Impunity: Getting awful in Benin
In this era of gender equality, it sounded most unbelievable to read in the dailies about a lady managing director of a power distribution company being sent out of a meeting of legislators and VIPs in the power sector in the Governor’s office in Benin by the state governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki. The lady, Mrs Funke Osibodu was according to reports representing her company BEDC when the governor allegedly asked her to leave and later explained to the confused and embarrassed visitors that the BEDC has been solely responsible for persistent power failure in the state for months and has frustrated moves by the state government to source for other vehicles of power generation and distribution . Investigations on the matter have however revealed that the sending out was a hoax to ridicule the BEDC and belittle the MD, an accomplished banker who held fort successfully in a leading Nigerian bank some years ago. But then, while the governor has every right to be angry for poor power availability like all Nigerians and indeed all state governors, it is quite unkind and ungentlemanly to treat anyone, especially a lady, the way the Edo authorities made out the false impression that the BEDC Managing Director was sent out of the Governor’s Office when that was not the case.
The purported sending out of the lady however is a lesson in how not to solve a problem and it is also a chilling example of the misuse of power. Indeed it was obvious at the meeting with the stakeholders that the governor was purportedly fed up rightly or wrongly with the BEDC and its boss .Yet that should not be mischievously misconstrued as a sending out of a CEO from a meeting.
Incidentally power distribution was the grouse of the Edo State governor with the BEDC, but the governor has used political power to humiliate and dent the corporate image of a corporate entity in the cause of the performance of the lawful duty of that entity. That is not only unfair and unjust, it is not right at all. For an elected political leader, the governor has sent a wrong signal in Edo State on power distribution and its challenges, and has put the lives and dignity of workers in the power sector on the line in the way and manner he has maligned the CEO of the major power distributor in his state. One expects the governor to have a rethink and do the needful and extend an olive branch to Mrs Osibodu as whatever differences there were between the state and the BEDC should not be taken as personal. And she should not have been berated so publicly and aspersion cast on her company’s performance by a governor responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the state in which her company BEDC, has legitimate jurisdiction for the distribution of electricity.
The problems of power generation and distribution in Nigeria are well known and not peculiar to Edo State . The Minister of Power, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola spends most of his briefings asking Nigerians to bear with the government because of the difficulties in supplying energy to homes and industries. Nigerians know he is not deceiving them and we have not heard that the minister has been shouted down or stoned or treated like a pariah at any meeting on the challenges of the power sector. So what right has a state governor refusing to dialogue with a relevant corporate body and enabler looking for ways to make a state have power regularly like the Power Minister in Abuja who knows what is at stake?
Certainly a governor should know better than the average suffering Nigerian and should be more circumspect and more responsible in apportioning blames for lack of power in his domain. The Edo State Governor certainly owes the MD of BEDC an apology for embarrassing her for the problems of power failure in his state .That is the only way to show that he is not a military governor as even such people often refer to each other as - an officer and a gentleman - a claim we believe the governor too should be able to make more so as a democratically elected governor
Emeka Osagie, Benin