EDO 2012: THE POLITICS OF PALLIATIVES

By NBF News
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•Oshiomhole
The vexatious (or contentious) issue of fuel subsidy removal or retention will continue to colour our discourses, actions and inactions for a long while to come. What with the praetorian mode the Federal Government employed in informing Nigerians on the first day of January 2012?  What with the metric flight (by over 161%) of the petrol price from N65.00 to N141.00 per litre?  What with the cavalier attitude of the Federal Government's information and propaganda apparati that created a yawing gap that was exploited by some well-known traducers of the Jonathan Administration to gain political mileage through exposure and attendant relevance.

Some self-serving governors took sides against the larger mass of the Nigerian people because the adoption of the N141/litre petrol price regime will enable them to complete some of the  'white elephant grandiose and ego-massaging' projects they could not work on; practise more 'resource control' with the expected fiscal largesse and prepare well for 'rainy days'; guarantee their re-election bids with expected presidential assistance (a la Yar'Adua) even if the masses of the people will go to hell. Afterall, their votes are always guaranteed.

All the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) governors (acting at the behest of their party leaders) except the 'Comrade' Governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole, took a principled stand on the fuel subsidy impasse and left no one in doubt about their distaste for its removal.  Conversely 'Comrade' Oshiomhole, at different fora, gleefully reiterated his stand on the fuel subsidy issue not minding whether the 'common man' will be the hardest hit of the two segments of the Nigerian societal milieu or not.  He took this double sabattical from both his party, the ACN and the 'common man' whom he had 'championed' his welfare and uplift since his (Oshiomhole's) days as a factory worker at the United Nigeria Textile Limited (UNTL), Kaduna.

Turncoat or Metamorphosis
A lot of questions have been asked about the underlying factors that will make a cogenital and serial objector to anti-people policies, programmes and actions like Oshiomhole, to suddenly become chameleonic and pitch his tent on the opposite side of the divide for any reason atall.

Concurrently, 'Comrade' Adams Oshiomhole's waning popularity rating has taken a further downward turn as the critical segment of the society he calls 'my constituency' has riled and rued the 'Comrade's' about-face in the fuel subsidy imbroglio.

It came to such a sorry pass that independent observers like the very respected Dele Sobowale, the Frankly Speaking columnist in the Vanguard newspapers and Chief Jide Awe, the Ekiti State  Chairman of the ACN had cause to chastise the derailing 'Comrade' Governor for abandoning the masses at critical period.

Even the stridently pro-Oshiomhole apologist,  Kassim Afegbua (once his Chief Press Secretary), had cause to berate and vilify the all-knowing Comrade in his Saturday Vanguard column of January 21, 2012 for his (Oshiomhole's) chameleonic disposition on the issue of oil subsidy removal.

Rather than recant or even demure to the line canvassed by his 'people', 'Comrade' Oshiomhole and his media spin-doctors have taken measures to justify his anti-people stance to make it look like he is a visionary who is misunderstood by his own people who have chosen to operate on a different wavelength on the fuel subsidy removal/retention divide.

The flurry of media activities to throw the people off the scent of a deviant Oshiomhole and hold Edo PDP vicariously liable for the violence, robbery and destruction that attended the state's version of the anti-fuel subsidy removal protests and rallies has not change the people's perception of Oshiomhole since the fuel subsidy removal plot came into the open.  What his people were really rebelling against was the discordant tunes coming out of the Government House depending on the audience at that given time or the dramatis personae involved.

For a Governor whose agenda is set beyond the fuel subsidy disagreement, 'Comrade' Oshiomhole's body language and verbal pronouncements at the different stage-managed pro-removal of fuel subsidy shows, he was ready to create a negative backlash for the Federal Government and at the same time extort support from President Goodluck Jonathan for his re-election bid on July 14, 2012.  His self-confessed story of how the late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua assisted him both financially and judicially pre and post -April 14, 2007 governorship election in Edo State speaks volumes of his 'unusual' abandonment of his 'downtrodden' masses to tow the unpopular line of his newfangled friend - President Goodluck Elebele Jonathan and extract a presidential promise of support before, on and after July 14, 2012.

