By Sarafa Ibrahim
My attention has been drawn to a reckless and immature attempt to drag the Spokesperson of Governor Ademola Ademola, Mallam Olawale Rasheed, into an innocent questions posed to the media aide of former Governor Gboyega Oyetola, Mr. Ismail Omipidan, by a civil group, Osun Democrats for Democratic (ODD).
I can understand the dire challenge of Mr. Omipidan in finding right answers for the questions posed to him by the civil group. However, I find it uncharitable that he went for the wrong man. It is childish, if not dumb, to commission one Adekunle Waheed to attack Mallam Rasheed, a man of confirmed intellectual depth with productive and indelible years in media and public governance before his present service with the Osun State Government.
Is Mr. Waheed saying the excerpt quoted in the ODD statement was not curled from Mr. Omipidan’s statement?
If Mr. Omipidan was that disturbed by the questions raised by ODD on the gross abuse and mismanagement of the mining under his boss, Oyetola, the ideal thing to do is to shut up and not try to distract the public by the ignoble act that the attack on Mallam Rasheed portrayed.
I have read the ODD statement and what they asked from Mr. Omipidan is quite straightforward. If Mr. Omipidan’s boss, Oyetola had done well in the mining sector, as he had wanted us to believe, he then should have answers for the questions posed, not the shambolic release credited to Mr. Waheed.
It is imperative that I stress to Mr. Omipidan at this point, that Mallam Rasheed is not his problem, rather the series of failings of his boss, which keep roaring showing up no matter the efforts to look away from them. This is the reality that Mr. Omipidan has to face and leave Mallam Rasheed out of his struggle with the truth.
May I also add that Mr. Waheed, or whoever is the true author, was ill informed about the concerted effort of Governor Adeleke in clearing the mess inherited from the Oyetola government. It was on record that the Minister of Solid Minerals came to meet Mr Oyetola to urge him to revalidate the almost expiring licenses of the state. The former Governor did nothing until he left office. By the time the white paper on the Solid Mineral report is released, Osun people will stone some people including some of these shameless hack writers.
The truth is that Governor Adeleke has taken a series of steps in repositioning the mining sector in the state since he came to office. Some of those steps include the tripartite approach, which the ODD rightly pointed out in their statement earlier. If Omipidan claimed not to know, it is because he and his boss were still in shock about their multiple rejection by Osun people.
On a final note, I like to assure Mr. Omipidan or anyone in his team that Mallam Rasheed is always engaging, intellectually vibrant and combatively occupied with inter-sectoral brainstorming especially with fact checks as propounded by Governor Ademola Adeleke.
The Spokesperson however has no soft spot for purveyors of fake news whose antics are known and who have severally rejected by the people of Osun state. Mallam’s readiness for intellectual discourse is reflective in the many public engagements he had undertaken since taking the role of the Spokesperson to Governor Adeleke.
For four straight years, Mallam was a high profile executive director of a policy centre which engages in policy works across the sectors, both nationally and internationally. His knowledge of governance and administration is therefore not a product of the Oyetola school of fake news and media trials.
Notwithstanding this salient fact, Mallam is however not giving to lying or deliberate misinformation, which Mr. Omipidan has shown to be an expert in over time. So, it’s incumbent on Mr. Omipidan and his team to take a turn for the better, instead of the propaganda and twisting of facts that defines it, as Osun people have shown that truth wins them, not lies.
