Obviously without mincing words, Governor Idris Ichalla Wada would have been the best Governor ever produced by Kogi State, but owing to some obvious reasons which are centrifugal in outlook, have undoubtedly reduced his government to near smeared imagine bastardization and lost at the face of daunting challenges that might cost him much as he allegedly seek re-election to occupy Lugard’s House again come November 21, 2015.
A proper check and in-depth study of his personality and comportment revealed lot of positivities in him. But with all these good virtues inherent in him, there is a disconnect with his real life-style and the way he is currently running the state of affairs of Kogi state. Hence, the reason we are where we are today in term of development. In him (Governor Wada) with due respect to his honourable office, I see nothing but a clash of his personality with what is inherent in the political space and the system he found himself. To this end, people generally believed he was a man of circumstances by the virtue of his ascendancy to the highly revered position of Governor. Some school of thoughts also assert that he (the governor was ill-prepared to handle matters of state, that he was brought in when he was not ready for governance hence his non-performance.
Outside politics, it has been argued that the Governor exude excellence, candor, prudency, humility, and other striking virtues, but to my greatest amazement the qualities they claimed he exhibits could not be marshaled into the act of good governance for the overall development of kogi state.
To this end, I was compelled to pop-up this poser: what went wrong that governor Wada has not been able to marry his good personality posture with the perfect delivery of good governance?
Some persons have argued in some quarters that the dwindling revenue allocations for the state was the real cause of him not delivering good governance and more dividends of democracy. Yes! Agreed! But I do not concur in totality with the proponents of this argument. I said this without malice or prejudice that it’s either the resources were mismanaged at the very inception he assumed office, spanning through his third year in office, before the issue of dwindling revenue came in or that kogi commonwealth are laundered and kept somewhere.
There are hues and cries by the governor and his cabinet that resources are very slim and meager but his Commissioners, Sas and other political appointees are receiving jumbo pay for doing nothing. Some of them don’t even have offices with which to work in but salaries and allowances are coming steadily for these political appointees as at when due while the civil servants taking home meager pays are left to suffer unpaid salaries and arrears.
For me, this is one of the areas(servicing political appointees) that the state is seriously experiencing leakages of her huge chuck of monies. For the state to move forward, His Excellency ,the governor should cut down the size of his political appointees with salaries and allowances slash in the face of the shortage of allocations and funds coming from the federation account and the IGR of the state. Obviously the administration is running a bogus government and this must be looked into so as to reduce cost of governance.
We all know that the tide of things have changed greatly in Nigeria, coupled with the fact that resources are scarce – knowing fully well that resources are scarce why have we waited that much before thinking of diversification? And even when we thought of it now there are no funds to bankroll projects. When we (the state) were busy collecting the fat allocations from the federation account, collecting excess crude money, sure-p funds etc, when the goings-on were good and rosy what did we do with those monies?
It is only probe panel that could address how those monies were spent and how much of the monies have been received under this dispensation
Conclusively, the simple reason Governor Wada could not match his character traits and his whole personality and the political system he found himself is the fact that the system he met is corrupt and the governor’s stand in correcting the abnormally is a very weak stand that lacks political will. Added to this, is the fact that most of the people around him are nothing short of sycophants who don’t tell him the truth – which would have helped him a lot, but simply because they don’t want to offend him and them keeping their jobs the truth has be suppressed and killed. His appointees go around telling him what or things that are not on ground and things he loves to hear.
By way of advise, the governor should learn how to interact much with different communities outside his cabinet regularly so as to keep himself abreast with the people’s needs and aspirations, as that will create room for getting first-hand information on issues that affect them and for proper aggregation and articulation of their interest. I said this because I felt the government is too far from the people. He is supposed to be the people’s governor, a governor that feels the pains and plights of the entire kogites. And this could be well achieved when he is more closer to them and not by governing from a distance.
– Abraham A. Achimugu writes from Lokoja
