Disappointing First Year In Office: Ajimobi’s Team In Disarray!

Ajimobi’s tortuous road to restoration in Oyo
By Festus Adedayo

Ibadan, which can be used interchangeably as the capital of Oyo State, the state itself and the capital of Yorubaland, has a renown which predates its present political gladiators. Let us for now abstain from recollecting the internecine wars between it and the Egba/Ijebus, the wars that threw up Ibadan generalissimos like Bashorun Ogunmola, Oluyole, Lagelu and sundry other generals renowned for their war prowess. Ibadan also prides itself as possessing of a self-purifying mechanism. Recall the lacerating memory of Iyalode Efunsetan, the Ibadan woman traditional ruling cabinet member, renowned for her remarkable despotism. Efunsetan’s tyranny was eventually brought to its kneels by Ibadan traditional mystique. This recollection is necessary to situate Ibadan, Oyo State, as a hotbed of intra-city crisis and the thermometer for measuring group dissent.
By the 20th century, on the political turf, Ibadan merely transmuted its earlier centuries’ renown to the field of politics. About then came into politics that young Ijebu boy-stenographer. He had witnessed a major financial crisis earlier. Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo came into Ibadan politics at a time when Ibadan/Ijebu mistrust reeked unpleasantly. Gradually, he transformed Ibadan, nay Western Region, into a place of reckoning, a land of firsts, but actually not succeeding in purifying it of its incendiary politics and, if you like, cynical people whom you could please seldom.
Since that horn-rimmed spectacle politician departed Agodi Government House, the state has witnessed several mutations from the good, the bad to the ugly. While some military men acquitted themselves very well as administrators of the state, some civilian governors merely went on governmental saturnalia, leaving Ibadan as poor imitation of the vision of the Ikenne-born statesman.
In the spectacle of the last referent was the immediate past administration of the state. While some administrators of states in Nigeria inherited templates of good governance which they are bettering, Abiola Ajimobi, the current Governor of Oyo State, inherited a dysfunctional state. From the basic to the essential, Oyo occupied the proverbial Ground Zero. Let us begin from the intangibles. If you assume that indeed, Awolowo sat at Agodi to administer the whole of Western Region, by May 2011, it would be safe to conclude that some locusts had invaded the forest of Ibadan governance. In renown, Ajimobi inherited a state with a remarkable typecast as hotbed of violence of NURTW kingpins, ably abetted by the state. Recall the Eleweomo-Tokyo-Auxiliary saga. And the seemingly insignificant: the inherited offices of the governor and his aides were comparable to a motor park executive’s waiting room and needed to be urgently rehabilitated.
The tangibles were no less decrepit. N24 billion had been spent building a hospital that COREN adjudged an engineering disaster. You do not have to be an architect to see its architectural illiteracy. Virtually everything that makes a hospital worthy of its name were absent in Adebayo Alao-Akala’s LAUTECH Teaching Hospital, which had set the state account balance back by an amount which could build twice the Africa-renowned UCH, Ibadan but with less finesse, less sophistication, less architectural sense and much more of greed and egotistic drive to show that the Ogbomosho boy (PSC, please!) had surpassed his late kinsman, S.L.A.Akintola’s contribution to the lot of his townsfolk. In the area of roads, the state inherited a governmental renown for road construction that lasted about six months before caving in to the hammer of potholes. Indeed, generally, the morale of the state was at its nadir. The above, akin to academics’ mantra – Statement of Problem – is necessary to understand where the Ajimobi government was coming from.
Ajimobi was aware of overwhelming public expectations from him and his government. His highly cerebral disposition, education and pedigree convinced the electorate that his would be a discontinuation of the yeleyele brass-tack governance of the past. This apparently translated into impatience from a people who, for decades, smelled governmental performance in foreign lands, heard of it like a fable and were thirsty for good governance in their clime.
By May 2011, virtually all roads that were hitherto constructed with billions of Oyo money had begun to go bad again, including one that Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was dragged by the nape of his trousers to commission at New Garage. So the governor began to ginger his local governments on the need to construct roads that would endure. Their specialties were roads that had been abandoned and ones badly constructed. Ajimobi’s sworn avowal was to construct roads that would endure like those of Awolowo, whom he had admired right from his youthful days. Never, he ordered his Works Commissioner and all local councils, will his government tread a recent road trodden by immediate past government where substandard roads were constructed with building blocks as drainages. Indeed, he ordered that for any road to pass his litmus test, it must be COREN-certified. That effort is now yielding fruits. Till date, the state has constructed/is constructing 192 roads within the period of one year. This is not to talk of a N2.1 billion overhead bridge it is constructing at the Mokola area of the state capital, the first by any civilian government in the state and about eight major bridges washed away by flood which are being reconstructed.
