‘It Isn’t Going to be All Partying under Otoge’
Change was never going to be rosy or flamboyantly flowery the way we knew it. Things weren’t going to remain the same. There isn’t going to be free money to throw around. And there definitely wouldn’t be a chance for anyone to throw their weight around to oppress fellow human beings in the name of serving in government. Government house bazaar of old can no longer hold. But there was going to be some pushback. Humans are mostly averse to change. But that is what Otoge means: change. Or did people ever think those chants of Otoge were just sloganeering? Did a whole lot of people actually think that the defeat of the old order birthed a new one where the only difference are just the persona? No, this is certainly not a perception shared by Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq.
The administration, given the prudent orientation of its head, has definitely stabilised, considering the economic and COVID-19 turbulence of the past few months. This is particularly true when one considers the low turnover of appointees so far. Coming from diverse professional careers and various socioeconomic backgrounds, the appointees are weathering the storm. Much as everyone desires a good life, the ethos of this Administration is service first. Given the Kwara journey, many expected the appointees to own new houses and fleet of expensive cars by now. But so frugal is the administration that the only set of vehicles the government has procured thus far are those used for service delivery to the people especially in the civil service. No appointee has received government funds to purchase personal cars. None has got public funds to procure houses. In the years past, appointees got as high as N16m each of public funds to buy themselves good cars. How do you demand for such a luxury under an administration headed by a man who drives a car he bought with his own money? While it is not a crime or abnormal for government to make its appointees comfortable, the thinking of the Governor is that the people have for too long been deprived of things as basic as water. He thinks they deserve a better deal this time in fulfillment of his promise to them, thus rewarding their choice of a new political direction.
But the truth is that this was not the norm in Kwara. Surrounded and constantly derided by some persons, probably even some in the family, whose expectations and perception of public office were shaped by the old order where sudden wealth was the hallmark of public office and where public appointees paid the exorbitant tuition of their children in foreign schools or lavishly funded the wedding of their children and so on, it is natural for some persons to feel deflated following a man whose conception of Otoge is for things to be done differently.
Faced with the prospect of ‘our people’ saying they risk coming out of government poorer and without status cars in their garage, it will not be unusual to see some appointees taking a walk. The noise of ‘enugbe’ in the political and social circles of Kwara sums up this thinking. Enugbe does not mean that the government is not performing. Everyone agrees the Governor is doing excellently well, particularly at the level of infrastructural development and promptly providing basic amenities of life