4 days Ago By Guardian Nigeria
Campaigns are over and unless the election tribunal in Edo State decides otherwise, there’s now a new administration to face the challenges it promised to fix. The reality across the state, just as it is all over the country is that good governance is absent and people are struggling to survive. Citizens are denied opportunities to thrive and be productive.
There’s no sustainable public water supply in most communities, just as access to electricity is now a luxury. Citizens do not have quality roads to travel intra-state; they’re also not safe to move around in their farms and along connecting roads to neighbouring states. The people are getting poorer by the day.
This reality of bad governance sharply contrasted with the celebratory mood at the inauguration of Monday Okpebholo as governor last week, when the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, led a team of the All Progressives Congress (APC) leaders, governors and federal lawmakers to commemorate their capture of Edo. Concerned Edolites had dreaded this day, when the state will be snatched back into the fold of APC. Not that the other political parties are better, but the APC is most untouched by the torment they inflict in the name of reforms.
They make more empty noise than they perform and none of their governors is distinguished on account of sterling performance. From what Nigerians have gone through in the last nine and half years, there’s little to look forward to in joining this league of oppressors. But here we are.
So, here was VP Shettima on inauguration day in Benin, waxing lyrical on the journey to transform Edo State, as if they have transformed any state before. He said the task would transcend party lines and that it was the dawn of a new era. Really? He also said the gathering was not one for empty promises.
“I stand before you with confidence, knowing that we have weathered the hardest days as a nation. We have pulled back from the brink of economic collapse and now we step forward into a time of growth..
.,” the VP assured. Let it be reported here that millions of Nigerians do not experience the optimism the VP and the government seek to promote.
Citizens of Edo State lack the experience to agree with Shettima that government has weathered the economic storm it created, not when cost of living is at all-time high as inflation rose to nearly 34 per cent in October. The people are paying heavily to transit from one community to the other, as dictated by high prices of petrol. In the absence of regular state-owned mass transportation, commuters ply motor-bikes, paying as much as N5,000 to access markets, banks and healthcare at council headquarters that are just a few kilometers away.
It is easy for a VP who is fed, housed and clothed by taxpayers to mount podiums and preach what does not exist in the daily routines of the people. This is why it is not advisable for more states to join the APC league of governors that are disconnected from the people. It’s a near hopeless existence for many when a litre of petrol at some remote Edo villages is sold for N1,400.
Yet, the VP boastfully declared government had weathered the economic storm, maybe for themselves. Certainly not for the people. The reason citizens can’t trust this government is that it does not lead by example.
The delegation of governors and lawmakers who flew into Benin had no idea of the daily torture citizens go through along deplorable federal roads. If Shettima and his team had crawled into Benin from Abaji in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), through Lokoja, Okene and Auchi into Benin, they would have gained some experience on how bad the roads have become despite repeated budgetary allocation. Last week, this columnist accessed Edo North through the Lagos-Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa-Akure-Owo-Isua-Akoko.
Apart from the Lagos-Ibadan end, that is smooth, even though not completed after more than a decade of contract reviews, every other portion of the stretch is a torment for motorists. Ilesa to Akure is pretty fair, despite being a snaky two-lane. This is also the major link to Abuja from the Southwest, so it’s busy.
That of Ibadan-Ilorin-Jebba into Niger State is perpetually challenged. The Federal Government has been attempting to fix this stretch since the days of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa stretch has gone through years of patch-work and it has developed scales.
Long overdue for wholesale resurfacing. Every dry season, like now, the agency responsible for roads maintenance and the Works Ministry look for potholes to fix. As soon as they’re done, the next rains wash away the poorly done job.
Back to square one. It is hoped that the committee in the National Assembly responsible for roads will insist on a lasting job this time. Apart from the Third Mainland Bridge Lagos, that benefitted from the Supplementary Budget of 2023, most federal roads are in a mess.
