Public memory is often short, selective and easily shaped by emotion, especially in an era where social media outrage spreads faster than verified information. Ten years after the peak of Osun's economic turbulence, narratives about the Rauf Aregbesola administration still move between passionate praise and harsh condemnation. For some, especially those who lived through the period of modulated salaries, the pain remains fresh. For others, the transformation of Osun's education, infrastructure and social welfare systems stands as a testament to visionary governance. What is often missing however, is context, particularly the economic realities that shaped decisions and the verifiable facts behind widely circulated claims.
One of the most persistent allegations is that Aregbesola deliberately paid half salaries for years, allegedly plunging civil servants into hardship. But this telling omits the nationwide recession of 2014 to 2016, one of Nigeria’s worst in decades, during which twenty three states struggled to pay workers at all. While several states defaulted on salaries for many months, Osun adopted a different path. Faced with drastic revenue collapse including federal allocations dropping by as much as sixty percent, the administration established a Labour Government Salary Apportionment Committee. This joint body of labour leaders, government officials and financial experts examined the books and agreed collectively on a temporary modulated payment system rather than mass retrenchment, a route taken by some states with fewer revenue constraints.
Contrary to the popular framing, more than seventy percent of Osun's workforce, mostly junior staff, teachers, health workers and local government employees, continued to receive full salaries, pension and the thirteenth month bonus throughout the recession. The modulated payment applied only to higher grade officers, including political appointees who received the least. Another false claim that continues to circulate is that Aregbesola's successor Gboyega Oyetola inherited the salary modulation. Records show clearly that a few outstanding balances of the modulated salaries were cleared before he handed over to Oyetola and that full salaries had already resumed eight months before the end of the administration. This fact has been confirmed repeatedly by labour leaders, public finance reports and even officials within the succeeding administration.
While debates around salary challenges dominated public conversations, what often goes unmentioned is that Osun under Aregbesola continued ambitious development projects despite the economic downturn. The Osun School Feeding Programme served meals to two hundred and fifty four thousand pupils daily and later became a national model. The state constructed more than thirty thousand classrooms, rebuilt flagship high schools, launched one of the largest youth employment initiatives in Nigeria through the OYES programme and rehabilitated rural road networks across all local governments. These investments were not cosmetic. They contributed directly to growth in school enrolment, expansion of small businesses and better engagement of young people in productive activities.
It is also important to acknowledge the emotional and personal struggles people endured during the recession. Families affected by the temporary salary system had every right to feel pained. Hardship is never theoretical when it touches the daily survival of a household. Yet emotion does not erase facts and narratives based solely on memory can distort history. Several workers publicly admitted that although the period was difficult, the administration maintained transparent communication, which is rare in the Nigerian public sector. Even more telling is Aregbesola's enduring popularity at the grassroots. His reception across Osun today, including the crowds and chants that follow him, suggests that many still recognise his long term developmental impact.
In the end, the story of the Aregbesola administration is not a simple tale of saints or sinners. It is a story of context, trade offs and leadership during a period of severe economic pressure. Falsehoods may thrive in the digital age, but they cannot wipe away the visible legacies. These include massive educational reforms, important infrastructure, nationally recognised social programmes and administrative transparency during financial crisis. The Aregbesola years remain a complex chapter, one where economic hardship coexisted with real transformation and where facts, when placed beside the lies, reveal a leader who refused to abandon his people even when the nation's economy slipped into its darkest moment.