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By Okwe Obi, Abuja
Few subjects in contemporary Osun State politics have generated as much heated exchange as the infrastructural record of Governor Ademola Adeleke’s administration. Critics have levelled a series of pointed accusations against the government, ranging from the technical quality of its projects to the motives behind specific policy decisions. The administration, on its part, has issued detailed rebuttals to each charge, and those rebuttals now form part of the public conversation whether or not they are accepted at face value.
Quality of infrastructure
Perhaps, the most persistent criticism is that Osun’s infrastructure projects are substandard and poorly executed. For many people, this is a serious allegation, and one that speaks directly to the competence of governance itself, for a road that crumbles within a season or a building that fails inspection does lasting damage to public trust quite apart from public funds.
In response, the state government maintains that its projects are handled exclusively by engineers holding certification from the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, and that execution follows practices said to have been validated by a technical mission of the Nigerian Society of Engineers. If accurate, this would place the administration’s work within a recognised professional framework rather than outside it, and would distinguish the criticism from mere political grievance.
Contractors’ competence
A related allegation holds that major contracts have gone to companies without genuine expertise in construction. Here, the government asserts that all engaged firms passed through due diligence and standard procurement processes, and that these companies employ COREN certified professionals. This claim is, in principle, verifiable through public procurement records, tender documents and the professional registers maintained by regulatory bodies.
Preference for local contractors
Critics have further asked why the administration has favoured local companies over established multinational construction firms such as Julius Berger. The government’s answer is straightforward. It contends that it is a local content law intended to build indigenous capacity in the construction sector, retain public expenditure within the state’s economy, and cultivate local technical skill for the benefit of future generations of engineers and artisans.
For pundits, this is a defensible position in principle, one that mirrors local content policies pursued elsewhere in Nigeria’s oil, telecommunications and construction sectors, and which carries genuine economic logic behind it. Whether it represents the most efficient path to quality infrastructure in the immediate term, however, is a matter on which reasonable observers have agreed, since capacity building and speed of delivery sometimes move in tandem, and the policy’s stated rationale may settle the question of execution quality.
Ido Osun airport controversy
One of the more politically charged claims is that the Adeleke administration relocated Ido Osun Airport to Ede out of political vendetta against the previous administration. The government’s account complicates this narrative considerably. It states that it was the Oyetola administration that handed the airport over to the Nigerian Air Force for a proposed aviation training facility, and that the airport remains at its original location under an arrangement predating the current government.
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Stakeholders and pundits who are familiar with the development, said the claims are accurate, and align with matters of public record concerning the handover. They also contend that the vendetta narrative would rest on a mistaken premise regarding who initiated the arrangement in question, and the criticism would properly belong to a different chapter of the state’s political history than the one to which it has been attached.
Edenisation agenda
The government has dismissed the term “Edenisation,” which has circulated in critical commentary, as a mischaracterisation of its actual policy framework. It points instead to the Osun Infra Agenda, launched in December 2022 and expanded in the second phase in December 2023 to cover Ila Orangun, Iwo, Ilesa, Ede and Ile Ife, with numerous associated projects said to have reached completion and to be undergoing commissioning.
“The distinction being drawn is between a coordinated, named policy programme with a defined multi-sectoral scope, and an informal label attached to it by detractors that implies favouritism or vanity rather than planning,” a state official told Daily Sun. He said the distinction matters considerably for how the underlying record ought to be assessed, since a labelled grievance and a documented programme invite different standards of evidence.
Spending and delivery
A further criticism concerns the relationship between federal allocations received and infrastructure delivered, with critics suggesting the administration, benefiting from larger allocations than its predecessor, has underperformed relative to available resources. The government’s response has countered this. It said there is a sharply altered cost environment since 2022, noting that inflation and currency depreciation have driven construction costs up by a figure exceeding 500 percent, a context that any fair assessment of delivery against allocation would need to account for.
The state government has listed among its achievements, some 350 kilometres of roads, three flyover bridges, six dualised roads, 150 renovated schools, more than 200 rehabilitated health centres, and substantial progress toward clearing inherited wage and pension arrears.
On questions of political control
Perhaps, the most personal allegation is that the Governor is not truly in charge of his own administration, with suggestions that family members exercise undue influence over decision making. The government states unequivocally that neither the Governor’s brother nor his sister holds any cabinet position or formal role within the administration.
Smaller controversies
Several narrower controversies, concerning a shortfall in tractor distribution against a promised figure, the dismissal of certain local government workers, and tuition levels at the state university, have each received specific, if disputed, explanations from the government: fiscal constraints tied to the withholding of local government allocations, procedural irregularities said to attend late-stage hiring by the previous administration, and fee structures claimed to remain comparatively lower than those charged by peer state institutions. Each of these merits its own closer examination rather than being absorbed wholesale into the larger narrative of either vindication or condemnation.
Some claims, particularly the airport handover narrative, rests on a premise supported by public records. Others, concerning contractor competence, spending efficiency and project quality, have also been addressed by the state government sufficiently.
