By Adeyemo Adesina
Dear governor, Engineer Oluwaseyi Makinde of Oyo State, while I am using this opportunity to welcome you into the second half of your tenure in office. Let me use the same to appreciate the good gesture of your timely interventions in certain areas that fulfill your campaign manifestoes. Sir, if you can remember I wrote a letter to you few months ago, where I analyzed the hurdles and hopes (raised so far) by your regime. Yours sincerely Sir, we are happy that you have been trying your best to cut in some permutations and combinations which is changing faces of governance in the state. You have been touching areas of: Education, infrastructure, health, agriculture and security. Your initiatives are indeed impressive!!! But, the question remains…are we moving on the right tracks and in the right directions? Maybe, we should look at this together in a fair, just and sacrosanct perspective.
Excellency Sir, in the open letter which I wrote to you around March, I emphasized the urgent need to call your appointees to order. I challenged them to come out from their hidings and tell the world what they have done so far. This becomes necessary because we can hardly see their handwritings on the vague walls. One of the painful, but unsurprising disappointments we found in your style of governance is the failure of your so-called Technocrats to deliver anything tangible within the controversial two years in office. It would have been better if they were not called to serve, than leaving fractures of more complicating calamities in sectors where prompt healings are expected. I mean prompt healings because we won this election through promises to heal the past. Have you ever imagine what the scorecard of this administration will be if this imprudence team have not been shown the way out of your cabinet? Oh I see!!!
Maybe your decision to sack them was made after you have hearkened to the calls for checkmating the incompetence in them. Dear governor Sir, let me inform you that you have done yourself half of more good and healing of the polity, by sacking your commissioners few weeks ago. If and if not, I should be asking you by now….where are the positive impacts of your technocracy? Where are the track-signs of kangaroo overseers of your ministries? Where are the legacies they laid even within the reasonably lengthy period of Nineteen months they spent in office? Anyway, Sir I hope you have learnt a better lesson from the failure of tested technocracy now. And hopefully you should be ready to replace them with worthy ambassadors when next you appoint another set of commissioners. Will that be very soon?
Your Excellency Sir, it will sound hypocritical if I fail to identify areas where you are making impressive waves so far within this first half. We can see renovations of health centers (if not everywhere, I have seen one in Igboora, ibarapa central, and somewhere in iseyin- oke-ogun). I have seen the yet-to-be-completed Light-up project in ibarapa and somewhere in the capital city ( even though the poles are still lying down in ibarapa after months of installation and light up in ibadan). I can see the effects of your partially fulfilled free education policy in the state (even though pupils and students of public schools are still spending on certain unrevealed miscellaneous). I can see the partly abandoned Igboora stadium (where work had stopped about four months ago). We pray it won’t end up being an abandoned project after the expiration of your tenure. I can see your projects: Youth Empowerment in Agribusiness Program ( YEAP)- (even though we are still expecting the kick-off of the program). I can see so many of your countless projects completed and on-going.
I pray that the almighty God will give you the strength and wisdom to navigate the hurdles successfully within the rest of time. That is when we can be bold to say that OUR governance under the PDP administration had indeed healed the past. Maybe we will be distinguishingly different from the APC then. So we pray!!!
Back to the PDP family, your Excellency Sir, I am sure right inside of you (by now), you should know that the PDP is no longer a united family as it were before your emergence as our party’s candidate, and eventual victory as governor of Oyo state. It is so unfortunate that an apparent factional tussle begin with you, within a very short time in office. Could it be that you camouflaged as Moses when you know actually that (deep inside of you….lies a Pharaoh-like embodiments). You forced and manipulated the state executives to be fractured and exhibit attributes that eventually set us against ourselves.
Under your watch, we held a parallel congress, parallel and inconclusive primaries that eventually ushered in your hand-picked candidates to emerge as local government overseers. You forced duly and legitimately elected candidates (at the primaries) to be refunded of their nomination fees ( even though they were not given fair treatment in terms of transparency). You promised WE in the PDP, and the entire Oyo state that you will conduct a free, fair, credible and emulative local government election. Excuse me Sir, where is that credibility? Where is the transparency? Where is the fairness to all parties? Oh!!! Do you think we can easily forget your demagogue-filled manifestoes? Why did you suddenly become entirely desperate power-mongers after you have anchored your toes into the PDP, and thereafter on assumption of office? Mr Governor Sir, are you not feeling that pulsating sensations of a conscience of guilt? Have you forgotten the criminality attached to the procedures and conducts of the most controversial local government election, conducted by your stooges in OYSIEC? Where is the credibility and integrity of the OYSIEC chairman, who is a so-called barrister of law? Are we not desecrating the pace instead of setting it? How will you tell the world that yours is an exemplary leadership (with these unsettled ripples)? Was this how you met the PDP?
Dear governor, I am very sure that some people will find ease in contacting you immediately this letter is made public. I know they will tag me as an anti-party agent. Oh yes!!! Maybe you too will agree with them that someone who was among hundreds of Ibarapa youths who risked almost everything they have to secure your emergence as governor can suddenly be working against you or your government. Sir, I am very sure some of them are those behind the ills I mentioned earlier in this letter. I know people from Ibarapa who took the forefront when they told you that kidnapping, banditry, killings in Ibarapa was exaggerated just because they want to remain relevant in your cabinet ( despite their savoring on poisoned meals). Are they worthy to be closer to you in the first instance? Are they not there by the virtues of trampling on the chances of competent hands that could have done better if appointed.
Hmmmmm….someone will say I am looking for appointment. No!!! I am not begging for appointment in your government. I am saying all these to reveal the impressions of large numbers of our party members and lovers who have been sent off track by the devilish attitudes of the sycophants around you. Dear Sir, let me make it clear once again, that I have been a PDP stalwart since 1999 and I will always continue to be as long as the party exists. I can never allow the house I labored for to collapse, because I am not and will never collude with enemies within the PDP. For those who might be telling you that they are the Alpha and Omega of this party, ask them once again where are they and will they be able to sustain political values and potentials capable of delivering victory for the party, if a keenly contested election was conducted?
Your Excellency Sir, I am suggesting that you mend fences with those fingers that fed you, but are now being bitten poisonously by you. Let them feel the deserved recognition, influence, position, and commendations. There is an urgent need for you to unconditionally sacrifice everything that could re-unite the party that brought a redefined direction into your political lineage and sojourn. This is the best thing you can do for now, irrespective of how much praises you are receiving from those who sees nothing bad in the present abnormalities. I hope doing this will heal the wounds you have intentionally or unintentionally created in the hearts of many people who you once see as your friends. The best time for a turn-around is NOW.
Yours in the PDP.
Adeyemo Adesina writes from Igbo-Ora, Ibarapa central local government. He can be reached via yemmyemeritus@gmail.com
