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Rauf Aregbesola

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Rauf Aregbesola

Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola ((Listen); born 25 May 1957) is a Nigerian politician who served as the minister of the Interior of Nigeria from 2019 to 2023. He previously served as governor of Osun State from 2010 to 2018. He is currently the interim national secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) after his defection from the APC to the party in 2025.

Aregbesola is a Muslim born into a family of both Muslims and Christians. He had his primary and secondary education in Ondo State. He later attended The Polytechnic, Ibadan, where he studied Mechanical Engineering Technology and graduated in 1980. There have been several dispute about Aregbesola's professional qualification. The Polytechnic, Ibadan which he attended, awards National Diploma and Higher National Diploma in Mechanical Engineering Technology, therefore a graduate of the school can only be an engineering technologist, according to COREN's Engineering Cadres in Nigeria.

Aregbesola's interest and involvement in politics dates back to his undergraduate days when he was Speaker of the Students' Parliament (1977–1978) at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, and the President of the Black Nationalist Movement (1978–1980). He was also an active supporter of other progressive students' movements nationwide, which earned him, for instance, a life membership in the National Association of Technological Students. In June 1990, he became an elected delegate to the Social Democratic Party Inaugural Local Government Area Congress. In July of the same year, he was also a delegate to its first National Convention in Abuja. Aregbesola, as a pro-democracy and human rights activist, was a major participant in the demilitarization and pro-democracy struggles of the 1990s in Nigeria.

Upon the return of the country to democratic rule in 1999, he was a ranking member of the Alliance for Democracy, led by Senator Bola Tinubu, who would go on to become governor of Lagos State in the same year. Aregbesola was Director of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Campaign Organisation (BATCO), who drove the electoral victory of Bola Tinubu in 1999, and he performed a similar feat with the platform of the Independent Campaign Group, with which he ensured the re-election of Tinubu for a second term in office.

Upon Tinubu's inauguration as governor, Aregbesola was appointed the Commissioner of Works and Infrastructure, which included supervision of the Public Works Corporation and the State Electricity Board(Lagos). He not only oversaw a large investment in road infrastructure in the state, but also birthed the master plan that has served as a basis for the infrastructural development and expansion observed in Lagos even after Tinubu's two terms in office.

Following Tinubu's tenure as governor of Lagos State, Aregbesola ran on the platform of the then Action Congress (AC) for the Governorship of Osun State in the April 2007 elections.

Aregbesola had to withstand several attempts by the incumbent state government to cut short his ambition, from the failed attempt to abort the launch of Oranmiyan, the campaign organisation of Aregbesola, which was fixed for Oshogbo Stadium until the state government deployed force to stop the event.

On 16 May 2005, a major financier of Aregbesola's campaign, Alhaji Sulaimon Hassan-Olajoku, was assassinated at Gbongan Junction after attending a series of political events to mobilise support of Aregbesola. Aregbesola also narrowly escaped assassination plots in Ilesha in 2005 and on Osogbo Oroki Day in 2006.

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