Guardian

A GOOD reference point may be emerging in Ondo State for those who advocate a single term for political office holders on the ground that the politics of second term is a major obstacle to socio-economic development and the performance of elected officials.

In the first quarter of the first year of Dr. Olusegun Mimiko’s second term in office, the state government took certain bold steps that would have been considered suicidal were the governor still seeking the votes of the people and had to, for political expediency, leave some stones unturned in the search for good governance.

What is happening in Ondo has a bearing to what occurred in Lagos State. There, Governor Babatunde Fashola, during his re-election campaigns, solicited the support of members of the association of commercial motorcyclists, who actually followed him in thousands to rallies. But after securing victory, he turned around to restrict their operations in his quest to reduce road carnage.

Similarly, Mimiko is baring his fangs to those things and institutions that are found to be injurious to the collective aspiration of the people. Of course, these are the same institutions that the Iroko, as Mimiko is popularly called, engaged and which actually worked for him in the realisation of his second-term ambition that came at the last October 20 governorship poll.

Right from his earlier foray into politics, Mimiko, reputed to have a milk of kindness and uncommon generosity, has always been known to be averse to any step that would have negative impact on his political fortunes, and would not take any action without first consulting with the concerned people and institutions.

That the governor was able to provide the hitherto non-existent bridge over the gap between the people and the government, performed relatively well and still sustained his popularity rating till election time, is an unprecedented feat in the state’s political landscape where often times, government has to be stern in taking decisions affecting the people.

Perhaps, this accounted for the popularity of the Mimiko persona, which was at its peak during the controversial April 14, 2007 elections and the subsequent 22-month legal struggle to reclaim the mandate and sustained by the people-oriented programme of his administration.

However, since the inauguration of his second term, the picture of a governor “that cannot hurt a fly,” is gradually changing to that of a no-nonsense administrator, who is ready to remove any human or institutional obstacle on the path to good governance and seamless delivery of dividends of democracy to the expectant electorate.

Three days after the dissolution of his first-term team, Mimiko, inside the Cocoa Conference Hall of his office, told a gathering of about 300 Special Assistants — majority of those who have neither schedules of duty or offices — that the new dispensation would not be able to accommodate them.

He said unlike when he had to appoint a lot of persons according to the political dictates of the moment, only about a quarter of the crowd would find space in the new government. Of course, the politicians, who were expecting to be reappointed to their various offices, walked out of the venue quietly.

Signs that it was not going to be business as usual emerged a few weeks after his re-election at a tax summit held at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) in Ondo. There, the governor unveiled his plan for improvement in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for the state.

To achieve that goal, fund-generating ministries and parastatals were given marching orders to increase their drive for revenue to boost the purse of the state, in a move that complemented the earlier successes recorded in the state’s IGR that had moved up in the first four years of the administration.

The message became clearer when the governor charged the Chairman of the Ondo branch of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Bishop Joshua Ketiku, who was on a courtesy visit to his office, to urge congregations “to give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” because 90 percent of government tax revenue comes from public servants while the vast majority of the people remained untaxed.

Apart from increasing taxes payable by public officers in accordance with relevant tax laws, revenue officers were soon mobilised into town, to move from one shop to the other, asking even petty traders to pay into government coffers in order to continue enjoying dividends of democracy.

To many people, this is a clear departure from what obtained in the past when government, in order to maintain its “caring heart” agenda, would look the other way and put on a human face in protecting the people from anything that might task them even when it was obvious that those things form part of the civic duties of the citizens.

On the receiving end in the current efforts by Mimiko to drop politics and act as a no-nonsense statesman are his fellow members of the political class and the public service where the governor has turned a searchlight of sanitation that is causing more than ripples in the polity.

Two months ago, the state government, in a release by its Secretary, Dr. Rotimi Adelola, claimed irregularities in their appointments and outright inclusion of fictitious names on the payroll of the 18 local councils, and announced the sacking of about 10,000 workers describing them as “ghosts”.

While blaming the political class at the council level for the fraud, the government said the sack of the ghost workers followed the discovery of monumental fraud in phantom recruitment exercise carried out at the local councils.

The government said it discovered unauthorised recruitment of unqualified workers or none existing individuals whose names are being used to deduct salaries from the local governments’ accounts on monthly basis.

The statement mentioned that the probe committee, in the course of its investigation, observed that the difference in nominal roles of the local councils between December 2008 and December 2012 was over 10,000 staff claimed to have been employed; thus, forcing the government to augment council wages with about N500 million monthly.