July 14, 2012, Here I Come
As the script goes, our Comrade is playing the game according to his own Rules of Engagement - move against the people and extort  president assistance, as it was done in 2007 and also caper to the whims of a terribly dehumanised and denatured Edo hoi-poloi to conjure the dreary mirage of a 'people's messiah' in view of the watershed Saturday, July 14, 2012 governorship election in Edo State.

The gale of 'palliatives' that the 'Comrade' Governor has to announce by himself on Thursday, January 19, 2012 to a shell-shocked Edo populace, is meant to shore up the governor's dwindling 'messianic' image that had been built in the people's psyche through his ant-establishment battles on behalf of 'hapless' Nigerians, nay Edolites.

The question on Edolites lips are: Who introduced the draconian fees and levies in all public college in the state, and upped tuition and other fees to an unprecedented and intolerable level in the state-owned university-Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma? What effect will a paltry reduction of school fees between N5,000 - N15,000 for undergraduate student (part-time and full-time), have on fees that run to up to hundreds of thousands of naira on the average?  What will happen to the registration and annual renewal payments in excesses of between 1,500% and 2,500% that has caused a lot of divestment and capital flight in the private healthcare and education since the advent of the 'Comrade'? For example: the 1,067%, 718% and 21,50% increase in the cost of application forms, registration and annual renewal fees respectively, for operators of private educational institutions in Edo State goes to show how much the 'Comrade' Governor loves the 'common man'.

What will happen to proprietors of hotels, restaurants, eateries and other hospitality centres in Edo State who are being forcibly subjected to the worse, double taxation ever unleased on a corporate sector of the economy by any state governor?  What will happen to the myriad levies and taxes that our market women and men are daily assailed by? What will be the fate of the civil servants who are being subjected to the highest tax regimes that make mockery of their 'take-home' pay? What will be the palliatives for hundreds of house-owners whose prized heir-looms or results of accumulated savings were wantonly demolished in orchestrated and selected orgies of destructions, all in the name of planting flowers and 'infrastructure' development? What will happen to the undeclared 'retainership'  fees and payments being extorted from contractors and consultants  handling state projects and programmes?  What will happen to the over N75bn facility granted to the state government by banks and other lending bodies for 'development' projects? Where will the palliatives for these incidences of economic miscalculations and outright misgovernance come from?

Certainly not from an Oshiomhole whose main agenda now is how to retain his tenancy of Osadebay Avenue, Benin City by dangling the hollow palliatives carrots before hapless Edolites after hitting them below the solar plexus by supporting, propagating and trumpeting the anti-people fuel subsidy removal and other unheralded corporate malfeances.

The issue of garnering peoples votes on Saturday, July 14, 2012 remains paramount in Oshiomhole's calculations as it forms the fulcrum of his grand design to return to Government House Benin City and reap his own 'palliatives' from the share accruable to the common man of Edo State and activate his vice-presidential dream simultaneously. Both ways, Edolites lose.

Whose Comrade?
The events surrounding the partial removal of the fuel subsidy enjoyed by all Nigerians (especially the 'Common man') will not be chronicled without the mention of 'Comrade' Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, the sitting Governor of Edo State who 'played possum'  and center forward while the issue of the removal or retention of fuel subsidy took the front burner in national discourses.  It will be told of how the 'champion' of the peoples causes abandoned them at a critical junction and offered half-hearted and feeble palliatives to sate the simmering autumn of discontent ruling the people's hearts.

That history will also include how discerning Edolites were not fooled by the 'Comrade's' Greek Gifts of 'How I For do' palliatives and chose that quintessential helmsman who will bail out the state from the current incubus the Court of Appeal foisted on them on Tuesday, November 11, 2008.

•Dr. Okhakumhe Ijebor
A Political Commentator based in Abuja