JUST as well Seyi Makinde, the Oyo governor, has reversed himself on his rather impulsive stop-work order, on the 32-kilometre Ibadan circular road project, on alleged slow pace of work.
He alleged, for good measure, that the ENL Consortium, the contractors handling the project, had done less than 6 per cent of the work, even if the contract was signed in 2017.
First, it’s one of the quiet gains of democracy, that a governor can swiftly reverse himself. If “military president” Gen. Ibrahim Babangida had had such strength, the tragedy of the June 12, 1993 presidential election annulment wouldn’t have consumed the country.
Neither would accomplished reporter and politician, Aremo Olusegun Osoba, have risked losing the Sketch managing director position, which he had earned via a stellar performance at the job interview, because Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, then outgoing military head of state, wrongly succumbed to corporate old wives’ tales; and found it a sign of extreme weakness for a military ruler to reverse himself, even when wrong.
All that drama, and how Osoba eventually triumphed, is in Battlelines: Adventures in Journalism and Politics, Osoba’s just released memoirs.
So, Makinde swiftly reversing himself is fresh and refreshing. But regardless of that earned praise, the governor must have learnt his lesson: the danger of his all-too-established propaganda plot, to always tar the Abiola Ajimobi governorship.
Since Makinde took over, his projected accomplishments aren’t complete without projecting how useless the Ajiimobi tenure was! The Ibadan circular road project was to follow the same paradigm. The emotive byte of the contractors doing just some five per cent of the job, after two years, was destined the ultimate propaganda pitch!
But with the Ajimobi side fighting back, that pitch badly backfired. The governor found himself on the defensive, reeling under potent and credible flak! It’s indeed the needed, if brutal, sucker punch to teach the gubernatorial lesson that a public proclamation is made after the sobriety of the policy chamber, not after the hung-ho passion of the political street.
Still, grant the governor his due. A shallower person would perhaps still have held on to his “stop” order, even if that bad decision would come back to haunt him, in the ever-shifting quicksand of politics, elections and allied matters.
Even then, the governor savagely marked himself down by his loud grumblings, about reactions from the Ajimobi camp. Pray, what did he expect? That the opposing camp would dumbly surrender to be slaughtered, by the governor’s own propaganda machine?
This tit-for-tat has attained a public good: scuppering the governor from, playing to the gallery, halting a crucial public project, so critical to Oyo’s socio-economic future.
Ironically, the governor too is complaining about a partisan play to the gallery, by the opposition camp. But wasn’t that what the governor himself was doing, by his impulsive “stop work” order, right on the site, even before the full project briefing that should precede every official public pronouncement?
Perhaps, the governor’s angst arose from what he later made public: that the ENL Consortium allegedly first quoted N14 billion for the job but that the job got awarded for N67 billion. Now, are all these figures confirmed gubernatorial facts? Or the routine old wives’ tales of sleaze and alleged sleaze that make the rounds in partisan blackmail and counter-blackmail?
Still, the important thing is that the government has courageously reversed himself. Now, the Makinde and Ajimobi camps can headline renewed public monitoring of the project, and put ENL on their toes.
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