I Agree With Aregbesola, Renewed Hope Is A Scam

There are moments in a nation’s political theatre when a single statement achieves the rare feat of being both self indicting and historically clarifying.

Rauf Aregbesola’s recent declaration at the ADC convention, that after three years President Bola Tinubu is still promising renewed hope, belongs in that category. It is a masterpiece of unintended autobiography, a confession disguised as critique.

After all, this is the same Aregbesola who, upon being appointed Minister of Interior in 2019, told the national press he had no idea what the Ministry of Interior actually did. Not a metaphor. Not a joke. A literal admission of administrative amnesia. And yet, President Muhammadu Buhari left such a character in charge of that ministry for four years.

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The results had the predictability and surefootedness of gravity, the kind that does not surprise you when it pulls a stone downward or a ministry into dysfunction:
* Jailbreaks like seasonal festivals
* A demoralised workforce
* A passport system that functioned like a national hazing ritual
* Borders so porous they could have been designed by a conceptual artist exploring the theme of absence

So when Aregbesola now claims that the Renewed Hope Agenda of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a scam, one must extend compassion. He is speaking from the limits of his own administrative imagination. He cannot see what he never understood.

THE MINISTRY HE LEFT BEHIND, THE MINISTRY HE CANNOT RECOGNISE

As part of the Renewed Hope agenda, President Tinubu appointed a young technocrat, Olubunmi Tunji Ojo, to clean up the ruins Aregbesola and his predecessors left behind. And the record shows that he did not merely clean. He rebuilt.

Key achievements of Olubunmi Tunji Ojo (as widely reported):
* Cleared a passport backlog of over 200,000 applications within weeks, ending years of systemic delays
* Launched automated passport processing, reducing human contact and corruption opportunities
* Upgraded border control systems, including e gates and biometric enhancements
* Reformed the Nigerian Correctional Service, initiating decongestion and modern security protocols
* Strengthened inter agency coordination across immigration, civil defence and correctional services

If Aregbesola cannot see this revolution, blame him not. One cannot fault a man for operating at the coping capacity of his acuity.

OSUN’S DESCENT UNDER HIS WATCH

Aregbesola’s difficulty recognising reform did not begin in Abuja. His eight years as Governor of Osun State left a fiscal footprint that still startles analysts. Before he left office in 2010, Olagunsoye Oyinlola publicly stated that he inherited a debt of 2.5 billion naira and that his administration took an additional loan of 18.3 billion naira, placing Osun’s obligations at a little over 20 billion naira before interest and other charges.

By 2017, Osun’s debt stock had risen to 165.91 billion naira according to the state’s own financial disclosures, a level that placed it among the most indebted states in the federation. What is clear from the debt profile without any commensurate developmental strides is that Aregbesola presided over a state whose fiscal health deteriorated sharply. If this was his idea of economic stewardship, one begins to understand why he struggles to recognise reform even when it is happening in front of him.

THE SCAM THAT BUILT ROADS THAT WERE NOT THERE

Aregbesola says Renewed Hope is a scam. And he is right.

All the roads being fixed across Nigeria are a scam. The Lagos Calabar Coastal Highway is a hallucination. A national mirage. The Sokoto Badagry super corridor is a pipe dream conceived by the Shagari administration and apparently still trapped in the astral plane. Any construction workers sweating under the sun along that route are clearly participating in a mass delusion.

To Aregbesola, none of the hundreds of ongoing monumental reconstruction works exist. The Kaduna Abuja Road, Kaduna Zaria Kano Road, the Onitsha Enugu Road, the East West Road and the transformed arteries of Abuja are figments of the collective imagination of Nigerians who insist on seeing asphalt and concrete where only despair should be.

The Ibadan Ilesa Road, which degenerated into a complete state of disrepair while Aregbesola served in government, is now being rebuilt. But since the reconstruction is happening under Tinubu, it must be a scam.

THE SCAM THAT PAID SCHOOL FEES FOR 1.16 MILLION STUDENTS

Yes, Aregbesola is right. The Renewed Hope agenda that has paid school fees and stipends for over 1.16 million Nigerian students is a scam.

The reforms that are stabilising universities, funding research and ending the era of perpetual strikes are a scam.

The infrastructure upgrades across campuses are a scam.

The hope restored to families who once had to choose between feeding their children and educating them is a scam.

THE SCAM THAT SAVED STATES FROM BANKRUPTCY

Before Tinubu assumed office, 27 states could not pay salaries without federal bailouts. Today, no state borrows to pay salaries. But this too, according to Aregbesola, is a scam.

THE SCAM THAT REBUILT THE ECONOMY FROM THE EDGE OF COLLAPSE

When Tinubu took office, Nigeria’s net foreign reserves were under 4 billion dollars. Today, they exceed 34 billion dollars.

Oil production has risen from under 1 million barrels per day to between 1.6 and 1.8 million.

Legacy debts owed to electricity companies, accumulated over a decade including during Aregbesola’s own time in government, have been cleared.

Transmission lines are being upgraded.

Gas pipelines to the North are nearing completion.

All scams, of course, in Aregbesola’s dark universe.

THE AVIATION SCAM THAT DARES TO DREAM

For the first time in nearly six decades, the Murtala Muhammed International Airport is being rebuilt into a genuine aviation hub. Airlines now have access to wet lease options and operational reforms that actually make sense.

But let us make the comparison that Aregbesola avoids.

The Emirates Group generated 39.6 billion dollars in the 2024 to 2025 financial year. Flydubai reported a record revenue of 3.7 billion dollars in 2025.

FAAN generated ₦343.87 billion (about 2 billion dollars) from January to November 2024, under Tinubu, representing an 82.5% increase in revenue.

The gap is not a statistic. It is a parable.

It is the difference between a country that built an economy around global mobility and a country that spent decades patching the aviation sector and praying for miracles.

Tinubu’s aviation reforms are part of a broader ambition to grow Nigeria into a 1 trillion dollar economy. That scale of vision requires airports that function, airlines that survive, mechanised farming that is efficient and infrastructure that signals seriousness to the world. But since these reforms are happening under Tinubu, they must be a scam.

THE SCAM THAT REFUSES TO DO PATCHWORK

Aregbesola, Rotimi Amaechi and their fellow travellers argue that reforms are not working because poverty still exists. But they never acknowledge that the administration in which they served left Nigeria using 97 percent of its revenue to service debt. They never admit that they collectively ruined the economy Tinubu is now fixing.

Global financial institutions now praise Nigeria’s reform trajectory because they understand what long term structural change looks like. Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore did not transform in two years. Real reform takes eight to ten.

THE BETRAYAL THAT SURPRISED NO ONE

Those who know the history say Tinubu trusted Aregbesola deeply. He often asked people if they had consulted Rauf. If Aregbe approved, the matter moved. If he opposed, it died.

Today, Aregbe has turned coat. And he seems to be enjoying the performance.

Kayode Fashola once sang, “E ma se gbara le won, odale ni won”.

Do not rely on them. They are traitors.

One can only wish Aregbe well in his new vocation.