Edo 2012: When silence is not golden

THE Norwegian political scientist, Stein Rokkan, writing on his country’s system, said: “The crucial decisions on economic policy are rarely taken at the parties or in parliaments”.

He compared the central area to the bargaining table, where government authorities meet directly with the trade union leaders or other group leaders. These yearly rounds of negotiations mean more in the lives of the rank and file citizens than formal elections.

Nigerian politics is not consensually well organised or cooperative as the Norwegian model, but there is a central core of similarity in respect of pressure group influence.

Democratic government is supposed to be government of the people, and politicians often claim to be speaking on behalf of public opinion, but how do rulers learn about what the people want?

Elections provide significant but infrequent opportunities for people to participate in politics. These are held every four years but pressure groups provide continuous opportunities for such involvement.

The relationship between interest groups and government is not always adversary. Groups may be useful to government. Commissioners and civil servants often lack the information or expertise necessary to make wise policies or the authority to ensure that they are implemented.

Therefore, they frequently turn to the relevant representative organisations to find out the defects in existing line of policies and seek suggestions as to how things ought to be improved. The ascension of power of Adams Oshiomhole on November 14, 2008 raised the spectre of labour influence as once again dominating the policy of the state.

Oshiomhole has been emphatic that unions, like any other groups seeking influence, will receive “fairness but no favour”. But the Governor knew he was incorrect or, indeed, somebody in the ‘khaki’ uniform, depicting the spirit of the labour struggles, was not really telling the truth.

At the inception of the clamour for the workers’ minimum wage earlier this year, Oshiomhole was one of the first governors that boasted he would pay the wage as soon as it was approved by the Federal Government but no sooner was it approved, than he became the first governor to re-engage, a development that brought him and the workers in his state on a collision course.

Today, the wage is received in Edo with tears, as it is paid with the right hand and taken with the left hand via a high taxation regime. How does one explain a situation where a Level 14 civil servant gets a monthly pay of N40, 000 and pays a tax of N9, 000 monthly?

How can there be social civil rights when teachers are being impoverished with over taxation, just to punish them for benefiting from the teacher’s unified pay structure.

Only the other day, the Secretary to the State Governor, Simeon Imuekhemen, during his reception, flew a kite that every Etsako person ought to take it as an article of faith to vote for Oshiomhole in the 2012 gubernatorial election.

This, he emphasized, does not need to be for the good work alone, but that the Governor is their son irrespective of the criticisms. Good talk.

Do you remember Imuekhemen? Imuekhemen was the Lucky Igbinedion wonder boy, who was brought from the Board of Internal Revenue to be the Head of Service. As Igbinedion’s Head of Service, he was part of the Igbinedion years of locust.

When Igbinedion exited, like the biblical Nicodemus, Imuekhemen sneaked into Oserheimen Osunbor’s administration to swear by the gods that Oshiomhole was not a fit and proper person to contest the 2007 election in the first place, let alone to challenge Osunbor in the tribunal.

With the coming of Oshiomhole, he developed a new song, this time flying the ethnic card that it must be Oshiomhole forever, non-performance and credibility notwithstanding.

Nosakhare Isekhure, the celebrated Chief Priest of Benin, is not as lucky as Imuekhemen, but today, as Chairman of Ambrose Alli University, AAU, Council, he has joined the chorus band that Oshiomhole be allowed to continue, with a tacit admission that his Bini tribe had always failed in the leadership position of the state; whereas the international rating of the state university he heads is going down daily for lack of basic lecturing amenities.

The Binis will now recollect with nostalgia the likes of Air Iyare, the Imafidons, the Omo Osagies (aka B2), the Akpatas and the Oba Akenzuas for the roles they would have played if they were still on the scene. Yesterday, their words would have stood against the world and inspire men. They had played their parts well. But, where are our Edo intellectuals?

As people in the centre of activity in the societal growth process and by virtue of their familiarity with modern ideas and technology, it is time Edo intellectuals climbed down from their high horses and reverse their positions of detachment and aloofness to that of commitment and involvement in solving the problems of the society such as Edo people are passing through right now.

This is indeed imperative because in a society in which diverse and determined groups working through propaganda and pressure assume the representation of the collectivists, the silence of the intellectuals is no longer golden.

It is an astonishing irony, that a man of Oshiomhole’s unerring astuteness and uncanny instincts would ignore these realities all in an attempt to justify the traditional saying that all is fair in politics and to protect self interest.

By so doing, he is destroying the very mass consensus he has ill helped and has turned himself in the process into the most reviled and distrusted labour leader in recent times. The desire by Oshiomhole and his like to remain in power at all costs is stripping him of all scruples and conscience.

Edo people must celebrate the fact that they have fought against such times and tendencies in the past. They must rejoice that they can always put their destiny in their hands and not in their faith.

But when an Oshiomhole, as a self-appointed errand boy and with an inordinate ambitious spirit, is trying to undermine historical development of the people, he becomes a potential danger to good governance.

It is in this sense that Oshiomhole’s failure and the wilting of his vaunting ambition must be located within the context of taking Edo State to the next level of development.

If in 2012 and at the expiration of his tenure, Oshiomhole fails, let there be no two opinions about it: that Oshiomhole failed because the courts installed him on the people; instead, it is the reverse that the because they knew he would fail. This is when silence is not golden.

Mr.  CALLISTUS OMOREGIE, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Benin City, Edo State.