Akala and the looting of patrimony

A few days after losing his reelection bid, Governor Christopher Alao Akala of Oyo State, with his characteristic sardonic humour, enacted a law ostensibly to liberalise the leadership of Oyo State Council of Traditional Rulers.

The hidden motive was to create disharmony between the Soun of Ogbomosho, the Olubadan of Ibadan, both of whom he had been at war and the Alafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, with whom he equally maintains a no love lost relationship following the latter’s open campaign against his reelection. But the Obas saw through Akala’s mischief. They rejected his Greek gift.

To discerning observers of Alao Akala’s motor park brand of politics, Oba Adeyemi, a veteran of many wars, was a wrong choice as adversary especially by a governor who has had all his past battles fought by others. His first emergence as Governor following illegal impeachment of his boss, Rasheed Ladoja was the outcome of a web of intrigues by his god fathers, Lamidi Adedibu, and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. He similarly played little or no role in his own electoral victory through a flawed election in 2007. Lamidi Adedibu, the garrison commander of Ibadan politics and his gang, masquerading as members of road transport workers union ensured that. He was similarly not privy to the behind the scene arrangements that got him off the EFCC hook in 2006 long after the organisation’s interim report had indicted him for alleged corrupt practices. Clumsy governor Akala, in picking on Oba Adeyemi has lost more than his last political battle.

Last Wednesday, the monarch who has never been afraid to fight alone, as long as it is on behalf of his people, attacked clueless and exhausted Akala at his weakest –corruption and underhand methods of handling state affairs. He alerted the incoming Governor of Oyo State of the ongoing culture of looting of the people’s patrimony. He as the custodian of the people’s values is troubled by Akala administration’s alleged sales of government quarters in the Government Reservation Areas {GRA}, the housing estates and District Officers residences to those in government with access to government money. He therefore wants the incoming government to probe the source of the outrageous amounts expended in purchasing appropriated government buildings.

If we were looking for reason to confirm Akala’s inept handling of affairs of the state in the last four years as alleged by his political foes, his indiscreet answer to the Oba’s weighty allegation provided just that. His reckless response was a self righteous defense of a squalid behaviour unbecoming of a true representative of the people. Speaking through his spokesman, Dotun Oyelade, he admitted that ‘a body of senior civil servants headed by the Head of Service oversaw the bidding exercise’ in which about 30 percent of civil servants are beneficiaries’ As for the proceeds from the sales, he added that ‘the N36 billion collected from the exercise is intact in the bank for the Contributory Pension Scheme’.

But that was not the issue that troubled the Oba. He had raised a moral issue as to the propriety of selling national patrimony to transient temporary power holders. Unfortunately, Governor Akala’s impulsive response evaded this. But even at that, the governor has not told us why Oyo State had to sell the people’s patrimony in order to meet its obligation to workers whose salaries he has increased on the eve of his departure from office.

But to be fair to Governor Alao-Akala, the culture of looting the national patrimony by those saddled with the responsibility of holding them in trust for the people did not start with him. It did not even start with the new emergent post colonial leaders who inherited not only political power but also the perquisites of office of the departing civil servants. Without clear appreciation of the policy thrust of colonial administration’s decision to provide furnished apartments in Government Reservation Areas for colonial civil servants who were birds of passage as they moved around an empire, covering such far and wide places like Canada, India, Ceylon and elsewhere in Africa, our new emergent leaders saw them as perquisites of office .They suddenly discovered it was unsafe for them to live among those they were employed to serve.

The post colonial Nigerian new emergent leaders abandoned their houses and moved to the mansions vacated by the departing expatriates. Many of the emerging new political leaders experienced for the first time in their lives, luxuries they never dreamt off. Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa for instance claimed his first flush toilet was in his official District Officers residence in Bauchi. But Balewa along with our other founding fathers were not national looters. It is to their great credit that their official mansions were never converted to personal houses. We have no information of private houses belonging to Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa.

Dr.Nnamdi Azikiwe or Obafemi Awolowo in Ikoyi or Victoria Island. They left intact all they acquired on our behalf as national patrimony.

The culture of looting started with the military especially General Babangida regime. Then it became a fad for retiring top civil servants, judges, military administrators and ministers to approve huge expenditures towards renovation of their official houses only to be bought at an amount much below the cost of renovation. Many of these men re-emerged in the Fourth Republic as National Assembly leaders. As part of the greed, Babangida signed a retroactive decree to confiscate the Osborne privately reclaimed land, which was later, shared out as parting gift to his transitional ministers. It is also on record that this economic policy was adopted by his military administrators to sell state owned economic concerns to themselves by proxy at the expense of the people.

With the emergence of Obasanjo, who as a soldier, shares with Babangida, a common military culture of looting conquered territories, sharing of our national patrimony among PDP buccaneers became brazen. With its privatization policies anchored by Vice President Abubakar Atiku; (1999-2003) nearly all viable government concerns were sold to PDP members and their sympathizers. With little left to sell to themselves, the ever resourceful parasitic elite came up with monetization policy ostensibly to check corruption. But not even the corruption chief crusader cared to find out how civil servants raised millions to purchase choice properties that belong to all in Abuja, Port Harcourt and Ikoyi, Lagos.

Governor Fashola of Lagos is already in court trying to frustrate collaborators in the theft of our national patrimony through the judicial process. We expect the Ajimobi administration in Oyo and indeed the new governors of the Southwest states to revisit all the illegal sales carried out under Babangida regime and Obasnjo PDP administration. And at the national level, if President Jonathan has his eyes on history, he must probe the sharing of our national patrimony by greedy military leaders who fraudulently proclaimed ‘for their future we sacrifice our present’ and their new breed PDP politicians. If he fails to do so, our nation will one day rediscover itself and our children will revisit the looting of our national patrimony.

Jide Oluwajuyitan Writes