“I have the green pen, I won’t sign any local government autonomy”, Governor Seyi Makinde, Feb. 2023
“Granting local government financial autonomy will engender massive corruption at the local level”, Speaker, ‘Debo Ogundoyin, May 2024
“The Supreme Court verdict on local government autonomy is a distraction”, Makinde, Friday 12 July 2024
“I will set up a committee to review the Supreme Court ruling on local government autonomy”, Makinde, Monday 15 July 2024
“We are not interested in any judgment that will free and liberate us from the shackles of financial bondage, political despotism, and tyranny”, 33 council chairmen echoed after a joint meeting in August 2024
‘Born Is The Emperor’
Emperor Haile Selassie was a ‘god on earth’. He was feared, admired, adored, and revered. Apart from having a religion named after him, with worshippers now restricted to a section of the Jamaican society, he was equally one of African legendary monarchs to successfully defy and defeat European invasion and incursion with remarkable grit.
“No other African leader during the independence era was revered so widely as Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia”, Martin Meredith says in his book, Africa: The History of a Continent since Independence. “His defiant stand against Mussolini’s brutal invasion in the 1930s had won him worldwide fame”.
‘The Elect of God’, his people dubbed him. Meredith added, “He was worshipped as a living God (Jah) by adherents of Rastafarianism, a religion that emerged in the 1930s and took its name from Haile Selassie’s original title, Ras Tafari in Jamaica”. As he consolidated his power through brute force, coercion, and tricky diplomacy, his empire grew in leaps and bounds, annexing modern-day Eritrea.
Celebrated and revered by his people in town and villages, his downfall, typical of other despots before him marked the end of an era. While he rose gingerly to the peak of his power, with an unbelievable thirst for more, his spectacular fall like a pack of cards was a masterclass disaster.
Rather than build an enduring and timeless legacy, he starved and impoverished the poor while enriching and over-feeding the affluent.
Under his firm grip, corruption spread, and poverty skyrocketed leading to desperation, death, and destitution. But Emperor Haile Selassie did some good. He built schools, constructed bridges, and modernized his nation. Sadly, none was enough to quench the inferno of revolution that eventually consumed him and his cronies. When the people’s cup of frustration and disappointment gets full, they don’t care what a leader has done for them in the past. They go all out. The recent political turmoil in Bangladesh is enough to ring a powerful bell to the hearing of the smart.
Then one day, tired, exhausted, and famished, people marched into his palace, broke in, and ended his reign.
‘Run Its Full Circle’
While late Abiola Ajimobi’s ‘constituted authority’ moniker gave him away as a sort of authoritarian leader, the name ‘Agodi Emperor’ coined by Akin Akinwale, a politician for governor Seyi Makinde depicts a leader with totalitarian tendency. For one, Governor Makinde’s uncomfortable disposition to the July 11, Supreme Court judgment on financial autonomy for local government has given him away as an unrepentant and unapologetic opponent of rural development.
With the unfortunate council chairmen ego-massaging message backing the governor in this misadventure, it is clear the governor and his honchos have run their full circle of propaganda, whitewashing and gaslighting. For the first time in a while, the governor seems to have reached the tipping point of advancing his dangerous rhetoric – except he will ask hungry people to march on the street in his defence – there is no low a Nigerian politician cannot go.
Interestingly, what started as a brag on the debate podium in 2023 has led to the colonization and abduction of the 33 council chairmen’s thinking faculties. Today, 33 grown-up men have exported and abdicated their thinking and conviction to the governor. “Do the thinking for us”, they all seem to say “and we will eat from the crumbs your throw at us”. By rejecting and opposing the Supreme Court verdict that seeks to liberate them, the 33 council bosses have put themselves on the line of prosecution and persecution. The people are praying for scapegoat.
‘Not one of Us’
“Not satisfied with the decision of the Supreme Court judgment on autonomy, ‘Seyi Makinde, governor of Oyo state, has asked local government chairmen in the state to break away from their umbrella body—the Association of Local Government of Nigeria, ALGON”, Oyo most reliable news platform, OyoInisight reported.
“The council chairmen, not minding the consequences of their actions, have declared their total support for Makinde’s stance”, it added. The chairmen even went as to say the reason for their action is anchored on the governor’s leadership and unrivalled achievements since his assumption of office”.
As Oyo people grappled with Makinde’s latest conman show to subvert and undermine the country’s apex court ruling for selfish interest, the video clip of a council chairman surfaced. In the clip, the boss, light-skinned, and well-built parroted the same outright lies, and outlandish invectives once attributed to the governor in his weak and watery defence of the Supreme Court Judgment. Like emperor, like puppet.
‘Heaven Is Far’
The battle line is drawn. The governor and the 33 placeholders have declared war against the growth and development of local councils. Will they win? Time will tell. Carefully and cautiously, the people are watching across the streets and in the remote areas, what their next line of action will be. First, they want to ascertain the effectiveness of the Supreme Court verdict: that a truly separate account is created for local councils by the federal government as against the Joint Allocation Account that combines both the state and local government.
Until that is done, with massive publicity from the FG, no significant step can be taken. While the court ruling has landed a crushing blow on the state governments, the takeoff time for the full implementation has been pegged for 3 months, starting from July, meaning that for now, the status quo of sending council money to the state will continue. For one, three months is enough to plan and plot. It is enough to launch a scathing and aggressive campaign against all the forces of development.
“We know what is good for our people”, Governor Makinde, showing his totalitarian trait quipped on July 15, 2024. But the people are saying they want autonomous council areas whose survival will not be tied to the apron strings of state government. To be clear, the battle for the souls of all the 774 local government areas in Nigeria cannot be fully won without the backing of the federal government, which hitherto dragged the state government to court ab initio, and of course, the people, on whose behalf the battle line was drawn in the first place. Makinde and his surrogates have set ablaze the dream of the people, they must be ready for the damn consequences.
OYO101 is Muftau Gbadegesin’s opinion about issues affecting the Oyo state and is published every Saturday. He can be reached via @GbadeTheGreat on X, muftaugbadegesin@gmail.com, and 09065176850.
