Hardball just heard Iyiola Omisore, beaten Osun Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, tell Governor Rauf Aregbesola to resign! That drew a throaty and instinctive laugh.
But on a second thought — what if Omi’s suggestion was right; and the governor did resign, what then? Would that, open sesame, magically clear the backlog of workers’ salaries?
Then, the laugh returned — now, not instinctive, but a full derisive guffaw that sent Hardball’s frame convulsing. How could anyone be capable of such infantile thinking — and a wannabe governor and two-term senator? Ha!
But don’t get Hardball wrong. It is never salutary to owe workers’ salaries — even for one day, given the level of poverty and suffering in the land. Now to talk of seven months! The workers would just flip — and who wouldn’t?
That is why Hardball joins the nationwide appeal to all state governments owing workers to do everything possible to find means of paying them. But even that, beyond the sound of one’s voice, is as vacuous as they come.
This is because though the states in the eye of the storm are the present object of hate and ridicule (and just as well, for when the pocket hurts, nothing can placate it but cash), the real culprit was the criminal profligacy of the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency.
This was a government that made arguably more money than any previous government, yet left the central till in a shambles. It was also a government that declared no less than one out of every five barrels of crude daily stolen, yet declared itself powerless!
These were the crises, coupled with the fall in global crude prices, that have put most of Nigeria’s 36 states in financial quandary, with no less than 24 owing salary backlogs. Indeed, Hardball would go to this extent: since the old Federal Government caused the problem, the new Buhari Presidency should view it as a national emergency, and help to clear this monumental national shame.
Of course, that is not to say that many states were not careless in their fund-husbandry. Indeed, not a few have been remiss. Such behaviours should be decried. Still, Hardball would be wary of Omisore’s grand wisdom (more of cheap folly, really) of the governors to “resign”, when that is no solution.
That takes the matter back to the State of Osun. Ogbeni Aregbesola must be a very lonely man now, being walloped left, right and centre by subversive sympathisers of his workers, milking the Osun civil servants’ misery to make triumphalist political statements.
Even many, that Hardball calls clinical sympathisers, have harangued the governor, their all-wise accusation ranging from his near-childish zeal for infrastructure; and utter failure to appreciate his cash flow before embarking on gigantic projects. But thank God: not even the most reckless have suggested Aregbesola diverted Osun money to personal use.
In truth, Ogbeni must have learned some hard lessons from his present odyssey. But even when his spirit is at the lowest, he must remember Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Ebudola (insults-turned-praise) experience.
When Awo was building the future by his radical policies, which necessitated higher taxation and sundry present discomfiture, his opponents went to town, emotively blackmailing him; and goading the ultimate beneficiaries to rebellion. Those were the “Omisores” of Awo’s age. But who remembers them today?
Ogbeni must find solutions to this cash meltdown — and fast. But beyond that, he must not surrender his vision — for developmentally, Osun never to be the same again. If he doesn’t falter — and he must not — the Osun generation next would, in future, adulate and venerate Aregbe, while Omisore would have been buried and long forgotten, in the dust heap of history.