One unpleasant fart left by Ajimobi’s predecessor was the typecast of government as peopled by leeches and scoundrels. Ajimobi chose his team, made up of professionals, across board. He also underscored the need to leave an identity of excellence and for his aides to key into a philosophy of transparency and accountability in governance. At various fora, Ajimobi impacts into his team, whom he likens to the American marines, an identity of qualitative discharge of responsibilities.
In the area of health, a few months into his administration, Ajimobi began a free healthcare programme which, so far, has catered for about 300,000 people of the state. They were provided with free health screening, drugs and minor operations like hernia etc. Today, beneficiaries of that scheme are lauding this health intervention that has saved thousands from the jaws of death.
Perhaps what can be termed the most instructive of the Ajimobi government achievements is the advent of peace in the state. By May 2011, the impression all over the world was that anyone from Oyo was inherently violent and possessing sanguinary affiliation with Eleweomo, the late NURTW kingpin. This conclusion was based on the incessant bloodshed in the state in which the past government featured as a prominent cast. When he came on board, Ajimobi was persuaded that the only way peace could be restored into the seeming internecine among drivers’ union was to be impartial. This non-aligned statesman role, combined with a Daniel-like sagacity, has weaned Oyo of rascally and periodic blood-thirsty hooligans, making the state safe for investors.
This paid off a few months ago when the prestigious Financial Times ranked OyoState, which had hitherto been literally delinked from civilization, as one of the 10 investment destinations in the world. What won Oyo this remarkable feat? A few weeks after he was sworn in, Ajimobi began a conscious meeting with development partners in and outside the state, giving power-point presentations on the deplorable state of the state, where he hopes to take the state to at the end of his first tenure and his aggressive developmental drive. This has taken him toSouth Africa, Australia, Chicago, the World Bank, UN bodies in Nigeria like UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO, UNIDO, WHO and 10 others; EU ambassador, the German Technical Cooperation, African Capacity Building Foundation and National Planning Commission, among others. The tireless driver that Ajimobiis, has also secured the promise of investors like Agra Africa and DSC International of India to help develop his state. Right now, he has lined up meetings with five other development partners.
Ajimobi also inherited a very filthy state, literally and metaphorically. Ibadan, over the years, became typecast as one of the dirtiest cities in the country. Amidst the daunting challenge of a resignation to a life of filth, Ajimobi has begun an aggressive clean-up of the state through the introduction of a weekly environmental sanitation exercise, aside the traditional monthly exercise. It is the first time in the history of the state that waste disposal agency collects dirt at night with a systematic waste collection strategy that is gradually yielding dividends.
In spite of the Oliver Twist disposition of workers all over the world, Ajimobi has sought to satisfy Oyo workers. His administration has offered N19,100 as minimum wage, one of the few states in the nation to so do, pays salaries before 25th of every month and is the first government in the state to pay full 13th month salary to workers, aside the periodic overseas training of civil servants that he has been facilitating.
One other major fart that his government inherited was the parlous state of education in the state. At the last examination, Oyo came 34th out of 36 states of the federation. For a state which, less than six years earlier in 2004, came 4th in same exam in the country, the aggressiveness with which the Ajimobi government is facing the exercise of an all-round restoration of the glory of the state in education is understandable. He reduced tuition payable in the state tertiary institutions and has embarked on an aggressive renovation of 235 dilapidated schools in the state, among other efforts. One very uniquely instructive bit about his administration is that it is arguably the only in Nigeria that is political party-blind. His party, ACN, PDP, AAA and others find refuge therein. This has been held as consequent on his exposure as an oil industry czar for over thirty years.
The above are just a minuscule of Ajimobi’s strides in 365 days, ably spiked by space constraints. But don’t go to Ajimobi and tell him he has done anything for the state yet. He tells anyone that he has not begun. His target is to build a 108-km ring road round the capital city of Ibadan in the next three years, commence, in the next few months, the construction of the first phase of 62 new Primary Health Centres in sixty wards in the state, construct durable roads across the state, build a new GRA at Elenusoso in Ibadan through Public/Private partnership, beautify major cities and towns in the state, create an enabling environment for his people to achieve their potentials, turn Oyo into an investors’ harbour and earn a life-long place in the minds of his people.
*Dr. Adedayo is Governor Ajimobi’s Special Adviser on Media.