The law of entropy states that if you leave anything, it disintegrates, it does not appreciate and organize itself.
Newton’s first law also states that an object at rest remains at rest, or if in motion, remains in motion at a constant velocity unless acted on by a net external force.
I decided to state these two laws because development is connected to it and I will try to explain it in plain terms because I have watched overtime how one decision can either move a state forward or take it backwards.
Let me be clear before I start that, in simple terms what I mean is that Osun state before Ademola Adeleke was in a state of entropy, a state where things were disintegrating, I would never have alluded to the name “State of Osun”, which has already been abolished and besides even when it was yet in use, I never agreed to the name in the first place.
Now there is a rhetorical question a motorcyclist raised a few months ago, he said “If Adeleke Did Everything, What Will The Next Governors Do When They Come?”
That remark above is something I have pondered about even though I know the poser of this question spoke out of his innocent mind but it underscores his observation of the government of Adeleke in the last two years.
So this day I had an important meeting at the Government Secretariat for 8am and as usual I set out at 7:30am, lo and behold I met a flat tyre. For the fear of going late, I opted for a motorcycle and I found this young guy. It’s often my tradition to get a young rider anytime the need arises to take a motorcycle.
We needed to go through the GRA in Osogbo, unknowing to both of us that construction had started on the road and we wouldn’t be able to use the road.
As soon as we noticed this, I deliberately made the remarks in Yoruba, “they have blocked this place too, what is happening to these people now”. The rider immediately responded in Yoruba, “Does Adeleke intend to do everything, what will be left for other Governors to do when they come?
This question raised two thoughts in my mind, it’s either this rider has never seen a Governor work this much and is simply surprised, or he is surprised as to why the hand of Governor Adeleke is seen everywhere.
So I decided to pry further and asked what exactly he meant by that and his explanation was very simple, let me quote him.
“Bros, there is hardly anywhere you go inside Osogbo now that you will not see construction going on. In fact, even roads that you will think the Government can not remember, if you go there Adeleke has done it or he’s already doing it.”
I was really excited to hear such a feedback that was unsolicited, the rider didn’t know my identity, so it wasn’t like he was massaging my ego.
Now what the law of entropy says is that if a certain thing is left untouched, take for instance a building, the strength begins to weaken. This is also the case with development, if a road is left unmaintained, the road deteriorates.
This has happened in Osun for at least twelve years. I was a hardened critic of the past government though I often leave my thoughts to myself sometimes but I was frontal on roads and especially streetlights in Osogbo. For which most of them were in a bad state. In fact I remember that I once wrote on Facebook how potholes surrounded the roundabout in front of the Government Secretariat and also in front of the Government House when Oyetola was Governor.
When Ademola Adeleke became Governor, Osun State Fire Service had no functional firetruck, Adeleke did. The last time Osun State Government acquired tractors was when Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola was Governor, Adeleke came and bought new ones and then went ahead to launch the Imole Agropreneur Project which is targeted at Cultivation of 31,000 hectares of Land, 1000 hectares per local government, this is unprecedented in the history of Osun State.
Additionally, in 2024 only, the Ademola Adeleke-led Osun State Government distributed 6,000 packs of various vegetable seedlings; 8,000 Liters of herbicides and fertilizers; 8,000 cassava cuttings and 80,000 cashew seedlings to farmers in the state.
Similarly, twenty-five poultry farmers in the State through the Osun Broilers Outgrower Production Scheme were empowered to the tune of N8.6 million naira each in a bid to boost poultry production.
As at the time Adeleke became Governor of Osun State, Osun had never done anything on Climate Change, Adeleke saw these loopholes and took bold steps. Today, Osun Climate Change Agenda is running and has even attracted a donor agency, FBRA, which intends to build the first ever Recycling Plant in partnership with the state government, with plan to give cash incentives to residents that brings recyclables to different collection points, spread across Osogbo, Ife, Ilesa, Iwo, Ede as well as other towns and cities. The first set of equipment has arrived.
