Dr. Olusegun Mimiko

Agagu’s performance in Ondo. By Adetokunbo Modupe, Guardian, Thursday, June 19, 2008

THE media, all over the world, is the vehicle for evaluating public good. This is in line with its role as the mirror through which the people view developments around them, regardless of the sphere. Although people in public service deliberately block access to information largely due to corruption, Nigeria is, nonetheless, steadily embracing this universal maxim.

So, when recently, ThisDay, one of Nigeria’s leading and most credible publications, made an appraisal of the state governments in the last one year, it was in conformity with this global mandate. In a rating ranging from excellent to below average, it scored most Governors based on well-known socio-economic criteria. In a basic economy like ours, the people are not expecting more than good roads, affordable healthcare, decent housing, sound education, safe water, job creation and agriculture. These are recognised globally as indices of development. And these are areas that ThisDay scored most of the governors in the past one year. Some were rated average, a few above average, while Ondo State and some others expectedly were rated below average.

The case of Ondo is a confirmation of what is obvious but nonetheless applaudable on the part of ThisDay Board of Editors for exposing the pain of the people of Ondo and other states who are being shortchanged by those elected (selected), or better still, fraudulently imposed through electoral gangsterism. It is, therefore, not surprising that most of the Governors lack proper vision, let alone the ability to deliver in the areas of basic expectations. The beauty of ThisDay’s rating is the fact that it is not the first time, and this year’s rating in particular, judging from public opinion, is a true reflection of the happenings in our country. Therefore, nobody will query the report except a derailed government like that which we have now in Ondo State.

Quite amazingly, the Ondo State Government led by Dr. Olusegun Agagu will go into the records with the swiftness it has responded to the Below Average rating it was scored by ThisDay newspaper. Through a banner headline, ThisDay’s Score Card of Errors, the Commissioner for Information and Mobilisation, Olorogun Eddy Olafeso on the instruction of his principal, derided the Nigerian media for being “parochial” and urged ThisDay to apologise to the people of Ondo for ‘this floppy and embarrassing exercise” having fallen victim of a “cocktail of lies.” An above average rating would have inspired a public holiday and a statewide vanity celebration but ThisDay board of editors lived up to public expectation in their very objective assessment and rating. Olafeso described the report as a sponsored effort by a “tiny group of disgruntled politicians who are against the landmark achievements (?) so far recorded by the incumbent government of Dr. Olusegun Agagu”.

He then wasted the rest of a full-page blabbing about what could have been. He didn’t mention the plan by the state Governor to have a big party had ThisDay rated the colourless Agagu administration average or better still, above average.

Performance is measured against budgetary allocation. If about N62.85 billion had been earned and spent in the last 365 days, and after a critical assessment of its utilisation, a verdict of below average is returned based on standard performance indicators, who is that rational person that will quarrel with the facts? Even a layman should know a new project from an old one. What the paper demanded to know, which the state failed to provide, are evidence of projects initiated or executed in the last one year. Not four years ago.

Come to think of it, if Dr. Agagu was not returned to office last year, although by a hugely flawed process, would he not still be assessed based on his first term? Some of the governors, including the President are first termers, and are expected to be judged in the past one year. One year is such a long time to make an impact. Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos was rated above average based on his performance in 365 days in spite of the huge challenges of governing a complex state like Lagos.

In Ondo, the people just want to have good roads, qualitative education, health care delivery system, water and low and medium housing. Simple! Some states have gone beyond these basics to more enduring initiatives as power projects, tourism and hospitality, mega city, industrial belts and economic zones, among others. Our expectations in Ondo are limited to the basics mentioned above which we do not have currently.

For an administration in a second term, the experience and knowledge garnered in the first four years should make full impact. Doing new or repairing old roads, for instance, cannot be rated extraordinary achievement because for a man in his sixth year in a class, he must have developed a template, roadmap or whatever relevant blueprint to achieve specific goals. But in this case, nothing of the sort is decipherable. What the Agagu second term should accomplish for Ondo State is to lay a solid foundation for long-term growth, not just staggering from one point to another, like a toddler.

Ordinarily, the ThisDay rating should be perceived as a call to action. But rather than so, the administration appears more enthusiastic about an unnecessary war with the press. It is hoped that the rejoinder Olafeso placed in the Nigerian Tribune of Friday, May 30, 2008 (page 47) was paid for from his personal pocket because if it was from the Ondo State treasury, he will be made to account for it one day. Again the commissioner admitted that ThisDay indeed sent a senior journalist to the state that was taken round the state on a guarded tour of projects. But what appears to have ruffled feathers was that the journalist reported what he saw on ground, and not a doctored piece they had expected. Plainly, the newspaper brought to the public domain what is well known to every Ondo indigene but which the administration had laboured in vain to conceal for years. Nobody is deceived. The people of Ondo are thankful to ThisDay for this expose. No well-meaning indigene of Ondo State is happy with the Agagu administration. There is a total disconnect between it and the people.

To make matters worse, the recalcitrant disposition of the administration has further bolstered the conviction in most quarters that, like a usurper, guilty conscience arising from a stolen mandate, has rightly denied it the bearing and space to think properly, and sunk it deeper into desperation. More embarrassing moments lie ahead, if the government continue in its floppiness. Indeed Agagu carries a peculiar cross. Being a Governor of Ondo State, elected by a bizarre electorate such as Mike Tyson, Bill Clinton, Chinua Achebe, Dora Akinyuli, and other voters from Planet Mars, leaves him without an ounce of credibility or dignity. Rigging in Nigeria had never taken such weird and comic dimensions. And to exacerbate it with incompetence and non-performance is double jeopardy.

The biggest losers are the good people of Ondo State who are unfairly being denied the dividends of democracy by a man they never voted for; who deployed everything in his armoury to achieve a questionable second term that is now being vigorously contested at the election petitions tribunal. The lesson here is that governance will be meaningless without being anchored on the collective good and wishes of the people.

Modupe, an Owo indigene, is a company executive in Lagos