By Erasmus Ikhide
 Published
February 24th, 2009
The people of Edo State have
lived under a siege and godfather-dominated political
structure since 1999. When it comes to politics, trite
elections are power pyramid. This nearly unbroken 11 years
of vague domination and subjugation is what makes partial
successes of the PDP until they shot themselves in the foot.
It is a big relief that the Action Congress, AC has taken
the task of reprieve to opening up and fastens the power
structure of Edo State political landscape.
The PDP local government chairmen and councilors in the 18
local government councils have never really been there on
behalf of the people, vis-ŕ-vis the fraud that attended
their elections. They are only focused on their joys,
pleasures, and certitudes of their everyday lives. Now, they
quivered at the likely disruption of that routine meanness
that takes away the peoples’ patrimony for which they
earlier pride themselves of retaining till Heaven – knows –
when. We have argued repeatedly that electoral corruption
will only encouraged and entrenched material corruption and
that is what we have had in the last 12-year or so of our
democratic experiment.
There is no use stressing the fact to an elastic point that
those who have held Edo State and her people hostage
insouciantly for years at the expense of the peoples’
aspiration; amassing unearned wealth and perquisites of mob
governance are at best troubled about their dangling fate,
at worse, their outright failure to keeping the people in
the ditch, perpetually. The foregoing altercation, blackmail
and the illogical stand point from which the 18 local
councils are viewing their objection to the creation of jobs
for the teaming youths of Edo State indigenes and none
indigene alike calls for concern.
It is laughable as much as it is bemoaning that the local
government chairmen who had confessed to doling out N10
million each every month to minister to the ego of a petite
hounds of godfathers – not the people – have engaged
themselves in a self-destructive pursuit that will deepened
the state’s poverty index in the long run. Granted that it
is not easy to change power arrangements even in a nation or
state where people have gained tremendous freedom of speech
and the right to vote and be voted for, but it is pertinent
however that the people whose behest government is
constituted deserve the minimum right to access the basics
of lives. No government worthy of the name which cannot
afford her people that contractual obligation of being there
on behalf of the mass of them ever existed.
The most disturbing of it all is the statement credited to
the Chairman of Edo State chapter of the Coalition of
Registered Political Parties, Dr. Samson Isibor in support
of the position of local government chairmen ‘‘that
Oshiomhole was only attempting to force the council chairmen
elected under the manifesto of another party to contribute
to the actualization of the manifesto of his party, the
AC’’. That, regrettably confirmed what an elected councilor
under the platform of PDP, Owan West local government area
of ward 7 told me few days ago in my local government that
the job creation drive of Adams Oshiomhole-led
administration is a misnamed gambit harped on party
patronage for Action Congress AC, members. He gave a logic
that had solely characterized PDP style of governance –
winner takes all – since 1999. He was categorical that if
for instance it was his billing to give job to, say 100
people in his ward the chances are that 99.9 percent will go
to his party, the PDP. But when I reminded him that
Oshiomhole had appointed other political parties’ as his
Commissioner and the like; he retorted to drawing binocular.
Sadly, that is the local government council where, for
nearly 8-year the chairman, Daniel Asekhamen has been on
sabbatical. He simply emerges from the blues at the end of
every month and drives from the state capital, pays salaries
and shares other monies and disappeared until it is time to
share the next subvention. Now, his status grows over night
at the penumbra of the creeping poverty everywhere you turn,
while he promptly proceeds to maintain a luxurious lifestyle
in the heart of the state capital.
The job creation is one of the assurances Oshiomhole-led
administration had given the good people of Edo State which
will remove the state from the parlous state of civil
service state to industrialized state. One of the policy
trusts of this administration is the creation of jobs for
the idle youths; to lead in the vanguard of job creation
that will see government at all level embarking on job
creation, without which the intimidating army of unemployed
youths will break free from the given squalor and idleness
and help themselves to criminality. If government is not to
partner, cooperate, and work harmoniously in the interest of
the people who elected them irrespective of party
affiliation, why else is it there?
Whether or not local government council chairmen are ready
to cooperate will not deter Oshiomhole-led government to
back off from its quest of continuing the actualization of
the set objective of job creation. It is on record that
Oshiomhole as a social change agent, a very highly organized
and disciplined personage, drawing in the main from great
physical and inner strength and from his strong moral belief
and supreme confidence in his shared theoretical analysis,
will make a great impact in Edo State, with or without PDP
local government chairmen contributions. If things must
change in Edo State , then people have to get out of their
routine enlightened self-interests one way or the other.
There has to be a social disruption, a process that has a
shared political identity such that people can aggregate
their wants within a system they help to put in place.
It is disgraceful to hear the local government chairmen
whose duty it is to create jobs at the grassroots, but never
did, constitute themselves into antiestablishment; just to
plead loyalty to their various or central godfathers who
goaded them on to back off from their earlier agreement to
partner with the Adams Oshiomhole administration in the area
of job creation and youth empowerment. This administration
is just extreme enough to bring about effective synergy that
will galvanize an ailing state as Edo, revamps its cultural
heritage, resuscitates the comatose sports industry,
rehabilitates the decayed infrastructures, paves the roads
and make Edo state great again where one and all will be
attracted to do business irrespective of his political
learning or geopolitical divide.
Erasmus Ikhide is a Special
Assistant to Edo State Governor
on Documentation and Publications
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