Stop the Musical Chairs in Oyo State

First as part tax payer in Lagos State I give my unreserved support to Governor Fashola to continue his pursuit of excellence and maintain the role of Lagos as the benchmark for the rest of the country. I however have my eyes set on the other side of the expressway.

Oyo state in general and Ibadan in particular holds a unique and special place in the National consciousness. In spite of recent erosion it is still the capital of research and publishing in Nigeria. In recent times Ibadan and by extension Oyo state has been greatly reduced in the National consciousness to regular political conflicts (not unusual) but also a provincial backwater. Her sons and daughters leaving in droves to record the unacceptable credit of being the only urban metropolis to record a drop in population as urbanisation across the country increases annually by 5.8%.

Oyo State has three front runners for the post and role of Governor. They are the current Governor , Chief Adebayo Akala, Ex Governor Rasheed Ladoja and Former Senator Abiola Ajimobi. Whoever becomes Governor has their job truly cut out for them as politics as exploited the differences amongst people especially pitting those who would zone Governorship to Ibadan people against some other areas. The issue should never be where you come from but the merit and potential that you have to effect change, transform lives and inspire collaboration with the citizens. It is worthy of note that no matter how bad it has been in Ibadan the most neglected part of Oyo state has been Oke Ogun.

The incumbent Governor has had more than the four year term set out constitutionally to make his mark. He at best has tried to conduct targeted management of decayed and decaying infrastructure. He has been bereft of ideas and shown very little capacity to transform the state. His treatment of public servants has been nothing short of irresponsible. The capital city has become a disgusting panorama of hastily constructed, badly maintained, ad hoc shop fronts. There is total lack of any civic authority to manage the excesses of people desperately seeking subsistence in the face of an ’owambe’ government. Mechanic yards strewn major thoroughfares, trailers have their way across the expressway within the city limit, Iwo road is a bottle neck of deep road craters and scrambling motorists without any intervention from any traffic authorities. The markets which are the heartbeat of the city are all in constant devolving cycles. The Government trots out Mapo Hall and roads across the old town as accomplishments. If that is all it has achieved then it is a depressing picture of lack of competence.

Nothing the incumbent Governor has done was done without the active and tacit support of some in the city of Ibadan. In fact Governor Akala became the Governor through the choices of two sons of the City of heroes. The late Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu and the Ex Governor Rasheed Ladoja. Ex Govenor Ladoja an accomplished entrepreneur and a proven original thinker enters this contest with an interesting and attractive manifesto. His record in office has been largely transactional and obscured by his successor. His progress in human development in the state is undermined by his failures on infra structure maintenance. However worse he has a record of poor judgement. In his alliance with Alhaji Adedibu, his choice of Chief Akala as his Deputy Governor and now his decision to split the Ibadan vote by seeking office in the face of the opportunity to leverage this largest block of votes so that the state can move on from the legacy that he and Alhaji Adedibu have saddled on its back.

Former Senator Abiola Ajimobi is a proven executive as a former CEO of National Oil (now Conoil). He is also a proven civic minded individual with successful social entrepreneurship through his Vocational centres across the land. He represents a real opportunity to move beyond the musical chairs in Agodi between Chief Akala and Alhaji Ladoja. Like Ladoja his manifesto is ambitious and encouraging. Unlike Ladoja he represents a new way ahead. Some want to vote Ladoja because he paid salaries on time . It is like calling me Father of the year because I paid my children’s school fees. It is my obligation as it is the responsibility of Government to meet its obligation to public servants. It is a mark of how low the standards have fallen in Agodi that this is considered a selling point.

It is arguable that both Alhaji Ladoja and Governor Akala will benefit from the Constitutional immunity from EFCC prosecution in cases that are still going through the court system but we need a clean break. We need a competent executive in Agodi and the choice is Abiola Ajimobi.