While hosting the Forestry Association of Nigeria in his office, Governor Adeleke announced that his administration intends to plant One million trees for which One Hundred Thousand would be planted in the first phase, as of today those seedlings are being deployed, the result will speak when the trees grow.
Osun even participated officially for the first time in COP29 and even held a side event to woo investors for the Onibueja restoration project- converting a dumpsite to an Urban National Park.
The first ever Osun STI Policy and ICT&DE Policy for was drafted and approved in the first two years of Ademola Adeleke, as well as a concerted effort to improve the Google Mapping Index of the state to boost e-commerce, aid connectivity and support the security architecture of the state.
In the area of revenue generation and mining, for the first time since 2021 that Thor Exploration Limited began commercial operations in Osun, it is only in 2024, under Governor Adeleke that Osun got a hold of its five percent shareholders right as the host state for the Segilola Gold Project. The implications of this is that the amount paid for that shareholding right had been going into the account of some individuals before Adeleke became Governor.
In the Power Sector, Governor Adeleke announced the creation of the Ministry of Energy and consequently transmitted the Osun State Electricity Bill to the State Assembly to create an electricity regulatory body as well as regulate power generation and distribution. The bill has now passed first reading.
Governor Ademola Adeleke in August 2024 relaunched the execution of Obokun 33KVA Feeder abandoned for the past 11 years by previous administrations. The project was first awarded in 2013 and when completed, will be supplying electricity to four Local Government namely; part of Ilesa West (Omi Aladiye, Akad) and other neighboring Communities along Ilesa – Osogbo road, 95% of Towns in Obokun Local Government, Igbajo in Boluwaduro Local Government as well as Kajola and Osunjela in Atakumosa West Local Government.
Osun was indeed in a state of entropy for 12 years, the people who were entrusted with leadership took away life from the streets and things became redundant.
As soon as Adeleke became Governor, the first law of Newton started operations and what did it say again, “an object at rest remains at rest, or if in motion, remains in motion at a constant velocity unless acted on by a net external force.” Now while that object is at the state of rest, its entropy and the distinction when it’s about development is that it doesn’t just remain at rest, it deteriorates.
Growing up, Osun was largely described as a civil service state and the perk of civil servants then was that they could take loans from commercial banks and then make an arrangement to deduct from the beneficiary’s monthly salary to get their money back.
In fact, Civil Servants across different ministries and agencies have cooperatives where they all save money and then they are able to get 200% of their savings as loan and they pay back installmentally. Apart from this, up until 2010 when Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola handed over government, civil servants are able to access soft loans from government, i.e Car or Housing loan, which meant Civil Servants can buy cars and build houses and then pay back on a monthly basis but these all died momentarily for reasons I will highlight below.
On one hand is the fact that at some point civil servants started earning half salaries, so what’s left of their salary is not even enough to pay back the loans, either from government or commercial banks, this automatically killed all the cooperative societies of civil servants across board, so what we witnessed is that Civil Servants lost their buying powers in a state that was referred to as a civil service state.
What then happened, abandoned and uncompleted building projects all around Osun owned by Civil Servants, so when Governor Adeleke said Workers Welfare was number one on his agenda, he wasn’t a blabbermouth.
On the other hand, was the fact that civil servants are promoted on paper for 12 years, you will get your promotion letter, but your salary and entitlements still remains as it was until Ademola Adeleke became Governor, not only did he implement the promotion letters, he cashbacked the salary arrears and is now paying back the money owed by his predecessors.
Adeleke’s net external force was all that was needed for the Osun “an object that was already at rest” to now be in motion.
To cap it, Ademola Adeleke is changing the narrative of Osun being a Civil Service State to Osun being a haven of industrialization, that is why the focus on infrastructure is huge because you can not build something on nothing.
Osun held its first ever Investment Summit in 2024; Ademola Adeleke launched Imole-Agropreneur project which aimed at boosting food security and providing jobs; Adeleke has released close to Two billion naira as revolving loan scheme to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as cooperative societies in the state.
These are also efforts to move the state from what it was known for to what it should be known for and I dare say that Adeleke is doing the job he was voted to do.
Sola Isola is a Media Aide to Governor Adeleke of Osun State
