Oyinlola, PDP and Lagos State

THE Governor of Osun State, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, betrayed the sorry state of affairs at the highest level of governance in Nigeria in his recent media interview. Among other jejune and ill-conceived arguments that he offered, he stated that "it is the aspiration of PDP to bring into our fold, Lagos State, as it has remained the only state in the whole of the South-West geo-political zone that is still outside the ruling party. We wouldn't want them to miss out on the development efforts that are derivable from the centre. Maybe, they could hold this long because of the revenue base."

Despite his limitation, it is surprising that Oyinlola could not see the contradiction in his ill-wish for Lagos regarding his so-called "development effort". This is what the Yoruba would call "da bi mo ti da" (literally, "become what I am"), indicating a wish by a lowly person that those better placed than him or her drop to his or her level. Those of us in Osun State who have lived under the misrule of the Oyinlola and the PDP and the absolute lack of vision displayed by the man and his colleagues in the other states of Western Nigeria would, of course, not wish that the people of Lagos State, the only state standing in the region today, degenerate to the level of the other PDP states in the region.

Pray, what "development effort" has the retired soldier made in Osun State that can be recommended to Lagos State? The devastation that he wrought while he was a military administrator of Lagos State remains fresh in the people's mind. Should Lagos State suffer the fate of other PDP states in Yorubaland, then the proud Yoruba people, who have the legacy of the good public administration from the onset of self-rule in the 1950s, should give up on the little window open to them to recover their commonwealth from the marauding band masquerading as administrators in both the region and the centre. Is it the deterioration in public service delivery that the people of Oyo State have witnessed under the PDP government - particularly under Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala, the ex-policeman who has brought all that is vile and condemnable in the Force to bear in his "administration" of a once-showpiece state - that would be the envy of Lagosians?

Is it the obscene personalisation of power and morbid self-aggrandisement that mistakes itself for modern governance in Ogun State, where the governor displays more billboards of his smiling self than actual projects that the Lagosians would pray for? Is it the fumbling incompetence in Ekiti State or the obstinate maladministration in Ondo State - and the electoral robbery in both Ekiti and Ondo States? Or the absolute lack of vision, the gaping incompetence of, and electoral fraud perpetrated by, the retired soldier in Osun State?

If we even go beyond the region, only a man who has not lived in Nigeria since 1999 or read and heard about the country since then would recommend PDP's "development efforts" to any serious country, state or people. Under Obasanjo, the PDP took Nigeria and tried to squeeze her dry. Since the crude oil, the nation's cash-cow, refused to dry up and with its price rising, the band of rogues in the party went to town. In eight years, Obasanjo's PDP killed dreams, ended hope and turned a once virile nation that was full of aspirations for a better future at the close of the murderous era of General Sani Abacha, into a desolate country. The current probes going on in the PDP-controlled National Assembly and the several revelations since the termination of Obasanjo's regrettable rule are enough evidence of the devastation wrought on the country by the PDP.

Obasanjo's PDP successor has fared no better in terms of meeting the yearning of the people. While President Musa Yar'Adua attended to his private worries - which should have conditioned him, in the first place, to decline such an energy-sapping and very demanding job as that of the president of Africa's biggest democracy - millions of Nigerians go to bed hungry every day. If Yar'Adua has spent a whole year studying how to rescue Nigeria, what is he going to do in the remaining three years? On the whole, in nine years, the PDP has bastardised Nigeria's federalism, rebuffed every move to return the country to sanity and the legacy that was laid by the founding fathers in terms of the political organisation of the country and failed woefully to give hope to an abused people, Nigerians. This regrettable state of affairs is what Oyinlola wishes for Lagos State.

Said Oyinlola in the interview: "We want the entire South-West to have the opportunity of benefiting from the type of federalism we are practising. If we were to practise federalism to the letter, one wouldn't be much disturbed. But with the kind of federalism, where everything is at the centre in Abuja, it will not augur well for our people in the South West generally if we don't collectively work to derive the dividends of democracy for our people. That's why we are of the hope that we would work strenuously to bring Lagos into the PDP family."

Oyinlola's and the PDP's "federalism to the letter" or what he called their "kind of federalism" does not bode well for a comatose country, it does not augur well for the people of Western Nigeria and it is not good for a dynamic state like Lagos. It is a "federalism" that not only fails to promote good governance at the centre, it is a "federalism" that sabotages any area of the country where there is good governance and eventually ends the comparative good life enjoyed in such area of the country - like Western Nigeria. This is what the martial federalism that Oyinlola participated in and wishes for Lagos State did to Yorubaland. These characters have forced on us the tradition of low-quality public administration and under-performing public servants that they are used to. That is why today, an Alao-Akala can occupy the same Government House where the likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Bola Ige once hosted the cream of our people.