Bad signal from APC states

It’s all coming together. After a wasteful spending to celebrate 40th anniversary of a state in an austere economy, the Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun, is now facing the music. Ridiculous!

It’s a paradox that a state governor that could mobilise the bigwigs from across the country to see his “unending” bridge construction and decoration with unusual ceremony cannot honour a simple agreement his administration made with the workers.

All my life, my father trained me not to be emotional, but at his death exactly six years ago, I betrayed him.

I was not overwhelmed with emotion by the reason of his death, I wept when I saw him wheeled out of the men’s ward of Ijaiye General Hospital in Abeokuta. It was because the doctors went on strike in the middle of his health crisis. He died.

This kind of story will be many this week as the state government’s rash response to the strike only made the mood of the workers to go from bad to worse.

Curiously, the thought leaders who gathered at the Ogun at 40 celebration are yet to call a spade a spade for Governor Amosun. That’s one bad news.

The other bad news is from Osun State, where Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s my-way-or-the-highway style of governance continues to impoverish the people.

The other time, even before the All Progressives Congress (APC) party started to pass the buck blaming every problem in Nigeria today on Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, the bankruptcy of Osun State under Aregbesola had become a public knowledge.

Of course, that makes mockery of the slogan of redemption (Irapada Ipinle Osun) with which Aregbesola took over the reins of power in Osun State.

Regrettably, instead of redemption, it is a story of regression in Osun State, where the governor failed to appoint commissioners and has not had a good relationship with the workers over the years. Osun is one state where government has put in billions into the state budget for local government elections, but such exercise has become a mirage. What happened to the money?

Just two months after he was sworn-in into the office in 2010, Aregbesola convened education summit in Osun State with all the razzmatazz.

The so-called world-class education summit chaired by the quintessential Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, according to the government was to chart a new way forward in the educational sector of Osun State in conformity with the evolving global trends in the field.

Now, it is disquieting to know that Osun continues to go down in education seven years after. In the qualifying exam for the senior secondary school certificate conducted last year by the West African Examination Council, Osun took the bottom position.

Just 8,801 candidates out of 48,818 the state presented obtained the basic entry requirement for university admission.

Those in the known blamed it on Aregbesola’s poor implementation of a good template.

We all know the misfortune of the state-owned colleges. Osun is a basket case; let’s just leave it at that.

The stories out of Oyo State are baffling, where a stranger is the governor.  The hyperbole of change and its faded hope can be seen in Oyo State where the state Governor, Abiola Ajimobi, has become a dressmaker.

Several notes I received from Oyo States provide me with the evidence of a people who have given up on Ajimobi.

One of the notes reads: “Ajimobi remains in a slouch position. Even his uncompleted works have been abandoned. Just like Apete Bridge, Orita Chalenge, Odo-Ona Elewe Road and many other areas in Ibadan have been there with no revamp work going on. Ajimobi is in hibernation mood. Nothing is happening and he has been so silent lately, even when openly criticized. It would have been better not to have him as a second term governor.”

In Imo State, the APC under Governor Rochas Okorocha (a.ka, made-in-China), has completely moved away from the change mantra. Did something go wrong?

He obviously deceived the people with bogus promises to get the second term. After many weeks of denial, Okorocha admitted to sacking 3,000 workers in January this year.

Currently, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) continues to investigate money laundering and embezzlement act of Okorocha, but the governor has denied any link as usual. When a principal secretary of a state governor and Government House treasurer are rounded up in a N2 billion scandal, they must be working for an “Ogaat the top.”  When did Government House turn to a pay department?

In Kaduna, the state governor, Malam Nasiru El-Rufai, has been at daggers drawn with some of his lawmakers within the same party, the big masquerade among them being the fiery Senator Shehu Sanni. When a party man openly expresses disapproval for another one, there’s definitely a cause for concern.

Sani continues to accuse Governor El-Rufai of introducing unpopular policies and also running a government that does not consider the interest of the people of the state.

“The way the governor is running the affairs of government in Kaduna State is the one which, if care is not taken, we will all sink. He is running the state in such a way that he will end up ruining all of us, which I will not be part of. He has taken some steps which have only attracted anger from the general public against him,” Sani said of El-Rufai in an interview.  Can we say El-Rufai is a capitalist and Sani a socialist in the same progressive party?

Taken together, the loquacious social media freak and the archenemy of Goodluck Jonathan government during its end time, Pa Ikhide, has now commenced another campaign describing President Buhari’s approach to governance as “useless.”

The theme of his new campaign with all the algorithm and traction is: “From Clueless to Useless.” Though, I believe it is hasty for Pa Ikhide to start this campaign in order to give Buhari and APC the benefit of the doubt for his requested 18 months to fix Nigeria, I’m equally concerned that 10 months are out of the calculation.

To boot, most of the APC governors appear to be clueless on the way forward for change in their states, because they have been part of the old regime of raiders.

This article first appeared in THISDAY