari, saying his tenure recorded the highest number of jailbreaks in Nigeria’s history, including the 2022 Kuje Prison escape in Abuja.
“During his four years, obtaining a Nigerian passport became a nightmarish process, and there were 15 major attacks on correctional facilities in Jos, Abolongo, Imo, Kabba, and Okitipupa, resulting in over 4,000 inmates escaping to join criminal elements.
“For someone who failed so woefully to secure our correctional centres and uphold his duties between 2019 and 2023, it is ironic that Aregbesola now seeks to lecture others on insecurity. Maybe he thinks the entire Nigerian population suffers from amnesia,” Onanuga wrote.
He warned Nigerians to remain vigilant against “power-hungry individuals with no programme,” saying the opposition was “weaponising isolated terrorist attacks, as if the problem started from this administration.”
Onanuga also cited what he described as the gains of the Tinubu administration, including a minimum wage increase of over 100 per cent, a decline in inflation from over 25 per cent to below 15 per cent, and growth in foreign reserves and GDP.
“The Tinubu administration has never shied away from acknowledging that policy reforms have brought unintended consequences, impacting the most vulnerable. However, over the last three years, the government has introduced numerous relief measures to mitigate these effects,” he said
“No, Rauf, the Renewed Hope Agenda is not a scam. The real scammers are the politicians gathered inside the SPV called ADC,” he wrote.
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