In this interview with Sola Isola, Osun State Governor, Senator Ademola Adeleke, speaks on his achievements in the last three years of his administration.
Your Excellency, I’d like to start by congratulating you on your third year in office. How will you describe the journey so far?
Thank you. Before I answer your question, I must first of all appreciate God Almighty for the journey so far, you know I am a man of praise, so I thank God for everything. I also want to thank the people of Osun State for their love and support for my government. This has been the driving force for our administration so far.
I must also appreciate my wonderful team and family. My Deputy, the SSG, my Chief of Staff, the Head of Service, my Commissioners, Special Advisers, my Spokesperson, Senior Special Assistants and Special Assistants, Permanent Secretaries, Heads of all government agencies as well as all government workers in Osun state. Without these people it would have been impossible to achieve much.
Now, I must say that the journey so far has been interesting at the same time challenging, but one thing that is important to note is that we have scaled through all the challenges that have come our way because of our motive, which is to serve the people of Osun State.
From the beginning, I have made it clear that we are here to serve the people of Osun State, and that has made the journey easy. What has made the journey easy is the love we have for the people of Osun State and that is what will keep us going.
How have you been able to continue governing the state without borrowing?
From the beginning of this administration, I have made it clear to my team that no matter what happens, we will not take loans from any source; we’ll rather look inwards.
So, what we did at first is to ensure that we block all the loopholes where Government money goes and then we started working towards improving our Internally Generated Revenue, after that we then became very prudent as a government.
Priority was what we started looking at when it comes to the issues of finance, because we have so much to do and so we can not afford to spend recklessly.
And then we started paying back the debt owed by previous administrations and we have paid back N65.05 billion out of Osun’s domestic debt, reducing it by 43.84% from ₦148.37 billion to ₦83.32 billion. We also reduced the external debt by 18.13% paying back $16.64million bringing it down from $75.14million to $91.78million.
There is a growing concern that your administration has focused all projects in Ede rather than other areas of the state, how true is that?
You know that can not be true. I can bet that it’s a propaganda sponsored by our opposition and the reason is simple: they are unhappy with the progress we are making because when they were in office, they couldn’t even do 10% of what we have done in less than four years.
You are a journalist, I challenge you to take a tour of the entire state, and see what we have done. When we decided to renovate one primary healthcare centre in each ward of Osun State, and so far we have over 200, is it possible that we’ll do that in Ede alone?
As a special intervention for roads, we have constructed at least 1.5km of roads in each local government of Osun state, nobody can disprove this and this is not Ede alone. And this is even after we have done 1.5km per federal constituency in our first 100 days in office.
Have you been to Osogbo? What about Ilesa, Ife, Ila and Iwo? The challenge here is that because I am an indigene of Ede, opposition parties have continued to amplify every project we embark on in Ede. So are we going to isolate Ede because the Governor is from Ede?
We are seriously focused on connecting rural dwellers to the city so as to connect farmers in the state to the market, this is definitely going to have a direct impact on food prices. I want to challenge you to go and check all the roads we are constructing, you will understand that there is a need for it.
How about appointments, they are saying more people have gotten appointments in Ede than other parts of the state?
Now let’s think about it together my brother, how possible is that? There are 30 local governments in Osun State. We picked a Commissioner from almost all the local governments because we have 25 Commissioners, others that didn’t get a Commissioner got Special Advisers.
There are several Senior Special Assistant and Special Assistants spread across each local government and they even have forums in each of these local governments, and like I said earlier, it’s because I am from Ede, our opposition thinks of that as their best strategy but it has always failed.
These appointees across all local governments are people that they all know, we didn’t import anybody from outside Osun or even people whom they’ll not see in office or that Osun people will not be able to relate with.
They are unhappy that the people of Osun State are on our side, unhappy that our government is well accepted, it is something they were unable to achieve for 12 years and despite being in government even at the federal level, Osun people are still not with them.
The opposition party recently criticized your government saying you have spent over a Trillion naira and there is nothing to show for it? What do you have to say?
You know it’s funny what politics is around here. People in the name of doing opposition deliberately misinform people, lie and malign, spread all forms of propaganda and they’ll say they are doing their job as opposition.
My friend, you also live in Osun state. Can you boldly say you are not seeing what our administration is doing? For four years, my predecessor did just around 50km of road across the state, we have done over 200km in three years.
We have continued to do what is expected of us as a government despite the withheld local government fund, we are doing what is normally expected of the government to do with the fund. Their sinister plan is to turn the people against us, thinking that withholding that money will bring our government down but here we are, God has not left us.
What we are doing in Osun is visible even to the blind but these people are not happy because we have proved them wrong. We have done things they thought were impossible.
Remember during the governorship debate, my predecessor was saying it boldly that it was impossible for us to pay the backlog of half salaries owed by him and his former Boss, now in three years we have cleared the half salary of retired civil servants and we are almost done clearing for the rest of them who are still in active service. You don’t expect them not to be sad. They underrated us and we have disappointed them.
Your Excellency, if you were to rate yourself, what would you give yourself?
I won’t rate myself, let’s allow the people of Osun state to do that. Truth is, we have changed the face of governance in Osun and when I say we, I mean my team and I.
Our results are speaking for us, just last year we were rated the best in the southwest in Primary Healthcare and we even won a cash prize of $500,000 which we are reinvesting in the health sector to get more results.
