South West governors and their tales of plundering, by John Akingbade

The expectation of the people of South West was very high at the point when the All Progressives Congress (APC) was being formed.
I belong to the group of people with such huge expectations. This was largely due to the failure of another big-for-nothing party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ran at the time by some gluttonous rascals who failed woefully to make life livable for the people but only succeeded in looting and stealing our common patrimony, and in turn left us hungrier and wallowing in pains.
These dis-Excellency Governors left their various states in ruins, those still in the saddle are not any different from their predecessors, but their treasure, that of their family members and cronies, were overflowing with our stolen money.
This was our experience before the emergence of APC.
The APC of today is worse than the PDP that we all detest like plague for its profligacy, visionlessness and desertion of the citizens.
I, as a member of ACN at the time registered as a member of the new party at Yaba in Lagos but have since lost hope in the party because of these characters who are driven by their narrow and selfish interest.
Mr Bello, Aliyah’s father in Sweet Sixteen, a moral teaching book written by Bolaji Abdullahi, former APC publicist, was a man who showed leadership to her lovely daughter whom she often referred to as ‘the first lady’.
He told Aliyah of the necessity of education to the growth of one’s mind as well as the society, and he supported her to ensure she succeeded.
Aliyah, upon questioning from her father one day about menstruation, told her dad that she was taught how to menstruate by someone.
Replying, her father said, nobody can teach you how to menstruate but that she can only be told of how to do it.
Two points are very important about Aliyah’s father here. One, Mr Bello let her know the importance of education and supports her with all she needs to succeed. Two, he does the job of educating the young Aliyah so as to know the right thing to be done.
He was a model of responsible and responsive leadership. This is a great departure from our South West merchants of power who are model only to those who scamper for the crumbs that drop from their table.
While Aliyah was able to get the nutrients with which to grow made available by Mr Bello, her father; the people of South West are dying of hunger and starvation because the nutrients they need to build a muscle is being stolen by their leaders.
That is the reason the people wish these leaders all manner of evil in the world. But, Aliyah never did, she wished her father good life.
The immediate past Governor of Oyo State and the National Vice Chairman, APC South West, Abiola Ajumobi is not a good example of leadership in the region. During the brouhaha that almost crippled the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Ogbomoso (a school jointly owned by Oyo and Osun states) in which the citadel of learning was shut down for over 8 months; he did not display ‘tactness’. Did he expect the students to keep quiet while their future is being sabotaged by power monger? Would he have allowed the school to be under lock and key for such a long time should he have any of his children there? Was it wrong for the students to show their displeasure over the action of a Governor who had forgotten that the office of the citizen is greater than the office of a Governor which he transiently occupied?
Politics is about conflict and resolution and anyone who lacks such capacity does not need to take public office. I wonder if he realizes that. Instead of him to address the genuine agitation of the students, he was making some dis-honourable comments which are not just only insensitive but annoying. Hear him: “I cannot fund the school. Babcock University is not being funded by anybody. The school should look for a way to fund itself. I am a constituted Authority. You can go and do whatever you like ’’.
He talked as if the money to be used for the exercise was one that he worked for himself. Arrogance at its peak!
Ajimobi would have resigned and allowed someone who can think out of the box take charge and do the needful. Has Seyi Makinde not successfully run the school without rancour and stench witnessed during his odious reign? Is Babcock a public school? Does he not know the difference between private and public? Is he not aware of the essence of public institutions?
His outburst was a reflection of arrogance, insensitivity and sheer lack of vision. Anytime I watched that video, I say to myself that Ajumobi is not fit to occupy any public office within our space. While he was busy complaining about funding, his daughter was seen spraying hard currency in bundles outside the shore of Nigeria. What business is that lady doing that she can spend money in such manner?
Babatunde Fashola SAN, the former Lagos Governor was believed to have done well while holding the mantle of leadership in the Sea city. That he performed well as being bandied is debatable. Can performance of a Governor be measured by the bridges, roads, hospitals built?
Can we say a man who increased school fee from #20,000 to #250,000 and thereby making the children of the poor unable to access education a performer? I do not think so. He may have done well in the thinking of some people but that wicked hike is a dent on his garb and I know it will stand against him in the nearest future. The fee has since been reverted to what it was before he hiked it. Mr Fashola, has Lagos University and others broken down since then?
Ondo State was very unfortunate to have another Babatunde Fashola in another SAN, Rotimi Akeredolu. He came and insensitively hiked fee in the tertiary institutions across the state.
Today, a lot of our brothers and sisters have continuously dropped out of school because they could not afford to pay such fee. How can a man who calls himself a progressive do such increment in a state where there is no industry, where majority are peasant farmers and traders?
Sadly, some people who are closer to their graves and who suppose to speak the truth were justifying the Governor’s destruction of fine edifice of affordable education for all built years back by visionary leaders.
One of such men is Barrister Tunji Abayomi, a man whom I have a big respect for until the moments he justified Akeredolu’s action. If I may ask Chief Tunji Abayomi, how many of his kinsmen in his hometown of Akoko can afford to pay the tuition in a session? It is sad that at over 70 years, he allowed politics to blind his reasoning and joined with Rotimi Akeredolu to destroy the beautiful and glittering edifice of affordable and qualitative education bequeathed to us by Chief Adekunle Ajasin and Obafemi Awolowo.
History is being made of what you made of our education today, and obviously you are not going to be at the good side when the story is being retold.
His excellency, Rotimi Akeredolu, just like your brother in Lagos, Babatunde Fashola failed woefully in taking education from the table of the poor and to the enclave of the rich, you too will fail roundly.
In the course of time, that hike will be cancelled by a passionate leader who believes in the right of every citizens to education irrespective of their status or class.
Across the region, the story is the same. Instead of these ‘rulers’ to add value to the life of the people they profess to serve, the contrary is what they do. They are busy building flyovers etc – projects that allow them to steal – investing hard earned resource on projects which have little or no impact on the lives of the people while the one that affects every citizen, education, and which have the capacity to develop the state is left to ruin.
Such recklessness and misplaced priority was obvious during the reign of egoistic Ibikunle Amosun government in Ogun state.
He went ahead and built a flyover in Ijebu Igbo, a community that obviously did not need such. What is the rate of vehicular traffic experienced in the ancient city that calls for a flyover? I lived in the city during my study at Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye and I could confirm that it was a misnomer, a wasteful enterprise. Why not equip schools in the city? Many of the schools in the city are in shambles. They are a bunch of wasteful rulers.
Sadly, their political party cannot call them to order and the people continue to suffer and wallow in poverty. What is the use of a political party that cannot tame the excesses of his off-the-track members?
As it is in the APC, so it is in the PDP. Where lies the salvation of the masses who are dying of hunger, whose children are dropping out of school due to bad leadership and whose future is made bleak by these ‘plunderer’ ? apology to Prof. Niyi Osundare .
Nelson Mandela says: ‘’Education is the weapon with which we can change the world’’. They steal our money to send their children to the best school abroad but deny our schools of infrastructure, teaching aids etc and in turn ask the appointed woo woo administrators to hike the fee in order to ensure that our people cannot access education.
That is the gift we have got so far from the progressive governors of the South West.
Any governor who is making education difficult for the people to get by hiking it is a cancer that must be removed irrespective of their political parties.