Of hatchet job as Makinde starts on winning note

SEYI Makinde, billionaire businessman and technocrat, came into the Oyo Governor’s Office on May 29, 2019 fully tried as gold. Unlike many of the emergency tenants in the corridors of power who strut the land making public office patent nuisance, Makinde, popularly referred to with his Omititun (fresh water) moniker, actually has a resume—and it is an extremely rich one. He is neither a career politician nor an economic saboteur. He is an engineer and entrepreneur whose odyssey has been an open book. The point may seem banal, but Abiodun Makinde is no empire builder nurturing hack and hired writers who will murder a man at midnight for a pint of beer, then deviously join his mourners at break of dawn in the hope of a swig of palm wine after their hypocritical tears. No. Perish the thought. He needs, and seeks, no perquisite of office to build an economic empire. He is not in office to profit from the tears of the populace; he is there to lift them far above the appalling conditions in which, hobbled by less than stellar governance, they have been confined for far too long. This is why even though for years he sought the office of governor with no success, he has never despaired. He kept his gaze on the goal, simple and humble in defeat, and drafted designs for Oyo people’s happiness when the now men-of-yesterday clinked glasses of triumph, proudly intent on personal benefit.

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So then how does anyone process one Ishola Adeshola’s “Starting on a faulty note: The governors that got it twisted” (The Nation, June 8), a commissioned attack on the Oyo State governor blending falsehood with illogic to craft one nauseous farce? Although the writer prefaced his 1,370-word doggerel with caustic references to Governors Mala Buni of Yobe State and Emeka Ihedioha of Imo State, the first for marrying a third wife and the second for ordering the demolition of a monument built by his predecessor, his burning desire to dress Governor Makinde in the robe of a villain soon got hold of him after just 173 words. Dropping the false pretence to patriotism, he launched swiftly into the object of his desire, devoting all of 1,197 words to the castigation of the Oyo State governor who emerged, it must be admitted, against the personal wishes of the water-hidden drummers behind his dance atop the waters of mischief. Here then, as our elders note, is mischief: Seyi Makinde had not even stepped one foot in the river before their crocodile pounced!

And Makinde’s supposed faulty notes? The sack of council chairmen, the temporary proscription of the violence-prone NURTW in Oyo motorparks, the promise to negotiate a new minimum wage with workers, and the reversal of last-minute promotions engineered to ruin his take-off as Oyo helmsman. The sack of the chairmen, said the writer, was ‘hasty’, which was why “outrage now trails the governor’s decision given the fact that the sacked local government chairmen were elected just as the governor himself.” The writer designated the sack of council leaders produced in violation of the constitutional as a faulty start. Surely this is egregious falsehood. As the Oyo State government indicated, the purported election was an outright illegality, having been conducted in violation of a subsisting court order. Since when did lawful enforcement of the law become a crime?

As almost anyone familiar with Oyo politics knows, the NURTW in Oyo State is patently partisan and violence-prone, which is why following the election of Governor Makinde, as in previous elections, violence broke out among rival factions. Intent on curtailing the impending disorder capable of plunging the state into crisis, the governor moved in quickly and proscribed, not the union itself but its operations in parks, for the time being. In the past, members of the union had made the state ungovernable, even going to the parliament and proclaiming a governor removed from office. The country surely has not forgotten the fate that befell Auwal Shanono, then national president of the Nigeria Medical Students Association (NIMSA) on June 5, 2011. The 500 level medical student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, was returning from Ile-Ife after attending a national conference on maternal mortality. He and other students were at Iwo Road, Ibadan, trying to board a night bus to Kaduna when they were caught in the exchange of gunfire between rival factions of the NURTW. Shanono was killed and burnt almost beyond recognition. While members of the NURTW were killed in that encounter, it was the death of the innocent student that shook the nation the most.

Given that background, should Governor Makinde have allowed a repeat of such sordid history by allowing the violence in Oyo motorparks to fester? Incredibly, the writer wrote this sentence: “What that means to some citizens of the state is that the peace and security of lives, achieved by the Ajimobi administration has come under threat as the members of this union may not take this lying low.” Wait, is security of life and property not the primary duty of government? Of course, the gods on the lagoon do not care about human life: all they are interested in is political mercantilism. For the avoidance of doubt, Governor Makinde will do whatever is necessary to protect his people regardless of the antics of economic desperadoes masquerading as saviours of the Yoruba race. By the way, how can a governor who insists on negotiating the minimum wage in accordance with revenue be characterized as starting on a faulty note? Faulty note as determined by whom? And how is the reversal of landmines dubbed ‘promotions’ in the civil service a faulty note? In case the writer has not grasped the point, elections have consequences. Governor Ajimobi himself took corrective measures before, and after he assumed office.

Strangely, the writer wants Governor Makinde to learn from Mr. Sanwo-Olu “who, on assumption of office, declared a state of emergency on refuse disposal in the state as well as the perennial traffic situation in the state.’’ Wait, was the ‘mismanagement’ of waste disposal, together with the ‘traffic situation in the state” precisely not the major reason given by the gods who ousted Governor Akinwumi Ambode in Lagos for engineering his downfall? So if Mr. Sanwo-Olu sought to correct the errors of his predecessor in office, just how can that be a lesson for Governor Makinde that “government is a continuum, and that the unwholesome act of bringing down the gains of the previous government, no matter its value, can only be counter- productive”? In correcting Ambode’s ‘sins’, just how was Mr. Sanwo-Olu pursuing continuity? The writer’s logic is suspect. But his qualms need not detain us further: Governor Makinde has taken steps to keep the peace in Oyo State, donated his salaries to pensioners, initiated steps for a state anti-graft agency and even promised to waive his immunity if found complicit in corruption. He has already started on a winning note.

• Adedapo lives in Ibadan