By Erasmus Ikhide
In the days ahead, we may be heading to a zero-order Edo in which rules are replaced by the power of thuggery—a very difficult and chaotic environment for businesses and law-abiding, decent humans to operate in. The question is, how is Okpebholo finding the way to a new rules-based order that more accurately reflects the Edo actual vision other than the one created by touts and cultists with vim and vigor? Interestingly, it was soul-lifting reading about Okpebholo retooling the state anti-cultism laws with the help of the state House of Assembly, stiffening, and tightening the rope around the neck of the bulk of his supporters, menacing the civil populace in the state capital, Benin City. Can Okpebholo afford the treacherous, betraying, double-faced, duplicitous and scorched-earth gambit of ex-governor Obaseki who used his benefactors as burnt offerings? How prepared is Okpebholo to free himself from the labyrinth of obvious slapdashness clogging his administration? Has Okpebholo developed thick skin to political perfidy?
That Governor Monday Okpebholo would be self-sustaining is more like searching for a needle in the middle of an ocean than expecting him to build a positive-sum framework of durable, workable, and serviceable government outside himself and the manacled sharks who burnished his governorship from the furnace of fire.
It is the same reason his 100 days in office is a mixture of toxicity of dreadful politics and a battle of self-extrication and assertiveness. It’s left to be seen how he hopes to achieve the profound shift from the current monsters plaguing his administration.
The tensile machiavellian maneuvering by a known tout, Mr. Tony Adun, alias Kabaka and his mutiny mate, Ebo Stone’s high-decibel shriek emitting from Osadebe Avenue is quite damning for a governor whose fate is still hanging in the balance over alleged electoral fraud.
In the days ahead, we may be heading to a zero-order Edo in which rules are replaced by the power of thuggery—a very difficult and chaotic environment for businesses and law-abiding, decent humans to operate in.
The question is, how is Okpebholo finding the way to a new rules-based order that more accurately reflects the Edo actual vision other than the one created by touts and cultists with vim and vigor?
Interestingly, it was soul-lifting reading about Okpebholo retooling the state anti-cultism laws with the help of the state House of Assembly, stiffening, and tightening the rope around the neck of the bulk of his supporters, menacing the civil populace in the state capital, Benin City.
Can Okpebholo afford the treacherous, betraying, double-faced, duplicitous and scorched-earth gambit of ex-governor Obaseki who used his benefactors as burnt offerings?
How prepared is Okpebholo to free himself from the labyrinth of obvious slapdashness clogging his administration? Has Okpebholo developed thick skin to political perfidy?
A few days ago, Okpebholo suspended two high-profile appointees in less than three months of taking office, namely the Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General of State and the Chairman of Local Government Service Commission, on grounds of corruption.
That act of single-minded purging of usually acceptable official corruption has been seen as a temporary pause to abominable graft and a pass for performative governance.
It’s too early in the day to call Okpebholo’s suspension of Barr. Samson Osagie, the Attorney-General of State and Barr. Damian Lawani, Local Government Service Commission Chairman for official corruption an alternative template for husbanding the new economy of the state, without mirroring the plausible impact touts in his government, a reminiscence of ex-govermor Adams Oshiomhole error of ‘Agbero’ saturated administration hallmarks.
What Edo people want is efficiency-enhancing policies that would better their lot, such as the proposed employment of 3,000-plus teachers in public schools, as enunciated by Okpebholo’s government, which successive governments of Oshiomhole and Obaseki played politics with, regardless of the fact that the governor is less adept at zero-sum thinking.
We cannot build a new, stable and orderly Edo that benefits everyone without first tackling the state violence from Governor Okpebholo’s promoters. This is because in the absence of security, the opportunity to dare and excel grows less.
Additionally, it’s elevating to have the majority of the federal government roads across the state being fixed and run-down and broken schools wearing a seemingly new look. Of particular interest is the five hundred million naira (N500m) monthly lifeline subvention now accruing to Ambrose Ali University, Ekpoma, an institution Godwin Obaseki used his incompetent and illiterate cronies and acolytes to destroy with zero allocation monthly.
The governor should spare a thought for the obvious irreversible death spiral that the anti-people policies of President Tinubu’s administration have visited on the masses of economically disadvantaged people of Edo State.
Edo dream, or the “Article of Faith” of the founding fathers—by contrast—is the basic rules, norms, rights, and obligations that underpin geo-ethnic cohesion and political stability and development.
Challenges like basic education, sports development, unemployment, healthcare, security, prosperity and shared identity have been the vision that advanced the Midwest, Bendel and Edo State’s economies that once served the people as the architects and guardians of the good old order.
This unwritten social contract is legally and spiritually binding on whoever governs the state, be it Asue Ighodalo or Monday Okpebholo.
Erasmus Ikhide contributed this piece via: ikhideluckyerasmus@gmail.com
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