RECENTLY, a group of people who identified themselves as ex-students union leaders bought spaces in the newspapers to admonish Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, Edo State governor, to take the path of honour.

The governor’s administration, they surmise, has wrought serious damage on the education sector, particularly, the state-owned Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma. The rot, they went on, would continue particularly because the Governor’s palliative measures introduced to cushion the effects of the recent oil subsidy removal by the Federal Government were grossly inadequate. In other words, it was a reflection of the fact that he has no intention of taking the state education sector out of the woods.

The development, they went on, reminds them of the good old days of previous administrations whose commitment to the development of the sector brought real nostalgia to them. In particular, they remember blissfully, the building of a twin hostel, tarring of roads and building of a lecture theatre in Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, setting up of a state Institute of Technology, Usen, and re-establishment of the College of Education, Igueben.

For all the anomalies, they admonished the Comrade Governor to do the right thing by deploying the monies accruable to the state from the subsidy removal funds, which they put at N500 million, to reintroduce bursary allowance and scholarship scheme.

Not given to knowing when to stop abusing common sense, the group concluded by declaring that they are waiting for the Governor’s response before “we know the noble path of honour to take on the issues”.

For all observers of socio-political development in Edo State, going through issues presented in the document, none is left in any doubt regarding its source. It is a typical pro-opposition document that is fraught with lies and half-truths. A day after the publication hit the streets, a number of ex-students whose signatures appeared on it, livid with rage, went to town looking for those who generated the document. They were nowhere to be found.

At the risk of overstating the obvious, it may be right to put certain things into proper perspective once more. At the advent of the current democratic dispensation, hopes were high that at last Edo State was headed for better times.

There were more than enough reasons to nurse the hope. Things started not so badly until those entrusted with the affairs of the state decided to toe the line of selfishness rather than work for the collective good of the state. Thus, ten years after the birth of hope for a state in dire need, it became worse than it was. Obviously, these are the same people and administrations the authors remember with nostalgia. Need anyone say so much for the source or motive?

The people of the state are well aware of those who stole their hope. They are now in opposition. And they have continued to crave for the ignoble past from which forward-looking people of the state want to forget. If nothing else, that explains why the people chose to consign them to political oblivion and indeed, the ignoble side of the state’s history instead of chasing the evil doers to Hades for the suffering that pervaded their years of pain. In opting to move forward, they elected Oshiomhole who is responsible for the all-sector, including education, rediscovery renaissance that has brought an avalanche of infrastructural development the people of the state can testify to today. Since the advent of his administration, it is on record that many of the things the opposition claimed can never happen in the state are happening everywhere across the state for all to see. Is that the same man’s administration the authors are accusing of leading the education sector into quagmire?
But the greatest lie on the document came to the fore on Thursday, February 17, 2012 when student union leaders from all the institutions of higher learning in the state paid the Governor a courtesy call. They did not only dissociate themselves from the document and its source, they also pledged their unalloyed loyalty to him.

Ironically, the publication was entitled “Oshiomhole should take the path of honour”. One would have expected the authors to employ honour as guiding light.

But because they were in a hurry to do their sponsors’ bidding, they forgot that the Oshiomhole administration is among other developmental strides in institutions of higher learning in the state, constructing two new hostels and an administrative building in Ambrose Alli University, the focus of the authors’ argument.

Typically, they have shown themselves to be replica prophets who only see the specks in other people’s eyes without noticing the log in their own eyes.

Mr. ERNEST OMOARELOJIE,  a commentator on national issues, wrote from Benin City, Edo State.