Category: Sunday magazine

From his first day in office, Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, has been in the eye of the storm. Even after winning a bruising second term election his actions continue to provoke controversy. He explained to SAM OMATSEYE in this interview that anyone interested in changing things will face attacks. He speaks on the challenges of governing the state, his recent run-in with members of the national conference committee and sundry issues.

LOOKING back at the past one year and then the first term, what are your thoughts about governance in Edo State?

First, I want to give gratitude to God for the privilege. For me I have been humbled by the support that five years down the road one has continued to enjoy from the good people of our state because sometimes when you are seeking a political office, people make assumptions about what it might be. You make promises; some will choose to believe you, others might not believe you. In the end, it is either you prove those who believe you are right or you prove those who disbelieve you are wrong. I have been fortunate that five years down the road, the bond of trust between the governed and the government in Edo state has grown from strength to strength and that for me is extremely important. But the overall conclusion I have drawn from my experience in Edo state is that though Edo state is only one out of 36 states, the way in which Edo state reflects the geopolitics of Nigeria and people have given the impression over the period in different circumstances that Nigeria is so difficult to govern: our citizenry are never appreciative, critics are so loud, but my experience in Edo is different. I think that this is the easiest country to govern. Our people are extremely appreciative, they can see through good intentions, they are patient, when they trust to allow you to take them through a journey if they can see through the process. For me, it has been quite rewarding. Thirdly, at the beginning, there were many who wondered how labour activism which has characterized by life over the period, how I will be able to cope with the realities of governance from being anti-establishment to becoming the heart of establishment, and my assumptions turned out to be true namely that a common denominator in activism is the welfare of the people; try to speak for the voiceless, try to look at the shoes from their perspective emphasizing how policies must be measured in terms of impact and quality of life for citizens. In government, the challenge is not different, it’s just that rather than making recommendations in carrying placards to draw attention to what is not right, you have the privilege to apply resources in a way that reflects your convictions and rather than telling the driver whether to turn left or turn right, you turn as you think is appropriate for the vehicle to get to destination. So I have had no conflict whatsoever but the only aspect I have had difficulties with is if you like, the night politics. When I was in the NLC, on several occasions I have cause to say that I suspect that most of our leaders don’t sleep and because they don’t sleep, they possibly can’t dream and if a leaders has not dream for his country, he is living on day to day basis; governance by ad hoc because no enough time for deep reflections. I can confirm that right here, the number of hours you have to sleep are so few that there are challenges and you find that if you are not able to organize yourself and organize your thoughts, you can be bogged down by those who are seeking favours, so that the primary purpose of your stewardship is lost in the confusion. All manners of suppliers and contractors will set their agenda rather that you determining your agenda and the contractors coming in to find out how they fit into what you want to do. But again, once you are clear and you give the right signals out, the word goes round that the guy knows, you are not going to be able to drag him into it. Looking back I feel quite fulfilled that one has the privilege not only to preside at this level but also to retain the trust of the people which I think is the only rewarding thing about governance; that people see you, they smile, they can feel what difference you have made in their lives and the lives of their children and that’s why a lot of the programmes we are doing have been so carefully chosen to ensure that they are projects that will deliver the greatest good to the greatest number. Nobody can accuse me for example of a white elephant project: prestige project that are designed to create comfort for few. We emphasize the health sector, we emphasize education, we emphasize the need to rebuild integrity in our public schools. We build roads; not roads that are linking the big guys in the society, the so called government reservation area, but popular roads that will service the socio, economic and commercial life of the city. We carefully chose depressed communities and rebuild them within Benin City to give them hope, so that we touch those who clearly have given up, although they have the numbers which tells off on election day but they don’t have the votes thereafter. They are not capable of organizing press conferences, they are not going to engage you one on one, and in group they are too depressed and they have given up. I think all of that has shown to the people that there can be justice. At the beginning, we talked about proper planning and clear vision. I said to everyone that Benin City was the capital of Edo state. It’s like our living room, when a visitor comes to our house, he might not go beyond the living room and it forms the opinion about the character- whether the house is organized, it’s cleaned, it’s good, the nature of the furniture, there might even be no bed in the bedroom. So, let’s start there to regain the confidence for Edo to return to positive public discourse, rather than one that has been dismissed and now known only for robberies and things like that. But down the line over a four-year period, we knew we would be able to affect the 36 local governments, of course, our opponents were like we were only working on the ring roads, planting flowers and then the second year, they said we were only working in Benin city, as we speak, some of them even argue that we are doing more work in the rural areas than Benin and that shows that we have touched everywhere and the argument is no longer whether we are working, the argument is t where has he done more work?. I have been accused for example by my political opponents of building roads that lead to hamlets where poor people live and that they are not economically viable. Again that shows you that for us, the rural people-the forgotten majority, they must be the heart of governance and fighting poverty is not what you will achieve by lamenting the fact of exclusion of the bulk of the people and sermonizing to the young ones not to troop to the city will make no change except if these young people see development at their doorsteps, then they don’t need to go to Benin to see it. The results have been quite encouraging, we are beginning to see; one quick way to measure is the number of people building private hotels in Benin, it is incredible. During my campaign in 2007, there was only one airline that was flying in Benin, the Associated, with an aircraft that was even much older than the one that crashed, I think they used to call it the grasshopper or whatever. It was the only one and it plied Benin once a day. On a good weekend, It might fly twice, total sitting capacity not up to 20. Today, we have more than 4 flights coming into Benin and out of Benin from Lagos. Sometimes, two flights from Abuja into Benin and out of Benin and I know if we have the capacity, people want to travel within the south-south, there is enough traffic but this shows that there is something happening that people have noticed that is encouraging them to return home to transact businesses here. More banks are relocating and they tell me that there is a huge deposit base, a robust saving culture in this part of the country. So by whatever indices you use, there cannot be any argument that things have changed but there is still a lot more to be done. Which is why I asked for second term and our people so generously obliged and we are celebrating the end of the end of the first year of the second term.