According to the SSG: “Before any recruitment could be done at the local government level, the express approval of the state governor should be sought and the local government chairmen should consider if they have the fund to pay the wages of such new recruits.”

He stressed that nothing of such was done in the case of the affected workers, adding that most of the names of workers claimed to have been recruited in the illegal exercise were nonexistent.

The discovery of the employment scam at the council level prompted the government to order a full-scale staff audit of its entire workforce, resulting in mind-boggling revelations about the role of even senior civil servants in the perpetration of the fraud.

In the course of the audit, government employees were directed to submit their primary school leaving certificates, to ascertain their actual age since many were discovered to have been due for retirement but still remained in service.

Several of them, including some very senior ones, are said to have falsified their ages and many, among them a serving permanent secretary, whose younger brother celebrated his 72nd birthday recently but who is still claiming to be under-65, were discovered to have been born many years after leaving primary school.

Stories are told of politicians and senior civil servants, who padded the wage lists with fictitious names and many officers on GL 04, for instance, were drawing salaries of GL 16, with the difference going into pockets of senior officials while several non-existent schools, with full complement of staff, were discovered.

As it was in 1999 when the then Adebayo Adefarati administration set up the Justice Rasheed Fawehinmi panel to probe the previous military administration, and the rot in the system was exposed by the exercise; cans of worms are being opened by the current audit, “which wouldn’t have been ordered if an election were forthcoming,” said a respondent during the week.

Shocked by the findings, Mimiko is said to have made himself unavailable to scores of fingered officials, many of whom reportedly contributed to his campaign funds, and respected figures in the society whose assistance the culprits have solicited to persuade the governor to change his resolve to unleash the full wrath of the law on the offenders.

During celebrations of the last Workers’ Day, a stern-faced governor made it clear that all the indicted politicians and the public servant collaborators — many of who were present at the parade — would be flushed out of the system and made to repay the amount they illegally acquired or go to jail at the end of the ongoing exercise.

Expectedly, opposition politicians have been latching on the development to score political goals, describing Mimiko as a Janus, the two-faced Greek god, “that is showing his wicked side to the people he professed to like.”

While awaiting the final verdict of the Election Petitions Tribunal, both Olusola Oke of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Rotimi Akeredolu of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), who contested the governorship election with Mimiko, pledged to reinstate the sacked workers and lessen the tax burden on the people.

With the affected people not liking the new approach to governance, resulting in a downward trend in the popularity of the governor, political watchers blamed the development on the events that led to the emergence of the Mimiko administration and the “unusually high” expectations of the electorate, who, sometimes, engage in absurdities in exhibiting their love for the governor and his government.

For instance, on February 23, 2009, when the final judgment installing Mimiko as governor was delivered at the Court of Appeal in Benin City, supporters of the new governor seized the official cars of several PDP chieftains, who were in the court premises, leaving them at the mercy of commercial buses in finding their ways back to Akure.

The moment the information of the victory got to the state capital, several bands of supporters physically took over the Government House, occupied the kitchen to treat themselves to foods and drinks in celebration while many others seized government cars from fleeing PDP politicians.

It took several announcements and warnings from the new government to persuade the “looters” to return the vehicles and leave government quarters where some of them had taken board. Besides, special security measures had to be devised to keep away the hordes of supporters that always gathered, at the initial days of the administration, for days on end, to do nothing but just cheer their governor in office.

Governor Mimiko had twice bared his fangs during his first term. First, when he had to move bulldozers to destroy illegal structures on the major highways at the commencement of his urban renewal programme; and second, when he called the bluff of the organised labour in the wake of the agitation for improved remuneration, which led to a strike action.

On both cases, he quickly made amends, which led to improved relationships between the parties, and eventually culminated in the labour leadership adopting him for a second term.

When the bulldozers were rumbling through the streets of Akure and the generality of the affected citizens were groaning under their impacts, an announcement over the state radio that the operators of the machines actually acted beyond their bounds restored the confidence of the people in “the caring heart governor.”

Curiously, the guilt of the exercise was shifted to the overzealous officials and some even blamed sympathisers of the ousted PDP, who were still in government, for the attempt to destroy the love between the people and their governor.

When some months later, Arakale road, the second major transport artery in the state capital, was being dualised, and the government paid about N2 billion as compensations to the affected citizens, with or without titles or approval for their buildings and even had to pay unsolicited relocation fees to the mainly Igbo traders occupying the shops, and the earlier accusations against a party that was no longer in government was reinforced.

With the new face of the Mimiko administration, it appears government has decided to drop the toga of populism and take active charge on matters affecting the state without minding whose ox is gored or what the majority of the population might think.