NATW: How The Rumour Mill Created A Mythical Fashola

Recall those days in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when the elders turned tales by moonlight into a frantic search of seeking to define the images emblazoned on the moon. Long arguments would ensue after those intense looks at the moon. For all Action Group adherents, even though, the party was no longer in government during these times, they all, inexplicably agreed that image emblazoned on the moon couldn’t have belonged to anybody but Chief Obafemi Awolowo, founder of the Action Group and first Premier of the Western Region.

It was the extent of the veneration of Awolowo that followers of the party, even, outside government, sought to establish his patron saint status by persuading themselves that Awolowo, though alive at that time, only compared to extra terrestrials. If any body engaged thought otherwise, as there would always be, some whom logic would not depart even in the face of mind bending extrapolation of the political deeds of Awolowo to the spiritual realm.

This is what myths are made for. In political field it implies a special connect between individuals in government and the people they govern. Awolowo, long after his death, still engaged the political imagination of Nigerians and especially, the adherence of the people of the Yoruba South West Nigeria.

I was young in those days, quite young that I did not get to understand the querulous banters among the elders anytime the moon watching exercise started, but I knew they would invariably conclude on the spiritual prowess of Awolowo and how he used to beat and capture his enemies, chief of which, back then was Chief Ladoke Samuel Akintola. I am very sure that late Ahmadu Bello and Nnamdi Azikwe must have had such mythical yarns around them; I did not grow in their regions of influence, so I wouldn’t be too sure.

History has moved past those iconic gladiators of that particular era, anyway. It would seem that a new creation of the imagination of people, especially, those in Lagos State, is in the making. This may be the first time since Awolowo that people are virtually spinning yarns around a government official. Though, there was a bit of that in the short-lived administration of assassinated military head of state, Gen. Murtala Muhammed. The new image that we may possibly be watching out for in the near future may be that of Babatunde Raji Fashola, Governor of Lagos State and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.

Suddenly, it would seem that Fashola held court with individual Lagosians, where he informed them of his next action and how he would implement it. So, it was that the word got out on the streets that the Lagos State Governor had directed that anybody found wearing rubber slippers on Lagos roads should be arrested. The directive, according to these “confidants” of the Governor, is because Fashola did not expend so much money building roads for slippers wearing Lagosians to come and deface the them.

A house-wife was said to have been sold on the Fashola directive that she had to run across from her home carrying her husband’s shoes when that one went out with his friends. She protested that no one would be there to salvage things for her when Fashola gets her husband arrested for wearing slippers.

There was this other one about Lagosians that would have cause to go out of the state to spend their holidays last December. The rumour mill was agog with story of how Fashola had instructed that tax officials would be waiting at the Lagos toll-gate end of the Lagos-Ibadan express road to check the tax certificates of returnees. Again, the wild rumour was so effective that some Lagosians started making discreet enquiries about tax payment.

Then, there were stories about the Governor’s nocturnal visits to hospitals and construction sites, how he used to alight from Keke Marwa to inspect the stage and pace of works at the site. The people in the Alimosho Local Government area are particularly fecund with such gist, it would sound as if the only place the Governor gets to supervise his construction was in the Alimosho local area.

The yarn of the Governor’s late evening unannounced visitation to Mercy Hospital nearly assumed the near truth status because it was actually published in a newspaper. The Governor was said to have entered the children’s hospital on the Lagos Island and had witnessed how medical personnel treated in the most ignoble manner patients and their mothers. A particular woman was said to have talked with the Governor about her travails in the hospital upon which he entered the Doctor’s room as just one common only to throw the hospital into a state of confusion when the Doctor identified him.

All these and many others made the rounds before the Governor descended on Oshodi. If you don’t know Oshodi it means you’re not a Lagosian. Oshodi had been a settled bedlam since I have long forgotten. The about one kilometre stretch on the Agege Motor Road had always been noted for a minimum two-hour traffic and a beehive of criminal activities layered on a robust tradition of street trading.