None of these things you have done would have been possible without stepping on toes and it was quite painful at the beginning and this goes to the act of the financial wherewithal of the state, looking back, how would you access that time when you had a lot of conflicts in trying to generate an institutional base and financial base for your administration?

When I was the NLC, I always argue that if all that governorship entails is going to Abuja once in 30 days, take your share of the federation account, come back home and pay salaries, then all we needed was just an efficient clerk and an honest pay master that will not require you going round to campaign, it doesn’t require a governor to be able to do that but governor means leadership and the most fundamental thing about leadership is the capacity to think, to plan and to be clear of what you what to do, identify the challenges and reflect on how to overcome those challenges. You spare people rather than buffet them with lamentation: here, this is not in place and therefore we can’t do this but everything can be in place and nothing is going be in place unless someone put it in place. For me that was the starting point and the good news is that we saw a model in Lagos that was working. When Asiwaju was the governor of Lagos state, I was the president of the NLC. We had our office in Lagos and I know in the course of my interaction with him over minimum wage issues, that the monthly revenue was six hundred million Naira, that was in a good months and his wage bill was huge even when you add what was coming in from Abuja. The net of wages was hardly enough to service overhead, he was always making those points but then he was also assuring me of what he was doing. I think along with Cardoso, the then commissioner for finance and few other young guys, I think he identified and brought them in. He was going to reengineer the finances of the state and with time, he was not only going to pay minimum wage, he would do much more. Before leaving NLC it was clear that Lagos state had made a lot of progress; revenue base was more than quadrupled and he sustained it so much that when a hostile federal government decided to sit on the local government allocation of Lagos, Lagos was still working. so he didn’t need to go to US, UK or Europe to find out how a leader could change the fortune of his people and I also know during that period that different segments of society attacked him; issues of both the property class, the business class, I remember there were issues with Nigerian manufacturers association. All sorts of people went to court, some resorted to physical attack, insults and so on but he forged on and in the end, we saw the outcome and today, Lagos goes to Abuja not as a matter of life and death, but it goes there because it is a constitutional requirement that you go and partake in sharing what accrues to the federation account. So I knew from that experience that to drive changes, you won’t expect people to clap. A leader must choose at which point do you make the critical decisions- at the beginning or the end. It was clear to me as it happened in Lagos that you made those difficult decisions at the beginning so that the fruit, the accruals from those difficult decisions, you will have enough time to apply them to those critical areas of need for people to see the linkage between the sacrifices they made in the morning and the benefits that is accruing in the evening. That those eggs you broke in the morning and they were angry that why did you touch our eggs, in the evening that omelets was ready and on the table for them to “eye-mark” and even to taste. Not a few of course attacked us here and there were two basic areas; one was the area of revenue generation but the other one was to try and make a difference in Benin. We were bogged down with serious problem of flooding, nobody in this part of the country looked forward to the rainy season because of the concomitant flooding problem. I remember following a former governor here to Minister Ogunlewe, the federal minister, where he pleaded with me, because he asked me to follow because I was in the NLC believing that my presence might influence Ogunlewe to try and look at the situation with some favour and do something about the flooding. It was believed to be something above the state government; in any case the road is a federal road but nothing came out of that effort and I know while I was there, the governor called the Oba of Benin to say that he was with the minster and that he was doing something about the flooding problem but the problem persisted. But I know from development literature and having travelled round the world that there is no problem that cannot be solved and no government has all the resources he need to deal with all the problems he need to deal with and that is why the issue of generating revenue through taxation is at the heart of governance.

