Halfway into his four-year tenure, Governor Godwin Obaseki is still experimenting with the destiny of Edo. His administration has been dismal and sloppy in meeting his ambitious electioneering promises to the people. Apart from a bit of urban renewal, the government has failed in the provision of infrastructure and amenities across the state. Joblessness and youth agitations are rife. Crime is fast engulfing the state, thus questioning what the governor has done with the humongous amount set aside as security vote on monthly basis.
Urban-rural drift has escalated than before even as the governor’s promise to create 200,000 jobs is far from fulfillment. Doubtless, the touted success of Obaseki is just media hype. Funnily, he would set loose praise singers to do “Awilo” dance to celebrate “…year(s) of Obaseki’s solid performance”. Alas, in the Nigeria’s situation, there is nothing as satisfying to those who have hijacked the people’s patrimony than to see the hoi polloi transfixed under false propaganda and repulsive domination.
Certainly, what most governors and elective officers enjoy to the hilt is the suffering of the ordinary people. Obaseki belongs to that conspiratorial faction. Recently, he hosted an Edo annual clustered event, which took place in Benin, from 9th to 12th November, 2018. Christened “Alaghodaro” 2018, etc., official statement credited to the government showed a deviation from its publicised original mission of repositioning the State as a hub of investment inflows.
The forum, which the state government’s publicists defended as being “for the wellbeing of the Edo people”, astonishingly became a whitewash for the governor’s tainted annual report card. Evidently, most Edo people, the target beneficiaries, know that the disastrous Alaghodaro summit was nothing but a cesspit to drain taxpayers’ monies. Whereas, the event was adjudged to have been well-attended by local and global personalities, Obaseki and his economic team did not consider they were duty-bound to inform taxpayers about the tangible dividends, if any, that the last year’s event had brought to the beleaguered state.
Charity, they say, begins at home. But, in Obaseki’s disposition, charity begins from abroad. For instance, Alaghodaro, an Edo word for “progress”, has turned a retrogressive chain-event that has no nexus with local content-principle. Those who invented it might have had good intentions, but it would appear it has now been bastardised. Alaghodaro is devoid of the usual certainty of the Edo person being very creative, pioneering and exemplary.
Despite that Edo has great talents, Alaghodaro had been incredibly planned and executed from outside the state and by outsiders. One of the event’s ugly fallout was that talented performing artistes from the state were paid mere pittance as engagement fees compared to their counterparts brought from outside the state, who were paid far more. Alaghodaro lacks originality. Obaseki’s version of Alaghodaro, with letters “A” and “a” dotted at the top, is foreign. You may verify it at:http://www.alaghodaro2018.com/
Currently, Edo State Government often discards local Edo business men; especially contractors, in preference to outsiders that are mostly awarded its contract works. Even now that the State Government is said to be awarding many road construction works across the state, the projects it abandoned abruptly last year, local contractors are again sidelined while most purchases and workmen are sourced externally.
The question is, why does Obaseki demand tax payments from a people that he does not patronise. His policy encourages outsiders to take the taxes away? Government’s refusal to patronise and invest in local businesses is the reason for dwindled revenue collection, with government pretending that all is well and giving out tax waivers. Whatever happens to the touted notion that Obaseki is an astute business mind!
In Obaseki’s All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo, there is a bitter tale by fellow party men and women that they too have been sidelined in the scheme of things. It is likened to the allegory of a man who wrested the knife and the yam, while wading off everybody else. The developing blues is that the governor is a technocrat, who has nothing to do with politicians and dirty party matters, and that while the yam and the knife are reserved for the emperor, the “dirtiness” of party politics should be left to the politicians.
Why will a governor, who was elected on a party platform, in which he claims to be the leading light, shy away from his responsibility, and cunningly seeks to control its soul, if not for greed and wickedness? Obaseki’s government is mostly disconnected from the people it claims to serve. Unlike his immediate predecessor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the public is now grossly misinformed or sidelined in state matters. And in a fruitless invention of a name to cover up the selectiveness in a public matter of openness, the Obaseki’s praise singers have chosen to nickname him the “Wake and See Governor”.
Indeed, they are only being clever by half; whereas the endorsement is a serious indictment on the governor. There is the absence of constructive engagement of the ordinary people about the suitability of projects that are meant for them, with the governor acting alone, where projects are executed without their knowledge and say. Clearly, this has led to public resentment that many undeserved and white elephants find their way into the public space, overnight.
Generally, the governor does not give a free hand to his commissioners and other aides in the discharge of their duties, meant to benefit the public. Obaseki’s aides are kept in the closets, while the governor is given undue public attention. Whenever the governor is away from Benin, government instantly goes into a sleep mode, until he returns.
One of Obaseki’s ugliest blights is his serial unfulfilled promises, especially failure to pay backlogs of pensions to the unfortunate pensioners from the bailout funds. Retirement benefits are the props of the old or senior citizens. With the altercations between the governor and aged pensioners, who are agonizing and dying in street protests, one is disturbed if Obaseki, as a professed Edo indigene, knows the import of the Edo parable that; “A man who prays for longevity shouldn’t deny the old man his walking stick?”
Edo people and political observers see the Obaseki administration as drab, unfriendly and typically self-serving. A contrast is usually drawn between it and Oshiomhole’s administration. The awful cries of marginalisation by Edo south senatorial zone only became strident, recently, as Obaseki, its son, behaves like the crocodile that eats her own eggs. There were hardly marginalisation cries in Edo south in the eight years of Oshiomhole, who hails from Edo north of the state.
Already, Obaseki has closed down the Tayo Akpata University, the Usen School of Management, the Institute of Continuing Education, College of Education and other institutions, located in his own Edo South senatorial district. And, these were facilities which the erstwhile Oshiomhole’s government either established or maintained.
Also, the apparent carelessness by which Obaseki’s government cedes vast community lands from his Edo south district to multinational firms and businessmen friends, in the name of investments sans overriding public interest, shows a great disrespect to the constituents. A people whose land is frivolously sold for public gains are the ones whose heritage is forever lost and a generational-chain sold into lasting slavery.
By and large, Obaseki must immediately turn a new leaf and double down in the about two years he has left in his first term; otherwise, he may sing his Nunc Dimittis. He must therefore win back the hearts of perceptive Edo people. He certainly will not want to take his place in the Edo Hall of Shame like the administration of Chief Lucky Igbinedion!
*** Mr. Tony Erha, a journalist and activist, writes from Abuja and can be reached viatonyerha@yahoo.com.
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