Looking for where to have cold fellowship before I moved to a party, I rushed with a sense of nolstagia to Agbowo Shopping Complex, Ibadan, opposite UI (that university stucked somewhere in the area where the gown has been totally polluted by the town in a disorganized unending contest for loss of identity), only to be met with great disappointment of an eyesore.
A dead but lying – in – state edifice, the once pride of Ibadan land, assaulted my sight and I was shocked with the level of decay. This used to be a big lively environment, an industry that provided for all multiple and multi – faceted services, ranging from studemts & lecturers academic services market, rendezvous, tourism, relaxation bars & eateries, entertainment spices, gambling & cultism, friendship & pre – sex negotiations among others.
With the full embrace of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) by the successive ‘Akotileta’ leaders who invaded government and unleashed neo -liberal programmes of deregulation, commercialisation, devaluation and privatization of all our commonwealth including government infrastructure like Agbowo Shopping Complex, deliberate mismanagement towards liquidation of government property so as to be sold at give away prices to their fronts became a conscious policy of the rogues in governmemt. Of course, this SAP has adverse multi – plier effects on those doing business there and their patrons. And the neo – liberal policy has not stopped leading to the era of poor country, poor states but richer leaders, some that are even richer than their states in and out of office. Now the major industry that gives highest profit is politics.
Agbowo Shopping Complex, in its old pride and form that I knew revealed the state of the nation then, and the Shopping I met lying in state today for its final interment or ‘miraculous’ resurrection also depicts another level of the state of the state and the nation.
What it means is that when a nation is dying because of failed leadership, she dies with her monuments. Agbowo Shopping Complex is indeed a Metarphor of our worried existence as a captured people, ruled and ruined by our criminal same same elite class.
Can this shame be removed and Agbowo Shopping Complex come alive again? I think Seyi Makinde led government and UI (if the school is serious beyond fighting its students union leaders) have a big role to play. I wish them well.
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