There are many ways to be insane. And you do not need a medical degree to recognise insanity in all its other exhibitions as we have all over Nigeria – in the highest places.
But in Ondo state, The Punch newspaper report(http://bit.ly/an6HCS) of governor Olusegun Mimiko’s recent approval of a mind boggling N866M to former political office holders that served in the 18 local government councils(the 1999-2007 set) simply announces a new category of madness: In-Mimiko-sanity!
If you let it affect you for a second, you stand the risk of losing your very head. And the decision was ratified in the state executive council meeting. It makes your blood boil. Who are these people? The commissioners, these pretenders, of leaders, who cannot see the uttermost of evil in rewarding themselves with such sums of money, in a state where 22 persons recently burnt to death in a hapless road accident (http://bit.ly/aQFUkJ) or wait, this (http://bit.ly/9hMcGJ) where at least 22 young children lost their lives on what should be routine cross-country trip – an excursion!
Has it not occurred to the folks in, and around Alagbaka that these accidents are preventable, if we had functional roads? You have to wonder who is prioritising projects and expenditure in the Ondo state government who proposed that such a cut of the state budget should go into the pockets of the 1999-2007 set of so-called politicians who cannot point to a single specific impact they made in their local communities let alone in the broader lives of the citizens they pretended to have led. It is pathetic! That is In-Mimiko-Sanity for you.
The symptoms of this particular In-Mimiko-sanity begins to hurt you even more when you imagine what wonders N866M could achieve in an Ondo state so endowed with brightly and scholarly people, and history.
Think for a second what a fully furnished 24-hour Internet Information centre hosted right at the heart of the Ondo state library can do to empower the youthful masses of Ondo state, were governor Mimiko’s government focused enough to spend that money in a solar operated free-for-all-citizen cyber-centre ? You would need a fraction of N866M to pull it off but not when you suffer from In-mimiko-sanity.
Take the OSRC – and they have a penchant for changing that name but I refer to the Ondo state broadcasting outfit; It takes only a walk around their Oba-Ile studios to observe the derelict that has become of what was once one of the best broadcast channels you could listen to, or watch.
Time was, when OSRC covered events real-time with Outside-broadcast vehicles, in super-clean television colours. Today, it is self evident no serious person bothers with OSRC anymore. The quality of the programming, the quality of the broadcasters, and the quality of the equipment at their disposal is benchmarked at the 80’s level that the glorious Pa. Ajasin administration left-over. Think of what a serious government – of brave, honest and determined, and of course, free from in-mimiko-sanity people – can do to such an institution with almost One Billion Naira? Dreams!
Ondo state has one of the most fertile landscapes in the whole namespace called Nigeria. With a careful attention to maximising production output, and injection of radical new ideas into production-methods, just think of what these sums of money can do to a plantation of yam? Or a massive village thought out, and supported to produce poultry – chicken and eggs – somewhere in the middle of Igbatoro village or somewhere in the heartland of Oke-Igbo.
No! Governor Mimiko, and his now certified collection of clowns-co, better for the EXCO as they like to parade themselves, will rather make you satisfy yourself with their endless ‘plans’ to build this; or ‘plans’ to do that.
And it is all truly disgraceful when you remind yourself this is an administration that rode on the back of popular confidence, and support – as the very patient people of Ondo state did their utmost to exorcise the wholesome wastefulness and grade A thoughtfulness of the penultimate governor Olusegun Agagu era.
Still, all forms of Insanity do lend itself to cure.
The people of Ondo state have consistently shown over the years, that while they may not have, yet, the sophistication to demand on-the-spot rationalisation for the trust and confidence they place on their government and how it is abused, they do not have a diminished sense of auditing.
The people of Ondo state have an acute sense of justice and a deeply rooted notion of moral probity. Thus, you can best your last kobo that with more and more bizarre authority-stealing-approval of monies like this, from Olusegun Mimiko’s government, the people of Ondo state are already counting down, that a day will come when this In-mimiko-sanity will be over.
Governor Mimiko will do well to wonder for himself: when and where did I catch this madness? Or is it just a question of being surrounded by parasites from his previous PDP who are vectors of this disease?
Notwithstanding, the people of Ondo state voted for Dr. Olusegun Mimiko when it was crunch election time. They must have thought he had the insight to diagnose insanity. No one is sure, Mimiko knows about In-mimiko-sanity yet but it is never too late to consult with his most trust medical, or rather philosophical sources…
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Olusegun Obasanjo, is one of Nigeria's lucky (mis)leaders.
