Southwest politics: The third factor!

Even as we read this, it is a fact that the All Progressives Congress (APC), aside the centre, now controls only 20 states, while 15 went to opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It’s the final result of the recently conducted and largely rested 2019 elections! This is apart from losses and gains between the two major parties in the national and state assembly elections, though. The show so far, with the coming of PDP’s NyesomWike on April 3 in a supplementary ballot in Rivers, reveals PDP has a net gain of states, while APC has a net loss! Among the first categorisation of governorship losses is the loss in Oyo State, specifically by Adebayo Adelabu of the APC to PDP’s SeyiMakinde. Adelabu’s inability to clinch the trophy has been blamed entirely on the failure of the outgoing governor AbiolaAjimobi to effect necessary/sufficient orientation, via personal conducts/utterances, among the electorate regarding why APC should be peoples’ prime choice in an electoral outing. Adelabu’s defeat came as an icing on the cake of an earlier defeat of Ajimobi himself who, despite his vociferous campaigns to be allowed to represent, in senatorial capacity, people of Oyo South, lost to Dr. Kola Balogun, a former state commissioner, again of the PDP! These two losses by Ajimobi were seen by pundits as long in waiting, thoroughly deserved!

While yours sincerely does not believe a party should dominate a state’s or country’s political space any more than the people so desire, it is imperative to worry how a governor within southwest progressive enclave would hold the reins for eight years and lose in an open electoral contest clearly egregiously to a candidate and party which had operated in oppositional capacity for equal length of time! To hold an executive power as governor is to control the state’s wealth for a minimum of four years, an opportunity often seen, quite validly, as having it all, especially in terms of latitude to determine who has/owns what, where, when and how much! Aside projects, the governor also determine who to appoint and as what, from which community and for how long. Consequently, to fail to garner sufficient sympathy/appreciation among the electorate to muster at least a win in whatever capacity is therefore commonly seen not just as weighty but equally blameworthy! Little wonder, Ajimobi is being buffeted by critics and party loyalists for being the source of APC’s record-breaking reverses in Oyo State in the last election, apparently losing it all –  presidential, governorship and senatorial!

But, by obvious parameters of assessment, Ajimobi did commendably well in the area of infrastructure! Quite staggering number of roads, bridges, and other physical structures were constructed and some are yet under construction across sections of the state, even till now, although Ibadan, being the capital and very hub of the state, has received the largest chunk of projects, not just because it is the state capital, but for being the town with the highest pull of newcomers in ceaseless search for greener pastures, a situation which has put amenities under pressure. But, despite having such an opportunity to shape the destiny of a massive state like Oyo with equally massive IGR and handouts from the federation accounts the whole eight years, Ajimobi yielded APC’s space to the PDP, precisely owing to his perceived utterances/human relations!

Much earlier, Dr. Kayode Fayemi had similarly lost to PDP’s AyodeleFayose in July 2014. But this was a loss which had put both academics and watchers of events to task regarding why! This is specifically because Fayemi was seen as having done well, creating over 300,000 direct jobs and over 500,000 indirect, through various policy measures, including friendly environment for banks and other businesses and construction of over 1,500 kilometres of roads, alongside other revolutionary moves across education, tourism and agriculture! So much did Fayemi achieve then that the international monthly, The Economist, lamenting his most alarming defeat in its June 25, 2014 edition, noted ‘The ousting of a reforming governor at the polls bodes ill for Nigeria in general!’

Why APC and Ajimobi lost the last election in Oyo State is same reason the party lost the 2014 election in Ekiti! Beyond superficial, political explanations, the losses speak to intrinsic yearning among the citizenry for deeply systemic overhaul of mind-set among governors that construction of roads, bridges and structures does it all! Despite massive overhaul of decrepit infrastructure, the people rejected APC governments in both states, apparently for failure to place appropriate value on workers! Regardless of whatever other achievements, workers, the primary vehicle through which the public gauge the sensitivity/humanness or otherwise of an administration, see their monthly and other entitlements as non-negotiable, failure to ensure prompt redemption of which is regarded as sin unpardonable!

In Ekiti, although Fayemi owed workers only one month salary, he had stopped for several months their monthly deductions to cooperative societies and civil service associations. A move which significantly compromised the workers’ financial freedom could not have been received peacefully by them! Ajimobi was perhaps worse! His supremacy battle with the Olubadan, the demolition of a popular musician’s radio station, his war/altercation with Ladoke Akintola university students and his open disaffection with various categories of public servants who he owed some arrears of salary hobbled him irremediably and undid his party!

Although, as things turned out, specifically in Ekiti, the Fayose option proved fatal, to say it mildly! Fayose, who, on completion of his second term, was not quite well scored in terms of performance, kept heaping excuses upon excuses why government business must stop on multiple fronts, across formal and informal sectors! Sending banks packing with stifling impositions and weakening purchasing power among locals with punishing measures, many would admit Ekiti was driven to its nadir within a space of one year of Fayemi’s vacating office. Thousands of those employed by Fayemi were sent back to the ‘jobless market’, no new employments ever made, and` political appointments, sparse like human habitations in arid zones, never followed any predictable pattern. No new roads were constructed, except a flyover that left urban managers in wonder as to its essential/critical necessity.

Atop entire malady was the administration’s refusal to prioritise workers’ monthly salaries and allied benefits! Hunger and squalor worsened as criminality soared amongst elements who saw no possibility of survival except in desperation and corner-cutting! Amid avoidable despondency and general disenchantment with a governor who appeared to have returned to office entirely clueless regarding peoples’ needs, Ekiti voters seized an election to plot Fayemi’s return four years after saying no to his bid at self-survival!

APC’s net losses in the last elections serve unambiguous warning to occupiers of elective offices generally to reappraise the import of governance and revalue the citizenry, especially workers, if favouring their party at election times remains fundamental goal! Governors especially must emplace processes that will ease settlements of entitlements of workers soon and as they are due, lest the risk of electoral losses! Despite Rauf Aregbesola’s sterling performance in the areas of infrastructure and job creation, APC nearly lost the last governorship election in Osun state, owing to same reasons of perceived depressed value of public servants! Workers, with their purchasing power, serve as primary drivers of a state’s economy; with their number and spread, they remain primary vehicles for propagation of the image of sitting governments! In their private interactions and dealings, they make comments that deliver unmistakable, often barefaced, public relations messages to the public about conducts of sitting governments, unconsciously swaying the former along partisan divides long before elections! Image and perception serve as basis for electoral wins or losses! Workers must not be toyed with in whatever way and under whatever guise!

 Salawudeen writes via [email protected]

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