Probably because of the high-wired politicking involved in securing tickets to contest the 2023 polls, or the presidential primaries of their party which took place over the weekend, the Oyo State Government is yet to roll out drums in celebration of its third anniversary, hence some quietude witnessed thus far, unlike the over-the-moon noise in commemoration of the same anniversaries, in the previous years.
Be that as it may, one thing critically clear, is that the current government under Engr. Oluseyi Abiodun Makinde, FNSE, despite concerted efforts to advertise the contrary, hasn’t done anything extra, whether in the governance of the state, or in the deployment of resources for the betterment of the people’s lot. Her performances as a government, assessed objectively, has been nothing but bang average. While she has been paying salaries of civil servants regularly, state-owned tertiary institutions staffers are back to the same troubles they experienced during the Ajimobi administration, without the Makinde administration even lifting a finger to rescue them, almost two months since they went on strike!
For a government which took over in 2019, on the strength of a coalition midwifed by former governor, Rasidi Ladoja, and embraced by Senator Olufemi Lanlehin, Barrister Sarafadeen Alli and Chief Bolaji Ayorinde, majorly under the drive to prevent then governor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi from installing a successor, Makinde’s handling of the coalition, barely a year into power, is akin to a well-read but poorly-understood lesson from the leaves of Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power. Swiftly, and probably hastily, Makinde fractured his relationship with these political maestros, instead cultivating a new power circle, heavy on political paperweights and yesmen, and light on politicians weighty enough to drive traffic on election day.
Asides the governor’s deliberate change in that political equation, his cabinet, twice constituted in the spate of two years, cannot be described as noble; consisting of eggheads, brilliant enough to offer high-end ideas capable of moving the state forward. Instead, save for one or two, majority of the current crop of commissioners, special advisers and appointees, have little or no access to the governor, hence can only but act in ways mimicking his body language, rather than in the pursuit of their Ministry/Department/Agency’s goals.
For instance (specifically because of the current discourse, as there are many instances in the State’s Executive Council), when the Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, doesn’t even know workers in the state-owned tertiary institutions had been receiving amputated salaries since February, get paid on the 45th of the month, or that all promises by his boss to workers in the Oyo State College of Education, Lanlate, under a 4-week assurance, were yet to be fulfilled 15 weeks after, how then can such a man be trusted to move the state’s education forward? His meeting with the leadership of the workers’ unions have all being perfunctory; bearing no serious fruits!
As if the mediocre performance of the current State Exco isn’t enough, some of the policy directions of the Makinde administration have been somewhat befuddling, or how best can one explain the decision to power streetlights with diesel, in the 21st Century? If that’s not backwardness, then that word needs a new dictionary meaning. Why no one in the State Exco could defeat that puerile thinking with the simplest of arguments that the world was moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy in efforts to secure the world from ravaging effects of climate change is still a surprise.
Perhaps, thinking for the governor’s camp, probably the need to get plum job for the boys, especially in the procurement of diesel, the servicing of the generators, or its overall maintenance, on a regular basis, are the reasons behind this stone-age policy. That, that project will cost Government more than three times she should’ve spent were the lights solar, is a sad tale of a government bothered only by aesthetics, at the cost of value and longevity.
For a government which campaigned vigorously, and rightly so too, against the deployment of Lagos-based Consultants by the Ajimobi-government, derisively tagging same “Ajele System”, promising to engage civil servants entirely in government business, to now do a 360, and shamelessly deploy Consultants, in all spheres of the state’s economy, with the work of Platinum Consultants, whose head is from the Southsouth, and who allegedly rakes in 10% of all earnings from state-owned tertiary institutions, the chief advert of that hypocrisy, one needs not be too intelligent to know that this government is no different from her predecessors, contrary to her “Omi Tuntun” monicker.
Similarly, for a government which established the State’s Anti-Corruption Agency, despite a plethora of same already existing in the country, and which a serious government can take advantage of, to be enmeshed in a corruption allegation in the production of customized exercise books, award of contracts to newly-registered companies with little or no experience in the area of interest, and above all, litigating against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)’s right to query her finances, is to take hypocrisy to dizzying heights. The Makinde-government has been one which deliberately fools the public, under the guise of populism, yet offers subpar governance.
While the intentions of the Makinde administration in desperately trying to pull a wool over the people’s eyes to mask a not-too encouraging performance are understood, particularly with the recent increase in the allowances of her digital warriors (who call themselves GSM Advocates), from N10,000 to N25,000, and who go about, from platform to platform, sometimes in poorly written English, defending the governor, the critical public, is encouraged, going forward, to begin to take a cursory look at government’s policies, decisions and actions, as we march through 2023, and not just accept hook, line and sinker, performances from governments like Makinde’s, which are high on propaganda, but middling, terribly, in delivery!
– Dr. Fasola, a public affairs commentator wrote in from Ibadan