Different government since we started reading them in secondary school history and civil study books have made strenuous efforts to dislodge everything that gave Oshodi its character but none have been successful. Then this Fashola came along three weeks ago. In less than 24 hours the place reverted to civility. Outstandingly amazing!

Now, this has given new filip to the Fashola beyond human talk in the state, no mortal could possibly run through Oshodi and bring to it sanity in a day. New but more fundamental meanings are given to anything Fashola. You would notice immediate movement or removal anytime anybody announced Fashola was on his way to clear a certain area of the state.

The yarns still continues, but what it implies is that people now respect and trust government, it is the first requirement of democracy, it shows the connect between government and the governed. But I hope we would not be looking out for the image of Fashola in the sun that must be hurting.

Despite what some would say about creating markets before markets are bulldozed by the state government, I think this governor is performing and do not sympathise with a Lagosian that decided to make the road his or her means of sustenance.

FOR THE FIRST TIME…A SOCIALIST IN A STATE HOUSE

Finally, an avowed socialist is in a government house in Nigeria. It has been a long trek for that community that belongs in the ideological bend of the Marxist/Engel political thoughts. The first experience with a publicly declared socialist inclined government was way back in the 1950s when Chief Obafemi Awolowo was Premier of the Western Region. Even as the British colonialists lingered in the background of the nation’s political cadence, Awolowo wrought some of the most astounding welfare programmes that till date, people of south west Nigeria embrace the Awolowo years with the nostalgia of a baby’s yearn for a mother’s breast.

Though years had passed, Awolowo’s political exploits and programmes implementation in government have been passed from one generation to the other, and has continued to generate a yearning for a re-enactment of the Awolowo years. This yearning has become more intense with the growing state of hopelessness of Nigerians, seemingly captured in the vice grip of a generation of political brigands that has raised mediocrity to new standards, celebrating the nation’s state of decay with all imaginable plum. It has become so bad that when a Governor of a State buys a bucket for the state’s house bathroom, a large press conference is called and the drums are rolled out to celebrate the “massive” achievement. It tells how much government provision for the needs of the governed has reduced to the deliquence of tokenism.

The coming of Adams Oshiomole to the government house in Benin Edo State provides a new vista for refreshing expectations. Labour and all its philosophical postulation should be the very antithesis of the free wheeling politics of the area boys in Nigeria. The Nigerian state is even more unfortunate because the politicians that straddle the landscape have no idea of what ideological governance must of necessity be administered. The consequence for the country has been the wholesale violence of misdirection that has seized the political environment.

This is just by the way. The truth of the matter is that Oshiomole former labour leader and unarguably, a respected radical now sits in government house, and already, we are getting a feel of the flurry of progressive activities that will characterize political administration of Edo State in the next four years. Immediately after he was sworn-in, the governor declared free education as a state policy in Edo State. It’s a policy that always sits well with the people, south of Nigeria. It was hailed.

Then the governor reeled out other banishments; the banning of illegal taxes at all motor parks within the State and a hint of probing the administration of his immediate predecessor, Prof. Osunbor. It’s just all right the governor has moved the State to the action mode, even, when he was yet to see a single file in the State House.

I dare to call for a slow down, at least in the first few weeks of the administration. Many well intentioned programmes and ideas have failed on the implementation scale, most often, because they lacked well thought out processes. I believe that government policies must be well researched on the template administrative briefing by appropriate officers of state administration. Even if there is a primordial suspicion of civil servants, consultation with them and other stakeholders in governance is important.

While not questioning the competence of Comrade Oshiomole, of course, he had shown sterling qualities with his leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress, I still think governance is different from politicking. It is even more important for the Comrade-Governor to conduct a minimum one week review of the state of situation in Edo State before rolling out his programmes implementation direction. This is against the background of the deplorable state of infrastructure and morale Edo State had degenerated into in the administration of the Peoples Democratic Party Governors.

Generally, Comrade Oshiomole’s coming is a good thing for all that bid good for Nigeria, at the minimum, there is a now a basis to compare labour with the band of degenerates that had for long assailed our sensibilities.