For Nigerians everywhere to feel the renewed hope, quality roads into every nook and cranny should be the minimum delivery from the federal and states. It must not be luxury to travel on smooth roads and this is what the people deserve and demand of their governors. Most governors do not prioritise intra-state roads that feed the urban areas with produce from rural communities.
For the new governor of Edo State, it is important that he applies native intelligence in managing the challenges he has inherited. They are huge and cannot be achieved through deployment of propaganda alone, the way his party has done for more than nine years. The renewed hope agenda of the APC has not worked anywhere, hence Okpebholo’s decision to prioritise a five-point agenda of security, infrastructure, healthcare, food sufficiency and education resonates largely with the agrarian nature of the state and people.
All parts of the state suffer the menace of herders who rampage the forests and destroy farmland. That’s in addition to their dangerous pastime of kidnapping for ransom. Many villagers have suffered harm in their hands and the governor must be decisive in dealing with them and with all insecurity.
Some traditional rulers are in the habit of selling community lands without proper security checks. Others operate vigilante groups whose activities are not supervised by the authority of the state government. That must stop.
Another threat to peace in the state is the activities of big-time touts and their sponsors who deploy them to collect revenue at motor parks. This practice must be revisited and sanitised according to the law. Some people in government cultivate relations with touts during elections, with a promise to hand over parks to them.
The APC is notorious for this practice; but let this government do it differently on the basis of equity, devoid of political bias. Let government reappraise the Edo Security Network (ESN), for the good of all, not as a political tool to witch-hunt the opposition. A safe Edo State will be good for the economy to do well.
On infrastructure, the campaigns provided opportunity for the candidates to go round the state and hopefully, they now have first-hand experience of the infrastructure challenges of the state. In Edo North (Akoko-Edo) for instance, candidate Okpebholo promised to revive the Ojirami Dam that once supplied quality water to communities in the North. There are similar projects in the Central and South senatorial districts.
The people are going to be reminding the governor what he promised during the campaigns. Where funds are not readily available, let assurances be made that this is not the usual promise and fail APC government people already know. Electricity is also a major challenge for the people.
The Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) has acted more like a coven operator, refusing to abide by the rules of corporate governance. Apart from not having enough energy to supply, it operates a very poor customer relations culture. Specifically, BEDC, instead of metering individual customers, forces bulk metering on households that are serviced by particular transformers.
As part of their voodoo business practice, IBEDC appointed community leaders to collect a specific monthly tariff per household. Most times, the community leaders pay themselves for the service they render from what they collect from consumers. BEDC doesn’t want to invest in workers, instead they hire third-party agents who are not accountable.
After a while, that arrangement collapsed when BEDC declared that hundreds of millions were owed without any formal accounting investigation. For near one year now, some communities in Akoko-Edo have been cut off from the national grid. There was no evidence that the last administration bothered itself, just as the regulators at Abuja, NERC, was similarly of little help.
For Okpebholo, that must be addressed because electricity is important to drive the local economy. Since the days of the Western Region, education used to be a priority in Edo State, particularly primary and secondary education. However, the civilian administrations since 1999 have not prioritised education.
It’s been hopeless since the days of Adams Oshiomhole as governor. Apart from a few eye-catching propaganda school projects in Benin, community schools were abandoned across the state. Oshiomhole rather sunk state funds to build an elite university in his village.
The school is neither private nor public and was not designed to be patronised by ordinary citizens. When the Comrade embarked on that self-serving project, Edo State was not in the immediate need of new institutions. In the absence of rigorous debate, Oshiomhole simply went on an ego trip.
Godwin Obaseki didn’t do better at managing the legacy tertiary institutions of the state. The new man should learn from their mistakes. No doubt, healthcare and food sufficiency are priority areas as well.
Hoping that the new government will not bow to pressures of political jobbers to deliver them as promised. Citizens have a task to track these projects and keep government on its toes; for the APC’s renewed hope to make sense in Edo..
