NEW born democratic administrations take time to settle down; and to stabilize such a system depends quite heavily on the invisible restraints of civility, convention and mutual respect. This process depends on a leadership with high standards, which the present Edo State Comrade Adams Oshiomhole-led administration lacks.

The government itself has become a spin of ill-will, poisoned by mutual suspicion, accusations of sabotage and intemperate speeches and winding rhetoric. Far from providing leadership in the building of a new egalitarian society, the government spread ill-feelings.

A few days ago, the government celebrated its three years in office which admittedly cost much in tax payers’ money. That is the sum our sister state, Delta, used in 2010 to flag off its free health care services.

In July 2011, Oshiomhole spent a princely sum to celebrate his victory over the PDP in the April legislative elections in the state and that was exactly the same amount Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State used to construct an ultra-modern market with state-of-the-art facilities. The market today generates employment for over three thousand youths and women as well as revenue to the state.

Edo is the only state arguably in Nigeria where the governor is all in all, where the governor will commence a State Executive Council meeting with an introduction and without allowing an input from serving commissioners or other members of cabinet till the end of the meeting.

Edo is the only state where nothing has worked in the past three years, be it in Agriculture, Health, Education, Commerce and where insecurity has become a common factor. Farmers had never had it so bad and an average of 20 people die every hour in our government hospitals everyday, just as the hospitals have been reduced to mere consulting clinics and mortuaries.

Apart from the dilapidated infrastructure in our tertiary institutions, the government has not added a block or a kobo to the state university (Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma), or helped to improve the state of things in any of the state-owned institutions for the past three years. If the Governor is keeping to his pledge to cripple the university because of its site (Esanland), a people he has vowed to eliminate politically for their political belief, why doesn’t he develop the state-owned polytechnic at Usen and other state schools of higher learning?

Four weeks ago, the law making body, the Nigerian Senate declared Edo as one of the states in serious financial crises. The state is said to be buckling under a debt burden with attendant servicing costs.

Like Lucky Igbinedion, Oshiomhole has always neglected state issues to gallivant and cruise from one world capital to the other. But Igbinedion still had time to attend to problems in our hospitals and tertiary institutions. Igbinedion built the Stella Obsanjo Children and Women Hospital and built a twin hostel and lecture theatre in the state university, while he also established the Polytechnic at Usen. My little boy of 15 has often asked me if Oshiomhole was a curse to the state or just a punishment from God.

In spite of all these, he is confident that his report card will speak for him. But we ask, what are the things that Oshiomhole has done that he is singing about and for which he wants Edo people to show gratitude? Is it the eight-kilometre Benin Airport Road dualisation contract which he has recently re-awarded for a whopping sum, thus making it one of the most expensive road contracts in Nigeria? Whereas, for instance, Federal road contract of similar specifications (the East-West Road: Warri-P/Harcourt ) dual carriageway complete with drainage, streetlights and road dividers which was awarded by the Federal Ministry of Works cost significantly less! Is it the deceptive walkways or drainages at the gateways into Benin City to create the façade of infrastructure development in Edo State? Is it the amalgam of political contracts and/or flakey showmanship in some parts of the state that is equated to development?

If this is the stuff Oshiomhole is made, one may wish to ask how much he has spent for these from the revenues collected from the Federation Account, VAT, Excess Crude Account, 13 percent deviation, Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) which is now N1.7 billion monthly and the Capital Market since November 14, 2008 when he stepped in the saddle?

How much of this has gone into recurrent expenditure and overhead? How much of this has gone into infrastructure development and/or projects? Oshiomhole claimed over N80 billion has gone into infrastructure development; his Information Commissioner, Louis Odion, claimed over N120 billion has actually gone into the process.

Which of these claims do we now believe? Should Oshiomhole not tell Edo people how he has managed or mismanaged their funds? How arbitrarily, without recourse to due process advertisement (and competitive bidding), contracts have been awarded in the state?

In fact, Edo people are amazed that so much billions have been claimed to have gone into so little that is paraded as infrastructure revolution in Edo.

There can be no doubt that Edo people are fed up with this status quo, especially in their universal upheaval of disgust that erupts whenever they recollect what they have passed through in the past three years, thus helping their movements to disperse the darkness in high and low places and to spread the consoling illusion of change everywhere. Sadly their intellectuals are not helping enough as political catalysts, giving room for sycophants to thrive, on the pages of newspapers.

In Sule Lamido’s little Jigawa State, he has eliminated the Al-Marjiris from the streets of Dutse, through its reformed educational programmes. The Niger Delta states of Cross River, Akwa Ibom and Rivers, have reached their crescendo in the diversification of their oil-dominated economy to agriculture and tourism, while our sister Delta State has long forgotten that we were ever once in the same crucible as one state. Delta state has eliminated all sorts of levies in its schools and striding astronomically in its economic development. Yet, here we are in our own Edo a one-time pacesetter state where in the past three years we have progressed in error, while hypocrisy is being hallowed.

Today’s Edo state scenario reminds me vividly of my heyday of when teachers used to tell us moonlight stories from the Arabian Night tales.

Mr. OKHAREDIA  IHIMEKPEN, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Benin,