Evidently, you fought a good fight – a fight of faith – and today, you are the Executive Governor of Edo State. We congratulate you most heartily. The fact that this letter is coming just a few days after your inauguration is indicative of some positive observations.
As morning shows the day, we are impressed by the fact that you have immediately hit the ground running. The people must be pleasantly surprised that so soon, you were returning to their communities, not only to thank them for their votes but mainly to remind them of the promises you left behind during the campaign. This must be a new dimension in public administration.
At the same time, there are positive indications that you will not run the Government aground. In contemporary politics, the rule has become that office seekers simply gallop through the nooks and crannies of their constituencies during electioneering campaigns, promising heaven and earth without really intending to fulfil such promises.
But in you, we have seen a healthy exception from the general rule as you have demonstrated serious intention to follow up on the promises you made during the campaigns. While we do not intend to write a full testimonial on your activities, we shall highlight a few points regarding two aspects that we find fascinating.
First, perhaps unwittingly, you are re-writing history by promptly taking up the case of the “FAMOUS 14” in which, after the 2019 Legislative Election to the Edo State House of Assembly, Gov. Godwin Obaseki constructively prevented 14 of the 24 members of the House of Assembly from being inaugurated. The chosen few were secretly inaugurated in the thick of the night under the candlelight. Secondly, you are already embarking on the resuscitation of the Boards of Government companies and parastatals which met their untimely death during the immediate past Administration in the State.
Wonders shall never end. People were invited to contest an election. They contested an election, and they won an election. But shamefully, for reasons known only to the former Governor, he denied inauguration to members he hated. It was an ugly process of choosing and picking which members to accept and which to reject.
The members so deprived were young men, a bulk of whom were fresh graduates just beginning life. Most of them raised bank loans to finance the election. The loans and accrued interest are still hanging perilously over the neck of such ones like the Sword of Damocles. Obaseki walked logic on its head in the process. It would have made sense if Obaseki and the deprived members were in different political parties, but they were all of the All Progressives Congress (APC) stock.
When the results of the election were announced, the APC celebrated its huge success of 24 over 24 to the high heavens, unknown to the unsuspecting members, an ambush was awaiting them at the next bend. That was how Obaseki dwelt in illegality by relying on his minority favoured members for the enabling legislations, including the appropriations throughout his first tenure. By the time the full facts are known, it will be that those minority laws are illegal. Let time remain the best judge.
Certainly, the “FAMOUS 14” have suffered terribly. It is heart-warming that someone is now coming along to beam some search light on their case. Whatever comes out of the case will be pure profit. At last, a Daniel is coming to judgement. We must quickly mention, though, that it will be simplistic to simply pay them some backlog of salary and allowances and let them go. This would suggest that they were going to the Assembly to break melon and be paid some salaries and allowances. Far from this.
Rather, they were coming to represent and fight for their people. The sordid treatment they received was a deprivation on their constituents. Your Excellency, one short step more will complete the clemency we are looking at by your magnanimity. It might be an idea to site one project in each of the 14 State Consistencies of the famous 14. This will be an atonement for the deprivation in the era of the cankerworm.
Again, this is development, and it will shoot your approval rating to the high heavens, while at the same time, sending shivers to those who originally planned the ominous evil, wherever they may be now, and if the cost is too high, it can be done in phases.
Your decision to resuscitate the Boards of commissions, government-owned companies and parastatals is totally an idea whose time has come, and nothing beats that! Those organizations hold the major attractions in Government. That’s where the action is, not in the mainstream ministries which exist mainly to push files. Let’s take a few minutes to imagine what government would have been in the Ogbemudia/General Gowon era without The Nigerian Observer. The paper was sought after across the country and beyond. There was the popular belief that if the information was in The Observer, it must be correct. In our student days, we travelled from Up-State New York to Mid-Town Manhattan, just to read The Observer at the Nigerian Consulate. The papers could have been 3 months old, but simply because they were The Observer, we enjoyed them.
The Bendel Line was the greatest delight to travel in. Imagine travelling in one of the luxury buses of the time. In the middle of nowhere, between Ijebu Ode and Ore, the buses were flagged down and people in a Government entourage enter the buses to interact with passengers, finding out about their comfort and complaints, if any. Travelling by Bendel Line could be compared with the best of flights; things were good. Let’s look at Bendel Brewery of the Prince Tony Omoaghe years. In faraway Lagos, that party did not jump except the Crystal Beer had reported.
What of the defunct Bendel Development and Property Authority (BDPA), where we provided housing and made service plots available to the citizenry. On occasions, the BDPA had to bail out the Government from situations that portend gross embarrassment.
To the victor, belongs the spoils of office. This is a political philosophy that has held true through the ages. Apart from the invaluable social services they provide, the Government parastatals also provide jobs for the masses. We recollect with nostalgia those days when workers streamed out of the Government Press on Sapele Road. It was comparable only to the close of Jumat Service on a Friday afternoon in Central Kano. These Government companies took most of our youth off the streets. They absorbed the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Which government can even do well these days without a viable press? Most of the opposition out there have their media outfits and they must need a counter-vailing force. In those days, when issues arose, I would invite the EBS GM to my office. I would tell him what the issues were and demand a position paper, within the next few hours. In turn, the GM would assemble those hot-headed boys in the press room; and before sunset that evening, a paper was ready, and the opponents bowed!
Sadly, in just eight short years, somebody sat down and destroyed all this! He was callous! Yes, you want to do some damage control here, but in doing so, you must make haste slowly. We hear that in most of those places, the cankerworms have eaten up everything and there is nothing to see. You must avoid a situation where you might be appointing Boards into empty spaces. Make haste slowly. You still have time to do a thorough job before setting up Boards.
Your excellency, clearly, we are not given to praise-singing. This is rooted in our belief that praise singing destroys initiatives, particularly if they come too early. From the lessons that history teaches, we recollect very vividly the case of one man who was a Local Government Chairman. He performed wonderfully much higher than many state governors of the time. He was easily the best Local Government Chairman nationwide.
Because of the trust accruing from that first outing, he had an easy sail into the state governorship soon after. Then praise-singers moved in. They praised him to the highest heavens, and too soon, praises dwarfed his performance on every occasion. It soon occurred to this man that the praises he was getting at this entry point were already more than the most successful Governor would get after a four-year tenure. He relapsed into docility and eventually became the worst Governor this country has ever had!
There will be time enough to roll out the drums at the end of tenure. Trust Edolites. If all ends well, they will spread the red carpet from Osadebey Avenue to Irrua when the time comes.
This, however, does not vitiate the fact that from time to time, we may intervene to remind you of your promises in the event of a memory lapse. It is now only left for us to pray to the Almighty God to continue to guard and guide you aright so that in the end, this will be yet another successful tenure.
Accordingly, we so pray.
Sincerely,
Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Omorotionmwan, a public affairs analyst, lives in Canada
