Dapo Ogunwusi
The scenario in Oyo State has been an enduring strip tease. New factors keep emerging as you are about to live down the previous fare. From such a rich fauna of content, a patriot must always find topic for concern.
A debate that was almost getting swallowed by the mire of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) spat is the issue raised by Governor Seyi Makinde himself about the claim by his predecessor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi, that he had calibrated a modern system of governance in the state. Makinde pointed at the state of the state to insist that there was nothing modern or glorious about the way the state has been run in the last eight years.
I must not fail to award Ajimobi his diadem in history. He is the only fellow in the history of Oyo State to break the second term jinx. Ara Ibadan kii sin eniyan lemeji (Ibadan don’t worship a man twice). That was the legacy that stood before Ajimobi. In doing that, one must ignore the fact though that Adebayo Akala was de facto governor on two separate occasions. Further down the hallway of history, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola was actually elected for another term in the old Western Region before all hell broke loose in 1966. All the same, the legend held that there would be no return match for anybody in Agodi (Government House) by and large.
Ajimobi saw himself galloping to a second term, which he served to the brim. That should count in his assessment of himself as a modern Oyo trailblazer. I, as above, affirm.
The contention of the new governor is that the horrible tales of graft and self-glory that spanned the state Ajimobi ran must never be seen as a foundation that presents itself for compliance and nurture. The proofs that remain so far shockingly uncontroverted give cause for serious concern.
Education is the high point of public administration in Western Nigeria. Obafemi Awolowo started the free primary education programme that has remained among other imprints of his a veritable watermark in governance and social engineering. He unlocked the talents of the West and launched a rocket into the future by that gesture in 1955. And things have never been the same.
Ajimobi, a politician presumably of the progressive persuasion, imposed school fees in public primary schools. That was beside other surreptitious fees and levies, which individual schools customarily imposed. It was a shock to find that hundreds of thousands of school-age children left school and took up apprenticeship or vagrancy in consequence. The state had never had it so bad.
The state’s health institutions that used to be the backbone of health service delivery had become dilapidated and fallen into disrepair and disuse. Salaries were paid regularly sometimes on the 29th day of the month.
As a matter of fact, people had gotten used to this terrible status quo that nobody thought the Makinde revolution meant more than familiar political rhetoric. The citizenry had fallen into Plato’s cave with the expectations of government falling rock bottom. The social contract was in shreds. First, it was assumed that it was the familiar swish of a new broom trying to show its versatility at inception only to relapse to the old format with time.
Alas, for nine months salaries have been paid latest by the 25th, schools charge no fees, with teachers who extort money from students being punished. Subventions were given to schools for their expenses. And the list grows by the day.
Almost 10,000 new workers are coming into the civil service in the next few months! And the new minimum wage takes off too.
When it was revealed that Makinde was cooking a plot to put solar panels on two million households in Oyo State, nobody doubted that this guy could actually pull through such magnificent magic. We are used to such pleasant surprises by now.
Where is all the money coming from? Better still, where was all that money in the past?
Revocation of questionably acquired landed property is afoot with the former governor being accused of appropriating over 23,000 square metres of high-end state land to himself. It is reported that Ajimobi has challenged the revocation in court. The press will do well to accord the trial its deserved attention and coverage.
It makes perfect sense to extend the validation of the former governor’s claims to credit for a modern Oyo State to other necessary indices.
Perhaps the passage of time itself is meet ground for making such a claim. Maybe the fairy-tale celebrations of his son’s wedding and the zany extravagance that went with it could stand for another consideration.
Whichever way we look at it, one needs to show extreme generosity with the dictionary to accept the position represented by the former governor.
Oyo State marched forward in its bid to rid the transport sector of its veneer of gangster violence and unbridled criminality by appointing managers to oversee the motor parks and revert the accruing revenue into the public till. The unions stand banned in effect.
The city tales of fierce combats and destruction of life and property at the parks have become history. Motor parks are now sober law-abiding enclaves as against the situation of yore when, with the poorly disguised acquiescence of the state, motor park touts played havoc with public order and decency. Some governors openly made murderous touts part of the fabric of governance. They were the batallions for the enforcement of civil order in a rule of the thumb dimension. Makinde has ridden Oyo State of the burden. One of the many of such illustrious manoeuvres he made.
To know how to make a modern Oyo State, one may need to dissect how the old fared. Awolowo, Akintola, David Jemibewon, James Bola Ige, Lam Adesina and Rasheed Ladoja are among the select company of men who once occupied that position in Agodi.
Some of them, like Awolowo, started without any template. They forded the waters using sheer intuition and purity of purpose. Their names shall ring forever across time.
The road to the future is paved with courage and vision, the grit to make a difference and rework the direction of the people.
I have been an unrepentant advocate of a new transportation initiative. Our slender roads continue to groan under the weight of heavy traffic and congestion. Perhaps Makinde could adopt the proposal for the inner Ibadan tramway. Nothing less revolutionary is required as the danger of climate change and the prohibitive costs of building roads stare the nation in the face.
A modern mass transportation facility that links the inner city areas and reduces the need for using cars would be a programme for the modern era.
Admittedly, it is bound to be expensive and difficult, but we can at least start from somewhere.
• Dapo Ogunwusi, a former editor of Nigerian Tribune, is a legal practitioner.