Ibadan regeneration (ongoing)

Over the past few days remarks made by Mallam Ribadu the former Chairman of EFCC during his lecture at the late Bola Ige birthday event has earned caustic response from the Oyo state government through Chief Gbade Ishola. Without rehearsing both angles I think it is a welcome thing that regeneration of Ibadan has become a topical issue. It is however an issue that requires a different discourse than that of a partisan political nature. I will avoid choosing sides because what is at stake is far more significant than who is right or wrong nor is it about the coming election.

The city of Ibadan represents a totally unique space in the history and potentially future of the nation. It has been the largest indigenous city of its kind in Africa but also the intellectual cradle of the Nigerian state. If we valued anything in our current transactional mindset it would be this city that evolve through a unique, meritocracy into a warrior republic using a constitution experiment that remains largely intact today. She carries three powerful dimension for our future, a habit of cultural innovation that includes the first television station; a platform for intellectual curiosity and academic expression that spawned the first university; a network of informal commerce that is translated into scores of open air markets including the largest market for indigenous textile in Oje. To say that Ibadan has regressed is not to focus blame on any one party in what should be a partnership to preserve her legacy and generate a vision to renew her.

Ibadan is perhaps the only city in Africa that is bucking the trend in urbanisation especially in the number of young people she has lost. The downward trend for the city started with the much vaunted Structural Adjustment Programme of the Babangida regime in the mid 1980s. This policy that decimated the Nigerian middle classes destroyed the vibrancy of Ibadan which was the most middle class of all cities in Nigeria. The disdain in which the universities, research institutes and that almost uniquely local focus i.e. ‘publishing was treated wiped out the intellectual values, skills and industries. The lack of priority for education also destroyed the place as an education destination from across the country. The middle class values of community , perseverance and long term effort were killed and replaced with neo liberal individualism leading to the triumph of the hustler class. Shame died and became replaced with wanton materialism. Ibadan has never recovered. Subsequent governments, local and national have neither had the desire nor have had the resources to prioritise Ibadan above other things they feel necessary . It does not start with the present government in Oyo sate. There is of course the inevitable structural problem of a potential ‘world centre’ in a largely rural, agricultural state. Maybe the challenge of renewing Ibadan might be a drain to ‘development’ in other parts of the State?

These challenges have not been helped by the false division amongst the citizens of our metropolis. The identification of indigene versus resident is a very poor choice. The founders of our great city came from all over Yoruba land to find fortune through valour and might rather than from birthright and bloodline. Nowhere is merit more forcefully enforced as the standard of excellence than in the ancient home of Oluyole. We as citizens have also failed our city in not creating a large enough umbrella as is our tradition. We failed to make talent, excellence and love for the betterment of our land as the only standard for determining whether one qualifies as Ibadan or otherwise. No great city is a creation of government alone but a result of the collective vision and contribution of her people , businesses, civic organisations and government in partnership. Even if the Oyo state government believes it has done some things the honest truth is that there is a lot more to do. Our city now has a shop front in every house, our roads struggle to absorb traffic because of the number of cars struggling for space. Nowhere is there more research institutes than Ibadan but they are not connected by the highway of this century in fibre optic broadband. The publishing industry in magazine road is a very pale shadow of the ‘capital ‘ of west africa that it was. I know from Mallam Ribadu’s comments that he cares and i know from my limited interaction with Chief Gbade Ishola that he is passionate about Ibadan. We can have a civil dialogue about the best way ahead.

Last year we started this process with Mesiogo initiative (outside of government and politics) to work across stakeholders for a long term regeneration for our city. We have a draft plan from robust dialogue that includes survey of nearly 5,000 citizens and a town hall meeting that involved all works of life. Lets continue this dialogue and effort without succumbing to self serving partisanship. No one has a monopoly of ideas or responsibility as we strive to continuously evolve Ibadan not just to the greatness of her pioneering past but also higher to the possibilities of prosperity for many more generations to come.

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