…the People’s Demand for Justice.
By Lois O. Adams
Following his lawful disqualification from the 2020 Edo state Gubernatorial election and it’s primaries, several people whose Obaseki’s awkward leadership and wickedness had affected have begun speaking out, not minding his disqualification, since he laid his bed, and has been allowed to quietly sleep on the thorns he placed ahead.
There have been massive jubilations and celebrations of his disqualification in all nooks and crannies of the state and beyond, with our sons and daughters in the diaspora, not left out in savouring this euphoria.
This is indeed, a reflection of the lugubrious and nauseating leadership style he haphazardly deployed in governance, which eventually and geometrically plunge every sector of the state, in a state of limbo, infrastructural decay and insensitivity to the development of human capital and other key areas, particular, health, security and education.
His score card and stewardship dossier is just a mere “tabular razar” but laced with verifiable acts of highhandedness, naivety, and desperation, while his knack for total disregard for constituted authority is legendary and unprecedented.
His not being receptive, accommodative and calm in terms of leadership, has annihilated good ideas from technocrats; an administration that has dashed the hopes of Edo people, and this account for a seemingly cognitive dissonance by a large proportion of his lieutenant, wherein voluntary resignation became a recurring decimal till date. His medieval and Elizabethan approach to issues of general interest has also compelled everyone to lose interest in governance.
The above and its consequences has eroded the standard of education in the state, and interned key sectors like Agriculture. People celebrate his downfall today, because he has abused his powers as an executive Governor to bring down those well-meaning Edo people,who have worked for the state for over a decade.
This celebration has nothing to do with the inter-party crises, but a reality of the Godwin Obaseki administration.
It’s a pity that people who only had interest in Edo politics when the crisis begun and read the surface, castigate us for challenging the Obaseki- administration to sit tight, because they are very oblivious of the genesis of his poor leadership approach, and they are not handy with how he started, they have not actually been opportune to have any encounter with him, and also never presented a healthy idea that will help the state, and it was trashed with rudeness.
There is no gainsaying the clear fact that, his blueprint and intentions from the outset, was a threat to the progress of the state.
Listening to the collective voice, yearnings and aspirations of the people, which have greeted his ousting, it is quite pertinent to assert that, he has eventually succeeded in shooting himself on the chest via rendering his political empire useless, for his selfish interests, as the people have vowed never to have such a man again as Governor of Edo state.
A respected school administrator and proprietor has this to say “A man who closed all Agricultural Institutions, in the state and laid-off 560 staff members without their entitlements, even when the National Industrial Court, sitting in Akure, has earlier given judgement citing how he “Obaseki and his cronies” have no such powers to close down these Institutions, and ordered the immediate reinstatement of all the staff and payment of their entitlements” this he undermined and disobeyed vehemently.
It beats ones imagination to note that, at a time government at various levels is clamouring for the embrace of Agriculture to augment our mainstay, Obaseki is undermining such policy which is a national emergency that will engender food security.
To this end, I implore all and sundry to critically look at the above verifiable assertions and analogy, with a view to having a proper insight into the activities of a man who have piloted our ship over the years, while also troublling the water and causing turbulences. This is to put you in a right stead to score him either positively or otherwise in an objective manner.
Agricultural sector has saved the world, in no small measure, particularly since the outbreak of the novel COVID-19, and it also accounts for the sensitization and reorientation of our people on the need to embrace the sector and not with levity, but a sitting governor who takes delight in being addressed as a technocrat, annihilated the federal government policy on agriculture and also jettison all forms of advise and ideas in that regard. As a bonafide member of Edo Farmers Association, my father and I ensured we paid all our dues and discharged other obligations to the association, all in a bid to ensure that, the association grows and the quest for food security in the country achieved by us as a people.
Staff of the Edo State College of Agriculture, Iguoriakhi and Agenebode, in their pain have placed their trust in God Almighty, to fight for them, and enthrone a man who is cerebral and very sensitive to the plight of the people, while having total regard and respect for constituted authorities.
This will shock you how Obaseki shot himself on the chest. As the head of the “Economic Team” under the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole-led government, he brought in one Prof. Balogun, a retired Professor of Agriculture from Kwara state, who did a study and recommended that Iguoriakhi and Agenebode should be bifurcated and any staff not qualified be transferred to the state’s ministry of Agriculture, and a bill was passed to that effect by the State House of Assembly as the institutions were already developing fast and would have in no distant time be the Agricultural base of this nation.
Only for the same Obaseki and his government of impunity and injustice, to close them down on flimsy and untenable alibis, that “he was going to restructure the Schools” He laid-off all staff without redeploying the schools, even those who have spent the statutory (Ten)10 years in service were laid- off without any entitlement or retirement benefits. What a wicked man who parades himself as Governor?
Edo people have seen that he never meant well from the beginning, even when he was the head of the Economic Team, he packaged himself to the state with the intention to defraud it under the guise of being a ” technocrat “
A man whose antecedence is far from being a technocrat, ideologist, nationalist as he has portrayed to us.
May God judge you accordingly until you restore hope to those you unlawfully laid-off from active service without any form of benefit.
