The Ajimobi administration in Oyo State has been on a demolition mission since I can remember.
The Fresh FM Music House’s demolition of yesterday only served as denouement to a catalogue of such unfortunate occurrence.
For a government that swore to an oath to seek and protect the welfare of the people, it has been a criminal abdication of the all important governance ethos of seeking the greatest good of the greatest majority.
This government has demolished our education.
Yearly our state hovers between the 26th and 29th position in WAEC rankings. It cannot be otherwise.
Teachers are disillusioned and unmotivated. Educational infrastructure provision is at its nadir – a sad commentary on a state in whose capital Obafemi Awolowo, eons ago, launched the boldest educational initiative and which hosts the premier university in Nigeria. All we see is the perpetual construction of model schools which the then Commissioner Solomon Olaniyonu said would cost N3.7b in May 2014 and would be delivered in 18 months. Today, 4 years and 3 months later, they are still under construction and only God – who is the One that sees the mind and mouth of afeyínpínran – knows what variation in costs has happened in those 4 years!
The Ajimobi government demolished the Oyo Town Library without providing another one! A library? Dr Tony Marinho will be mad to hear this. He has been championing the provision of community libraries for the better part of the last quarter of a century!
This government has demolished our healthcare services.
A government hospital doctor told me that to undergo a simple surgical procedure of removing hernia, you have to queue owing to dearth of doctors. Some have to wait for months during which benign cases could turn malignant!
We have the unwelcome statistics of about a nurse to 25 beds/patients when the standard should be a nurse to 4 beds/patients.
This government has demolished commerce.
Remember the demolition of shops about 4 years ago in the name of environmental sanitation and how many livelihoods were destroyed?
The government said it provided neighbourhood markets. Fair enough. But apart from the one at Scout Camp in Ibadan, which of these neighbourhood shops is not occupied by squatters, lizards and snakes?
And when will neighbourhood shops be provided for those poor souls they demolished their shops at Oyo, Ogbomosho, Oke Ogun and Ibarapa zones?
This government has demolished our agriculture. This is the only government in living memory, that cannot boast of vital supports like credit guarantee which most administrations in years past provided. And please, nobody should tell me about anchor borrowers program. That is an initiative of the FG through the CBN.
The only storage facility we should own, located at Awe, is also under construction in perpetuity!
Is this an administration that some people wants its continuity?
I see billboards of the APC guber aspirants with their photos placed beside that of Ajimobi and remember one of Iya Ibeji’s favorite sayings: “Aye n wò won l’áwòsunkún, awon n wo’ra won l’áwòrérìín”
In all this, what are the representatives of the people, the House of Assembly doing? Your guess is as good as mine.
But if the Honourable members of the 8th Assembly know what is in tandem with public good, they should have taken in hand, measures to check the demolition expert. In fact, long ago!
Anyway, in Oyo State, the physically-challenged, the less-privileged builds but the able-bodied, privileged one demolishes!
Ó gb’enu tán! (in Ayefele’s voice)
Omi Tuntun Igba Otun!
Kehinde Ayoola, a former speaker of the Oyo State House of Assembly, writes from Ibadan.
