Dr. Olusegun Mimiko

Ondo in the Eyes of Mimiko. Daily Independent.

It is usual for political aspirants to accuse the incumbents as corrupt or incompetent; hardly do they worry about character. Yet the word, character, is at the core of every political failure.

So, when recently the governorship candidate of Labour Party (LP) in Ondo State, Olusegun Mimiko, told his audience at a fundraiser organised by his friends to support his campaign effort that the fundamental crisis in Ondo State was lack of character in the leadership of the state, he was hitting squarely at the heart of governance in the country.

“Leadership character is what is missing in Ondo State. Let’s look for people who have character”, Mimiko said.

He went ahead, surprisingly, to de-emphasise the role of political parties in the current state of affairs, saying the nation would get there in future when political parties would matter. For now, he insisted, the electorate should look at the character of individuals vying for elective offices.

He was uncomfortable with the amount of hypocrisy among Nigerian leaders.

Said he: “There has been too much self-righteousness among our leaders”.

The reference is within guess if one recalls that someone went to Ondo State capital, and in a fit of self-righteousness, publicly accused Mimiko of corrupt enrichment.

Mimiko said he had discovered there actually existed “a thinly veiled disdain (by the leaders) for the people”.

The governorship hopeful succeeded in presenting a vast canvas of poverty and suffering resulting from a basic difference between the avaricious desires of leaders and the needs of the people they govern, or, as he put it, there existed “a fundamental disconnection between rulers and the ruled”.

Despite receiving about N54 billion in 2006, Mimiko said, Ondo State had little to show for it. Yet that income is bigger than everything the state received from the Federation Account since 1976.

Over the years, the people of the state had been content with the little that trickled down from the master’s table, thus giving birth to a culture of “tokenism”. This is the predicament of Ondo State as seen through the eyes of Mimiko. “Poverty has become our second nature,” he claimed.

He came up with what he termed “New Paradigms of Development”. This programme embraces efforts that would galvanise the people to self-development, energise the economy and guide his government towards taking the people to the level where they would at last begin “to live like human beings”.

But that would only be if the votes go in his favour at the April polls.

He then predicted a season of happiness for the people of Ondo.

Waxing biblical, he said: “When the righteous are on the throne, the people rejoice”.

What are the raw details of this package? They are summed up in the domain of a liberalised private sector-driven economy.

Of this, he said: “I am of the firm conviction that the government, especially in an under-developed economy like ours, must intervene responsibly–and as a matter of social obligation–in direct employment and in the provision of subsidised services like health, education, housing, soft credit and other poverty-reduction mechanisms that will ensure that the weakest in the society is given the opportunity to develop and actualise their potentials. This is the social democratic context or the ideological context of our conviction”.

Those words sound so idealistic that there would be a strong temptation for many to dismiss it with a wave of the hand.

But Mimiko is coming from a rich background of public service involvement, having twice been a state commissioner, a secretary to government, and a minister; he should be familiar with the complete bearings of his progamme.

As Commissioner of Health in Ondo State, he experimented, out of necessity, with what he termed “the spirit of volunteerism” that abounds in the tradition and nature of his people.

By this method, he was able to secure the voluntary services of medical personnel to carry out free surgeries and other medical operations, which the people needed so much but were unable to access, given the existing human and financial resources of his ministry.

One of the landmark achievements of this strategy was that at a point the state effected about two 200 eye surgeries in just two days.

“I’ve come to this conclusion,” Mimiko explained, “after several years in public service, and at different levels, that what is most important to deliver good governance is not even the educational qualification of our leaders; yes, there must be a minimum qualification, for you to learn what governance is all about; it is not even experience in government or in business, and I dare say, it is not even your socio-economic circumstances before you came to government, we’ve seen all the billionaires mess up horribly in government in Nigeria, and, of course, we’ve seen hungry people eat to their heart desire, it is not even experience, but the most important factor is character and social commitment”.

It is not surprising that he scored himself high in his one and half years in government at the national level as Minister of Housing and Urban Development, a period he claimed he gave the country its first building code.

Speaking earlier, Mimiko’s friend, Rotimi Komolafe, a medical consultant in the UK, urged the electorate to turn their attention away from political party affiliation and focus on the candidates, because in the end it was the character of the victorious candidates that would determine how much of democratic dividends the people would benefit.

He presented Mimiko as the answer to the problems of corruption, ineptitude and mismanagement of many decades.

Mimiko’s shining performance as Health Commissioner in the State, he said, accounted for the preference.

Komolafe’s opinion was not much different from that of Sina Osin, a co-organiser of the fundraiser.

Osin decried the prevailing conditions of social services and life in the country generally, situations which he blamed on insensitive leadership.

“Anybody who is 50 years old in Nigeria should count himself lucky, because the average lifespan in Nigeria is 48″, he said.

He also bemoaned the collapse of the education sector.

He regretted that Nigerians now had to send their children to schools abroad because, unlike in the past, certificates from Nigerian universities no longer commanded international respect. The reality, he said, was that those sent abroad never returned to the country after their education.

So, the nation was now in great danger of losing the best of its intellectuals to foreign nations, he said.

“An entire generation of educated Nigerians would be lost to foreign lands”, he claimed.

The prerogative to effect political change belongs to the electorate; they hold the yam and the knife. They would decide in a few weeks’ time, all things being in order, whether they need a change in Ondo State or they prefer the status quo.

And this question will revolve round their perception of the new political brides, possibly the ones whose antecedents they already know and find promising enough.

However, if signals from Ondo State are right, then the nation may be witnessing a paradigm change in the state soon.

Source: http://www.independentngonline.com/?c=49&a=23512