In fact, it defines the character of government. But also that the problem you see may require a holistic as opposed to ad hoc approach, so if you are bogged down with serious problem of flooding, you can’t deal with it without understanding it and so I had promised during my campaign that this flooding problem, will require a holistic study and based on those studies, we would deal with it. All of that is history. We carried out a comprehensive study of the city, we got competent consultants, unfortunately foreign contractors/consultants to handle (I think it is a South Africa based company) and they did a job that has now enabled us to understand the problem of the city and based on what we now know, we started the huge challenge of constructing drainage and all that such that the last rainy season, the problem of flooding was not in Benin, it was some villages around the back of River Niger because of even though the project is not yet completed, but what has already been accomplished is such that even if it’s raining now, somebody can now stay there while it rains and it flows. We have replaced what we call 5 junction where you have all kinds of five streets and it wasn’t properly organized and so they called it five junctions, it was actually 5 confusion. On a good day, normal traffic doesn’t flow. Once the people use to call yellow fever, traffic managers are off there, you have a problem but even worse if it rains for five minutes, you can’t pass the place. We have dealt with it on the basis of those studies, reclaim the moat, reconstruct the moat so that traffic can flow and we designed a round- about to reorder the traffic and the place is now a beauty to behold. We have had to remove all those illegal structures and on reflection now if you play back some TV coverage of those events, many people where like ‘ha this man has come, am a widow, the small shop where I am selling cigarrete, he is removing it’. Some people claim that at least we should be exempted given our status, you can’t go and remove our property, there should be respect for our status’. And am like, the only thing we are obliged to respect is the law. Again, one lesson to learn from this is that when you make laws without fear or favour, people can see through. We are working on Akpakpava road; you have illegal structures there both by the poor and also by the rich and you remove some, you spare some, automatically people realize that it’s about status, not about law. But when you remove the property of the rich as well as those of the poor, then there is no story. I think the most interesting day we had was the day we pulled down a perimeter wall fence of the Central Bank, which also encroached on the right of way and people where like but you know this is a Central Bank and I am like the Central Bank is itself a creation of the law and it must respect the law and someone was like no but you need to talk to the governor of the Central Bank before and I am like no! The governor of the Central Bank doesn’t talk to me before he implements his monetary policies so everybody should respect the law, that’s it. The higher you are, the more the reason why you should not be exempted from the law. We sent our bulldozers there and removed the wall fence. Talk about security, no bank is secured by wall fence. The cash is not by the window so there are no cashiers anyway but the day we removed that CBN wall fence, it was in the news all over the place. The point I am making is that when people see that there is no impunity, there is no exemption, everybody is under the law and they can see some big men whose property has been pulled down, they will cooperate.

But what you have shown here is that the most important thing in Nigeria in governance is adherence to the rule of law, how has that in itself helped with dealing with the issue of the so- called god fathers in the state and how have you been able to manage the fact that we don’t hear so much rumble these days?