We moved from 33rd in 2022 to 7th in 2025 in National Examinations. We moved from 30th in 2025 to 6th in 2025 in Climate Governance Ranking. In March 2025, we emerged 5th in States Fiscal Transparency.
These are ratings and statistics that are out there, we didn’t lobby for it, its public knowledge, these are all testaments to the fact that we are doing well. And let me tell you, Osun people have not seen anything yet, we just got started.
You seem to be confident despite the financial bottleneck because of the local government crisis.
Let me start here by reassuring the people of Osun that we will not abandon any project. Whatever we have laid our hands on, we will complete it by the Special Grace of God.
Now you see my confidence is not in me, it is in God. My being Governor was ordained by God, you saw what happened in 2018, but God had planned it out for me and I didn’t even know. In 2022, it was a landslide victory; God showed himself that the appointed time has finally come.
That is why despite all the challenges we are always coming out clean and victorious.
We are pursuing our case legally and you may be aware as well that we are awaiting judgement from the Apex Court in the country which is expected to be any moment from now, so I will not want to speak on it, let’s allow the court to give its verdict. One thing I must say however is that in this particular case, we are on the side of law and we have not done anything out of the line. We will definitely come out victorious.
But sir, some APC members are claiming to have accessed the fund. Is that true?
It is simple my brother, they should come forward with proof. Their own lawyer and even the bank’s lawyer said before the Supreme Court that the money is intact in the bank, what else do we need to tell ourselves. We know they are playing mind games, but we are not in for that.
Some people are saying you are doing only roads, neglecting other sectors, how true is that?
Again that is a lie from the pit of hell. A Governor in a state like Osun can’t focus only on a sector, leaving out several others but you see the reason we are doing a lot of roads is because we inherited a state with an infrastructure deficit. As of 2022 when we came in, almost all the major roads that lead to Osogbo, the state capital are in terrible situations and in fact even within Osogbo metropolis, so we had to start from there.
After then we saw a deficit in the area of potable water, then to mitigate that, we immediately provided one borehole per ward across the state, after which we have invested heavily replacing old pipes and moribond equipments, now we have renovating water schemes across the state, we have started with Ora Igbomona water scheme which will soon be completed.
In agriculture, we have donated several number seedlings to farmers in the state. For over 12 years, the Osun State Government under my predecessors did not acquire any tractor, now we have acquired 31 which have been distributed to each local government in the state. We also launched the Imole Agropreneur Project which is targeted at cultivating 31,000 hectares of land across the state.
Each Local Government Area is to allocate a minimum of 1,000 hectares of land for mechanised farming and local empowerment initiatives. We are providing extension services, technical support, and other essential resources to ensure the beneficiaries’ success.
In ICT, recently, the State House of Assembly has passed the Osun Start-Up Bill and it is before me for assent. Before then, we launched the first ever Information, Communication and Technology policy. We also launched the Science, Technology, Innovation and Digital Economy policy.
We recently launched the Imole Free Wifi in some selected locations in Osogbo and we will be taking this round the state. I just inaugurated the Osun Digital Economy Advisory Council a few days ago, this council is made up of Tech Experts who are from Osun will help us drive the sector.
In Education, we have renovated several schools both primary and secondary, some of them under our Infrastructure plan, some others under SUBEB, we have distributed learning and instructional materials severally and we’ll still do more. Our Teacher Recruitment Process will soon be completed.
You see the impact we are making in Climate Change. We established a Department of Climate Change and Renewable Energy within the Ministry of Environment and Sanitation; we appointed and trained Desk Officers for Climate Change across MDA’s, and we are implementing and monitoring climate-related projects across local governments.
Now, we are Integrating climate education and environmental awareness into schools; and we are conducting periodic capacity building for state and local climate officers.
Talking about empowerment, we launched the Imole Business Empowerment Scheme in phase 1. We have helped 2000 youth and women in the state register their businesses, given them POS machines and cash grants to start up their businesses. In phase 2, we provided grants to another 2000 residents of Osun state to start their businesses.
We have released over N1.6billion as Cooperative Revolving loans. We have implemented two phases. Ward-Based Cooperatives Initiatives, expanded from 332 to 401 wards, with 389 wards fully benefitting. So far, interest-free loans have been disbursed at the grassroots level, directly impacting over 20,000 households.
The Conventional Cooperative Unions and Societies under the umbrella of FOSCOOP received nearly N1billion, reaching over 250 cooperative unions and societies, with 10,233 individual cooperators benefitting.
Your Excellency, I know if I don’t cut in, you’ll continue to roll out figures and statistics but, let me ask this question, three years down, one to go, what should Osun people expect?
There is so much to say, but then, you can get yourself a copy of our three years anniversary in office compendium to get familiar with what we have achieved so far.
Now to your question, Osun people should expect more, we just got started and like I have promised them earlier, we will not abandon any project. Any project we have embarked on, we’ll make sure we complete it.
As you celebrate three years in office, what your message to the people of Osun State
I just want to urge the good people of Osun State to continue to support us and I promise that we will not disappoint them, we’ll make sure we do everything possible to keep all our campaign promises.
One thing I can also assure the good people of Osun State is that they have absolutely nothing to worry about. Imole will shine till 2030 and beyond.
Osun Spring
