Osun on Autopilot: BudgIT Exposes Adeleke’s Fiscal Failure

By Adebayo Adedeji
Osun is rudderless and on autopilot. That is not my opinion. That is the submission of BudgIT, a civic organization seeking accountability and transparency using technologies.

According to BudgIT, Osun under the leadership of Adeleke is in ICU, a total emergency that needs an immediate overhaul. The group says Osun is being run on pure vibes and debt. The state was number 32 on the fiscal performance ranking for the year 2025. That is scandalous. Osun used to be fairly ranked in the past. It was ranked number 13 in 2021 when Oyetola was the state governor and Asiwaju Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji ( AMBO) was in charge of the finance.

Today, the gbatueyo calling the shots in the state have run it aground. The state came last in the revenue performance pillar, indicating the state’s lack of capacity to mobilize and grow its revenue internally. Its IGR for 2025 was N54.3 billion while its federal allocation was N245.9 billion, representing 81.9 % of the total revenue to the state. What this means is that without the federal allocation, the state would not have been able to fund its budget. The state total expenditure for the year under review was N346.4 billion, translating to over 6 times of the internally generated revenue of the state.

Osun also ranked number 30 on the debt subtainability index, meaning the state face “greater fiscal risks arising from relatively high debt burdens,” increased exposure to foreign debt or “significant contingent liabilities relative to their available revenue.”

BudgIT reports that the state’s debt increased from N199.6 billion to N221.8 billion, meaning additional N22 billion was added to the debt profile of the state. What was the purpose of the fresh loan? Nobody knows.

A key sector like Agricultural sector had a below average performance of N1.56bn (26.47%). In fact, Agriculture “performed worst with only N0.55bn (12.01%) of its
capital budget being spent, with
N4.04bn of projects still not funded.”

Although Osun is not alone in the state supervised by poor managers, what has made the state more pathetic is that in the last 10 months, Governor Adeleke has hidden the financial record of the state from the public in violation of the fiscal responsibility law of the state ( 2012), thereby making the independent assessors unable to interrogate its financial books.

In the Q2 2026 State Fiscal Transparency League published by BudgIT, “the state had a
Citizens’ Budget, but the Citizens’ Budget was not adapted to local languages and no Quarterly Budget Implementation Report (BIR) was available during the assessment. The absence of a BIR creates a significant gap in the
budget transparency cycle because citizens cannot readily assess how implementation was progressing. Osun is encouraged to prioritise
the timely publication of its Quarterly BIR and improve the accessibility of its Citizens’ Budget.”

Unless the managers in charge of the state’s finance buckle down, Osun may go bankrupt, especially when the federal allocation dwindles, finding it difficult to meet its statutory obligations.