Niyi Akintola (SAN)It will be part of the solutions. It can’t be the silver bullet. If we think about our social milieu and sociological behaviour, the parliamentary system is the best for us. It’s better than the presidential system of government.There is what we call the sociology of law. Any law that fails to take into cognisance the social milieu of the people will not work. You have to appreciate that governance is not like operating a machine. To rule human beings is not the way a machine is operated. Human beings have different opinions about things. The aggregate of opinions that exists in the regions is what will propel decisions. Even the minority opinion might be the best, but economists will say it is necessary but not sufficient. We must appreciate our differences and accommodate our differences.Are there no provincial leaders today? Provisional leaders have always been there because we are not a nation but a country of many nationalities.Of course, yes! That’s the mantra of an average Yoruba man who has been a progressive, since 1947. We need to note that if we don’t restructure, we will disintegrate.It is an aberration for the lawmakers to be doing constituency projects. What some members have been giving is not what the people need. If the executive has given the money, they can build two or more schools. But our federal representative in Ido has been giving rice, garri and others. That is where we are missing the point. Many important institutions are not being built. No single public secondary school in Omi-Adio. As of the last count, seven of our people have died on motorcycles, while going to school in Apata to attend schools. The only school the community has belongs to the United Missionary College (UMC). That means, from Command Secondary School down to Bakatari, there is no public secondary school. That’s a long distance within the same local government. The Community Secondary School that we used to have in those days is not there again. The late Chief Bola Ige as governor last built the one in Ward 10.
Again, there is no single General Hospital in that local government except the one I built. The governor has a lot to do in Ido and we have tabled those things before him. Yes, Mr Governor is doing very well but we need secondary schools.
Many people don’t actually appreciate the needs of the people. We used to have thinkers in government, the type of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. When Awolowo established compulsory primary school education, he put on his thinking cap. Having realised that by the time these children left primary school, they needed to forge ahead, the late premier quickly established secondary schools and schools of agriculture. Most of our elders went to these schools. They left schools of agriculture, did their private studies passed their GCE and went to the University of Ibadan (UI). Now we have two million pupils in primary school. Where are they going after six years of education? Nobody is thinking about that.On the railway corridor from Bakatari down to Moniya, he is the one who thought that the government should acquire the land, 500 metres to the left, and 500 metres to the right. Otherwise, they will turn the place into a slum, like Mowe and Ibafo in Ogun State. So, Makinde had thought ahead of what would likely happen along that corridor. I hope he will do the same thing along that Circular Road corridor because land speculators are already moving there.
It is good for a leader to have character, but we need men and women with the capacity to lead and think. In my paper to the students of the University of Ibadan, I pointed out the fact that we were all conned by Muhammadu Buhari, who is a man of integrity. The Hausa says ‘Maigaskia’ which means a truthful person. I was his lawyer, I defended him up to the Supreme Court, but we never looked at his capacity. The man cannot simply lead. Though we were warned, we never listened. The Ohanaeze, Ndigbo, Afenifere, and even Arewa warned us about his capacity.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo said he had no capacity for economics. He said he just wanted him to come and sanitise the place, serve one term and leave. But we were abusing Obasanjo, calling him, ‘Mr Letter Writer’ and other names. His philosophy is, ‘see no evil, hear no evil and do no evil’. Obasanjo took us out of the Paris Club debt, but Buhari took us back there, even 15 times over. He left everything in shambles. Such people are not fit and proper to lead any society, not even clubhouses. That was why people were stealing under his nose and he refused to lift a finger. Some of his aides were caught but he refused to act.
So, what do you expect this present government to do? All of us are not being fair to President Bola Tinubu. Maybe, you can accuse him of keeping silent all through the Buhari administration but we have some elders who are shouting, even the civil societies. I thank God that we now have a Daniel that has come to judgment to put all of us back to line, because we were probably living beyond our means, both the government and the governed.The governor has been fantastic. We don’t belong to the same political party, but he has always been a progressive. So far so good, the minor problem with Makinde is that he has not been speaking about the projects he has done. I think his media team should do more to showcase his achievements. That man has done what Napoleon could not do in Oyo State. I am not given to flattery. If you are not doing well I would say so. I had to shout at the closure of Abiola Ajimobi’s administration and threatened to go to court if the Eleyele-Ido road project was not executed. In the bill of quantity of that road, it is supposed to be an expressway from Eleyele to Ido and a single lane from Ido to Eruwa .
Governor Makinde invited me and told me that the contract was awarded by the last administration and paid for. He said its non-execution was not his fault. The road was done after my intervention. In my local government alone, the governor has constructed five roads, including Omi to Ido, which was last constructed in 1992 when I was a Deputy Speaker; then, Eleyele to Ido. He constructed a road to ensure that the traffic hold-up that used to happen at Apata has vanished. The road at NNPC linking Akala Road is under construction. This same man took it upon himself to construct Ido to Akufo, from Akufo to Alabata. Now if you are coming from Apata and going to Iseyin, you don’t need to pass through Ibadan, Ojoo and Moniya. Alabata is the next town to Ijaiye.
The man didn’t stop there. Don’t forget that the idea of the Circular Road was that of former Governor Rashidi Ladoja. The late Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala came, he didn’t believe in the Circular road. Ajimobi came, and launched it but no construction was done. Makinde is smarter, he paid the counterpart funding to the World Bank as if he knew there was going to be inflation and the Naira would lose its value.He has done the channelisation of the Ogunpa River and the governor has not even celebrated it. What the past administration failed to do, this man came and did them. Go to Bodija, down to Ring Road, Odo-Ona Elewe, you will see the works of the governor there.I wouldn’t know. I’m in APC. The truth of the matter is that we are all working at cross-purposes. They have their complaints; even someone who left our party to form another party was appointed as a minister. Those of us who stayed and didn’t decamp anywhere are in the cold. Progressives don’t leave their party. I’m talking about the real progressives. I’m not talking about pseudo-progressives. Many of those who claim to be progressives today were PDP members. The current minister in the state has never pretended to be one. He joined the party in April 2018 and the power-that-be then decided to give him the ticket in August of the same year. We told the National Leader who is the President now that he would not win. He didn’t win. That is why the president has left us alone. Oyo State is different. In the state, we have stakeholders, the gatekeepers and others. It is not about money.There is no single leader. We have a pocket of leaders.
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