THE  poor kid from the plains, Hugo Chavez transited a week ago. In response, a large swathe of humanity stood still.

The most important contribution of the heir to the liberator of Latin America, Simon Bolivar, is that he put the big ‘D’ back into development as the propelling force of government.

The ‘D’ small or large in development had actually hitherto gone out of fashion. It had been succeeded by the age of the racketeers and the speculators. When the 1950s and early 1960s Secretary-General of the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Latin America, Andre Günter Frank, coined the phrase, the ‘Development of Underdevelopment’, little could he have known that he was predicting the future.

When that dismal future came, the very concept of development as a structured and coherent imperative of the governmental process flew out of the window. It was also the age of intellectual dishonesty writ large. Crass Shibboleth’s such as ‘no alternative to SAP’ (the Structural Adjustment Programme), ‘market- driven reforms’ and all manner of catch-phrases gradually replaced the very idea of reasoned thinking and rigour in  analyses and debates.

This is why the Hugo Chavez intervention was so remarkable. In his 14 years in power, Chavez actually believed he had a social contract with the down-trodden in Venezuela. In contradistinction to what was at the time an unfashionable proposition, he did not live in mortal fear of the sensitivities of and the implied threats of the international credit rating agencies.

Chavez decisively shifted the territory of debate. This is crucial as the actions of so many ‘leaders’ tend to give the impression that the credit ratings agencies in spite of their deplorable track record had replaced the electorate as well as  the enforcement of the social contract as the leit motif for having a government in place. In this way he was a decisive game changer.

The shift in the territory of debate is important if development is to once again take the centre stage. In Nigeria, for example we still have at least three ministers in charge of strategic economic ministries, who obviously and fervently believe that the opinion of the credit rating agencies is the only leit motif for being in government.

This sort of mindset is bothersome. In contradiction, a few weeks ago in London, the credit ratings agency downgrade of the British economy was met with a bored shrug. The heavens strangely enough did not fall.

This would not have been the reaction to a downgrade a few years ago. Fortunately, this shows that the overblown allure of the credit agencies is mercifully waning. The intervention of Chavez, frankly in an unnerving way, showed up the vacuous duplicity and lack of concern of Nigeria’s political establishment. Blow-by-blow, to use the boxing parlance, it was no contest. Chavez could account for billions of dollars of petrol-dollars unlike our self-serving establishment.

Personally incorruptible, he created with great determination, a superb healthcare system and a society of very high literacy rate.

The social gains in Venezuela, like those of our own Chief Obafemi Awolowo as Premier of Western Region in the 1950s, are irreversible. The terrain of debate had been that decisively altered. This is why Awolowo’s name is still so very handy in winning elections in Western Nigeria.

If Chavez is the self-acclaimed heir to the liberator Simon Bolivar, here too, we have our own heir’s to the Awolowo/ Michael Okpara type social democratic tradition. Personally, I kept thinking like so many did, of OsunState’s get-up-and-go Rauf Aregbesola when I heard that Chavez had passed on. The wily Ijesha fox has after all intervened very much in the same game-changing way.

To go further with our comparison, Venezuela will now historically be divided into pre and post-Chavez. In OsunState too, it will eventually be pre and post-Aregbesola. Before Chavez, it was not very pleasant to be outside the charmed privileged circle in that country. For those outside it was a life sentence of poverty, disease and illiteracy. The Chavez intervention reversed the trend and history will absolve him.

Pre-AregbesolaOsunState was a cerebral film producer’s delight. The atmosphere was tragic-comedy writ large. OsunState’s ancient regime simply reinvigorated the concept of maladministration as in ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’. When the ancient regime was kicked out by the courts, the people simply became delirious.

Luckily for them, Aregbesola, like Chavez has not flunked the Kumbaya Moment. ‘Kumbaya’ is not an exaggeration, since the people pre-Aregbe and pre-Chavez were actually lamenting that,’ this wahala is too much, oh my lord come-by-here (kumbaya)’. The resemblance to Chavez is highlighted because the State of Osun helmsman is carrying out a profound piece of social engineering.

The symbol, as he his often endearingly referred to, has been very hyperactive in a structured sort of way. Like Chavez he has put the big ‘D’ back into development. In OsunState the social engineering has actually focused on jobs-led growth.

The government’s action has woven a synergy around the state’s economy. An example is the way the provision of school uniforms to public school students has spurned a garment industry capable of procuring export orders from the United States of America.

The Aregbesola revolution is also focused on using the surplus from increased agricultural production as the launch-pad for agro-allied industralisation. The symbol of good governance in the State of Osun   links up with Simon Bolivars’ heir in Venezuela  because both men have an almost child-like fascination with putting the big ‘D’ back into development by re-directing capital into the social and physical infrastructure.

In the Nigerian context, this involves a move away from consumption in the direction of production. It entails a large dose of fiscal rectitude wrapped around the old social democratic rallying slogan of – macroeconomic stability as the way to achieve social justice’.

Here it is not only Aregbesola on the good foot, of course. Superb efforts in the same direction are coming from Lagos State’s Babatunde Fashola, Ekiti’s intellectual-in-residence-Fayemi, Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and a few others.

Overall, the light at the end of the tunnel comes from the shift in thinking that human beings should once again become the raison d’etre for anyone  being in government in the first place. As in Venezuela, the shoeless and the shirtless ones can heave a sigh of relief and savour that Kumbaya Moment.

Mr.  AYO BADMUS, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Lagos.