I will say that the fight is rather over, really. The first is that a lot of these god fathers underestimated the capacity of the people to engage them. All I need to do, which is the most important lesson I learnt from my trade union background is that you can challenge anyone who is wrong and victims of a system can cause a reverse the day they make up their mind, and that someone needs to provide leadership for such a process. There will be some who will have doubts, some will nurse fear but they need a leader to give them confidence and courage, to question what is unjust and to be ready to make minimum sacrifices to deal with those forces. There were many who said this labour man, he thinks that politics is like labour, we will teach him a lesson but today it is clear who is the lecturer and who is the pupil because really, particularly in a democracy, the only source of power is the people. So it was an irony that you can be described as politically powerful even as you are hated by the man on the street. How do you derive those powers? But you derive that merely from the fact that you cannot mystify yourself, people believe that if you touch him something will happen, so all I needed to do was to say no, these guys are not invincible, any man born of a woman has his own limitation but I also believe that when you are in the right path, God in his infinite powers has a way of shielding you from the negative plans of the enemy. So this was a major campaign that look, the people not the god fathers should determine their direction and I have this slogan ‘let the people lead’. We have big boys all over the place and the people tried and they saw and even the fact that you can talk to these people because in the past you can’t even talk to them, the fact that you can talk to them, call them by their proper name and to their face reveal what they have been doing wrong, and show that things can work differently. I mean you find schools that were not as attractive as pig house and we are sending children there and everybody is convinced that there is nothing we can do about it. As you build a new school that is more beautiful than all the private school in the state, people are like so really! And now they can see what they see what they can gain if they show a little more courage by identifying with you and so what we have done is basically to mobilize the people to question and even to engage. When the people were now ready to engage, the thing just collapsed like a pack of cards. There is limit to what you can achieve with propaganda, the money you can make or the politics. You can be fluent in your rhetoric; you can have the gift of oratory- that can take you only to some points, there after people will see through and begin to ask you some questions, now therefore what has changed? Just like I learnt in the union work, the first day you are abusing the manager, you get all the applause, you abuse his father, you reveal how he is exploiting the working people, you get all the applause. So come and lead us, you have courage. First month, second month, one year, you are perfecting your rhetoric, somebody will tell you after all these, ‘Oga our salary has not increased. Our working hour is still as along as before, we are still being hired and fired without due process, what has changed? They begin to ask question, that rhetoric is no longer of much appeal. I think that the average human being is rational. He may not be particularly knowledgeable in terms of how to articulate his feelings but you can’t doubt that he knows he can distinguish what is good from what is not. During our campaigns when we built schools, we allow one building that depict the state of the school before we built it so that people can remember that this was the way things were under these god fathers and look at the way they are now and on election day I just said, don’t even look at my face, vote for these schools that we have built or vote against it. If you vote against it you will return to that one because that is the one they wished for your children, not just wish, that is where they dumped them but we know that your children deserve a better deal because if you have been detained by poverty, your children can bail you out of poverty and the basis for upward mobility is skill acquisition and education is at the heart of that. We don’t need to campaign for a child to go to a school that is clean, so if children are wandering about at 9 am when they should be in school, it is because the school did not offer any appeal. In any part of Edo State across the 18 local government areas, the most beautiful edifice is the government school. So why will a child not look forward to going there? Going late to school, our children not being in school is because the school itself is like dumping children in a cell. Nobody in full freedom walks into a police cell. The report from schools now suggest that people get to class before time and they don’t want to leave even after closing hours. You don’t find them wandering about during school hours, of course we have little problems with teachers and all but even that was a consequence as one teacher told me. At a time they were not paying them salaries for 3 or 4 months, the men left, the women for family reasons stayed behind so the result is that we have in some cases as much as 80 percent of our teachers, particularly primary schools are women because the men left and they also then devise a strategy; you go on Monday and Tuesday and I will go Wednesday and Thursday, the other one will come Friday and the next Monday, such that at any point in time, only one tenth of the teachers were at work because there were rational reasons for that; if you have not paid me salary, how do I find money to transport myself to school? I need to devise other means, maybe sell some garri, sell something in a kiosk to keep body and soul together and to be able to do that I need to absent myself from regular work to do this this part time work. Unfortunately over a period this became the standard and the teacher confess that although since I came, we have never defaulted the payment of salaries, I actually give instruction that the pay day is sacrosanct that is to say that the workman and woman is entitle to his/her salary before the end of the last working day of a month. So having returned to regular payment, the old habit refused to go but we have dealt with that through some supervisory mechanism and identified few ones in surprise visits and all of that has changed. I think basically, the god fathers just discovered that their strength was actually the result of the fact that people assumed they were invincible, all I needed to do was to demystify them and it is now history as far as we are concerned.