Mimiko in historical perspective

THERE have been different perspectives on the outgoing administration of Governor Olusegun Mimiko by different people and commentators. Some who have been eagerly wanting to get their pound of flesh back for various perceived wrongs committed by the Ondo State governor in the course of his certainly long political engagement, have seized on his recent travails – the inability of his party to win the gubernatorial election – to voice out violent denunciation of his regime and pour invectives on his political character.

Again, some who have followed his governance style and detected a deliberateness of policy initiatives informing his administration’s view of the goodness of society have sworn by his philosophy of governance as the template of development for sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, some others like the state’s civil servants, while conceding that he might have performed well in terms of communal and masses empowerment, cannot forgive him for not paying their salaries for such a long time.

This piece is not about to judge if these opinions are either right or wrong; rather, it is the intention of the writer to fast-forward history and place the Mimiko’s eight-year regime against the backdrop of say, the first 33 years of pre-Mimiko governance in the state: that is, the period between 1976 to 2009.

Many do not know that already Ondo presently has been redefined and remodeled after the Mimiko concept of governance. Let us assume for example, that rather than the apparently friendly incoming Rotimi Akeredolu government, a hostile take-over of government by someone not enamored of the Mimiko philosophy of governance was the case, the development architecture of Ondo, would be fundamentally altered right from its foundation.

The rejigging and retooling of the educational sector through massive investments in mega primary schools, quality education assurance agency and intensive structural and curricula upgrade in many secondary schools, wouldn’t have made any meaning to a fixated mind bent on reversing the Mimiko legacy. That the state virtually frog-jumped from 33rd position in 2009 to 7th position in 2016 in the West African Examination Council results would be of no interest because turning the ICT-compliant and digitally equipped schools into hotels might catch the fancy of those challenged in the knowledge of grass-roots governance.

The very flagship of the Mimiko administration and the one for which he has won the highest number of accolades and greatest international and national commendations, is in the health sector. The evidence of superlative performances in this area so much abounds that only people engaged in cognitive fraud will deny the drastic reduction achieved in infant and maternal mortality through the celebrated Abiye programme and the transformation of the Medical Village in the Laje axis of Ondo city into a veritable resort of medical tourism. It is now unusual for poor pregnant women to conflate child-birth with probabilities of death or financial ruin. The health sector funding can be better managed but, to go back on this Mimiko legacy will cost any administration tremendous political will.

Mimiko’s bottoms-up urban renewal paradigm, for which the UN-Habitat gave him an award, is a repudiation of the “trickle-down” theory approach that vests too much hope in the prosperity of the regional big city-centers’ revival to spread to less fortunate parts. It has been a revolutionary method of blazing the trail in parlaying decaying inner-city structures and market redevelopment as developing catalysts of urban and regional areas. Again, it is this same philosophy that informs the building of the many Caring Heart Neighborhood markets whose main salience apart from the comfort and aesthetics, is in their strategic use to redevelop the inner cities while also generating ancillary commercial activities besides retail marketing. The Dome and International Cultural and Event Centre, of which the Nigerian Society of Engineers was mightily proud and to which it referred as both an engineering and architectural masterpiece, has become a must-see for any high profile visitor to Akure.

The 3i-initiative community projects, of which there are over 500, comprehensively spread out in the different Local Governments in the state, cannot be left unattended to or unserviced. The concept of participatory governance involving the people is a novelty of the Mimiko administration in the areas of needs assessment and prioritisation. Needless to say that the masses in the rural areas have taken this approach as a standard form of democratic dividend.

Soon and very soon, the masses will realise that the administration of Mimiko has always employed a masses-centric view of development in Ondo which has even significantly eroded his support and understanding in elitist quarters. The civil servants will realise that governance is about the prioritisation of peoples’ needs; that the democracy of numbers favours the masses in the allocation of scarce resources and that Mimiko or any governor for that matter, could not have manufactured money when the resources from the centre dwindle.

With an eight-year administration of two terms whose continuation by a successor candidate was only aborted in the complicity of INEC and Justice Okon Abang of the Abuja High Court — serving as proxies for their master puppeteers, the federal cabal in Abuja — the Mimiko administration has bequeathed legacy projects in the state whose non-continuation may provoke restiveness in the citizenry. Mimiko has therefore emplaced a development trajectory the reversal of which, may be difficult to effect; he has defined the state after his vision of governance.

Mimiko’s critics in the aforementioned categories must contend with the historical perspective of his tenure which may not necessarily be in tandem with their perceptions of him as a friend, ally or governor. History is written on stubborn facts and does not have much room for either wishful thinking or, still unfolding events.

• Ajao is a Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications to Mimiko.