Critical issues in Ondo politics. By Niyi Akinnaso
IT is campaign season. The political culture of thuggery and violence is once again being reproduced across the country. It is unfortunate that this disturbing national trend is also evident in Ondo state, where highly educated and skilled professionals control the political machinery.
For example, the two frontrunners in the state’s gubernatorial race are Dr. Olusegun Agagu of the PDP (a geologist) and Dr. Olusegun Mimiko of the Labour Party (a physician). Dr. Agagu is the incumbent Governor while Dr. Mimiko leads the pack of challengers. Yet, their campaign organizations are mired in accusations of thuggery and violence. This can only mean one thing: Each campaign organization is trying hard to get ahead of the other. It is unfortunate that violence is one of the means being employed.
Yet, experience shows that thuggery and violence have always been counter-productive measures in the election process. First, they damage lives, property, and the integrity of politicians. Second, they tend to grab the headlines and displace the candidates’ ideas and programmes, thereby making it difficult to distinguish between “good” and “bad” candidates. Third, thuggery and violence portend a bad omen. Instead of preparing citizens to accept election results peacefully, they tend to prepare them for violence, particularly if they feel that their votes were stolen. This happened in 1983 when violence erupted throughout the state, following the falsification of election results. There is no need to reproduce and entrench thuggery and violence as the state’s political legacy.
This is why indigenes of Ondo State in America, who have been following the ongoing campaign, would prefer that Ondo politicians and their supporters eschew thuggery and associated violence during the remainder of the campaign season and during voting, collation of results, and their final announcements. Rather than make the ongoing campaign a “do or die affair,” they should view it as an opportunity to convince the people to vote for them by selling their policies and programmes. The quality education and professionalism of the top participants demand no less.
Accordingly, the candidates should focus on how they plan to manage the state’s resources in order to improve their people’s life chances. There are far too many sectors that need improvement, notably, education, health, agriculture, industry, transportation, tourism, and infrastructure (roads, bridges, electricity, water, telephony, and recreational facilities). Politicians should be busy trading their priorities and policies rather than trading insults, fists, machetes, and guns.
Take education, for example. It used to be the primary industry in the state but was clearly in jeopardy when Agagu became Governor in 2003. His administration was encumbered with teachers’ salary arrears, which it paid off after consolidating the state’s capital base. It also started building the education sector from bottom up by constructing model classroom blocks in primary and secondary schools throughout the state.
But much more remains to be done. For example, the young state university has not been able to meet its projected development target owing to shortage of funds. This is why Dr. Bode Olajumoke, Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, suggested recently that local governments should be mandated through legislation to contribute as much as 10% of their statutory allocations to fund the state university. But local governments need an incentive for such contribution. This is why I suggested elsewhere that the university should adopt a multi-campus system in order to promote a sense of ownership by the contributing local governments. These are proposals worth debating by politicians.
Another project in need of urgent attention is how to harness the state’s raw materials and develop them to produce wealth and employment opportunities. Fortunately enough, the state is endowed with high yielding mineral raw materials, notably, crude oil, bitumen, granite, marble, gold, gemstone, diorite, lignite, and clay. In addition, the state is also endowed with various agro raw materials of the cash crop variety, notably, cocoa, timber, cotton, and oil palm. Moreover, the state’s arable land is home to yam, cocoyam, plantain, banana, cassava, maize, rice, kolanut, coconut, and assorted fruits, all of which grow luxuriously even without fertilizer. Similarly, the state’s waters and coastline host assorted fish, crayfish, crabs, and other amphibians. It is no wonder then that Ondo State is dubbed “Nigeria’s investment haven of the 21st century”. There is no doubt that the control of these resources is worth fighting over. But it is more worthwhile to debate how they should be managed by the next state executive.
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We all saw it coming – those of us who had not sold our conscience to the devil, that is. We knew that it was a matter of time for the rightful winner of the governorship polls in Ondo State, Rahman Olusegun Mimiko, to keep his date with destiny. He is just about on that highway now with the judgement of the Justice Garba Nabaruma Tribunal which awarded victory to him. Although the incumbent Governor Olusegun Agagu has appealed against that judgement, you don’t need an LLB to know that the power has abandoned the former university teacher. Agagu will soon be history even if he tries to muddy the waters before his long-awaited exit from the corridors of power.
