If recent reactions from the denizens over jaundiced and atrocious policies of government are worth worrying about , one might be tempted to recommend stiff and barbaric measures to solving the problem of inept leadership, and particularly the betrayal of trust reposed on those who represent us.
It sounds bizarre to recommend the cancer approach to solving the problem of inept leadership in Warri north. On diagnosis, a cancerous part of the body is cut off to prevent the cancer from spreading to other parts of the body. This medical procedure has no sympathy for the various theories of punishment. There will be no need for rehabilitation. Just put an end to the menace by identifying and plucking out the soul.
This old man, now late and a Marxist I want to suspect, once said that himself and another leader of the Koko community should be executed summarily if the community was to find peace. Strange and insidious as it was, the old man had proffered a solution to the leadership conundrum of the Koko of his time.
Bizarre and weird, you want to say. Though this recommendation reeks of savagery, barbarism and in itself unlawful, it is a sincere and selfless attempt to stamp out the twin menace and scourge known as corruption and inept leadership that had over times held our country and various communities by the jugular. The underlying principle behind the recommendation is simply thus; protect other seeds by isolating or removing the corrupt one from circulation.
In Russia, China and most countries of Asia and Eastern Europe, corrupt officials are unapologetically executed and their corpses are subsumed in acid. Late Jerry John Rawlings (1947-2021) attempted this in Ghana when he executed corrupt officials on taking over power through a military putsch because he wanted to prevent others from being infested by the corruption bug. Ghanaians hailed Rawlings’ cancer approach.
We cannot but less recommend that the cancer approach of ‘plucking out the soul’ be applied as a therapy to the Warri North leadership conundrum. If for nothing, but the fact that there are other mild and humane options that are open to solving the leadership menace plaguing the oil rich council area since it was created by a military fiat in 1999.
For instance, a leader found wanting could be removed from such a position through election, “and his office let others take”(Acts:1v20). Unlike the forgone recommendation, reform can be achieved without necessarily spilling blood. Hence, credible election which has been adjudged the most civilized and peaceful means of picking or electing leaders across organisations, institutions and nations should be the fad and new normal amongst both civilized and uncivilized nations of the world.
Because the Warri North leadership problem is legendry and cancerous, it was high time we had stopped playing to the gallery. Equally, we should stop wearing complacent faces as if all is well with us. The urgency of the Warri North situation thus calls for concerted effort. It’s only in Warri north that secondary school dropouts are voted and elected as councillors. The council is also notorious for maladministration. Its being rumoured that what they do in Warri north yearly is recycling short term budget plans. This means that the council is ran without an annual budget. The skewed custom is to change dates and in some cases, figures.
The council has few primary schools to provide for. No infrastructural challenges like its counterpart urban councils yet, most times the council is said to be broke! Not really broken in the right sense of the word, but because leaders of the council had at all times ingratiated themselves to the detriment of the people.
What can one say of a council area that has no programme designed to encourage education and craftsmanship at a time when unemployment is soaring up geometrically. Indigenes of the council area who slave to keep themselves in higher institutions are not encouraged by way of paying bursary to them like others benefited in the tail end of the 1990s and 2000s.
There is no doubting the fact that those good old days are gone, but it can be replicated or at best revived, considering the humongous wealth at the disposal of the administrators of Warri north council. I was privileged to have travelled extensively around the council area and particularly into the dark -greenish mangroves of the Benin river. Being also a Koko resident has boosted my knowledge of the Warri North council. By virtue of these acquaintances, I can beat my chest and say that I have a privileged firsthand knowledge of happenings in the council area. These 20 years that I have keenly observed successive administrators mess up the resources of the council area, it should be taken that I can pass a valid judgement on those that have mounted the dais of the Warri North chairmanship seat. With dismay, I can recall how most of these administrators plunged the council area into a cesspool of avoidable bankruptcy.
Just as it is worth the while to bring to public knowledge those that were responsible for the many woes of the Warri North LGA, it’s also imperative to douse the trajectories of the council area with a little period of purposeful leadership. Unequivocally, the leadership of Hon. Godwin Toritseju Ebosa stood out as a tiny dot in the whole rots.
There was a Chairman who auctioned all the official vehicles in the council including the one meant for him without first buying even one! He didn’t stop at auctioning official vehicles, but also sold generating plants, electronics and furniture in the council’s lodge to himself and his cronies. The question is, what kind of chairman would do this to his own people? The vehicles and other council properties which he was led into auctioning by one Akamba, the council’s HPM at that time, were purchased by Hon. Ebosa, whose term in office from popular views and reports in public domain ranks very close to that of Hon. Benson Asin was the best and only period the Warri north council was in good hands.
Now, it would amount to merely splitting of hairs to begin to trade blame. Having identified the problems of the Warri North LGA, it is time to look at ways to resuscitate the haling LGA. Most times, the masses feel that they have no stake or are inconsequential in the reformation processes. This erroneous thinking has been so until the political class finally messed up the entire system leaving Warri north in comatose. Politically, how do we redeem Warri north ? First, are we in agreement to redeem the council from the oligarchies presently in place? Nothing can be done by way of proxy or undoing the abnormal. Hence, the masses are even more relevant in the crusade against the twin problems of corruption and inept leadership.
Take for instance, politicians are not known for rigging elections directly. They find the masses, especially the jobless ones as veritable tools to manipulate election results. So when they got into offices, the fear that they may be voted out of office in future elections if they failed to perform won’t be there as elections in Warri north have become ‘Cash and Carry.’
The foregoing has been our albatross in Warri North. Infact, what is obtainable in the LGA is a system of “undemocratic democracy” where leaders ingratiate themselves by hand picking those who represent us at whatever capacity. What we have in Warri North is a smokescreen and a shambolic democracy where candidates win elections from the comfort of their sitting rooms.
A young man recently approached me with an ambition to contest the Koko ward (6) councillorship election. He is of impeccable character, at least honest to some extent, and importantly, he won’t turn out a “sidon look or rubber stamp ” councillor, if he wins. The riddle here is, such candidates, and several others like him are never allowed to see the light in Warri North. Reason remains that in Warri North LGA, names of political office holders are compiled in the homes of some self acclaimed oligarchies. Little reason stack illiterates were selected and appointed as councillors and supervisory councillors respectively in the immediate past administrations of the council.
The last time we had a proper election in the council area was in 1999. The contest between PDP and the defunct ANPP for the council’s political offices was a demonstration of a true democracy. When the dust finally settled, PDP narrowly won the chairmanship seat. And the defeated ANPP candidate, Barr. Alasha Wilson had to contest the election results at the tribunal. Perhaps the reason is the winner of the 1999 Warri North chairmanship election, Hon. Benson Asin had to justify his 3yrs in office. As I write, the achievement of Hon. Asin stands to be beaten.
That I have not bother to mention the names of some of the past Chairmen including the present Chairman who has just started his three years term on a very wrong track is because they are not worth mentioning, and this writer would not want to belabour readers with their escapades while they were in office. The few good ones I have mentioned.
Let me quickly add here that a one time Chairman of the council, recently Chairman I must say travelled out to Akosombo, Ghana with a fair large entourage to study the breeding of tilapia. This Chairman who hails from Ebohimi could not see the potentials of his community in the breeding of tilapias but saw that of faraway Akosombo all to sleaze the council resources. I make bold to say that this is the kind of inept leadership in Warri north that should give those in charge sleepless nights.
In the last LGA election in the state, political tempo in other council areas were at a fever pitch crescendo, posters of various shapes and colours dot the streets, but in Warri North, the situation was a sharp contrast because of the anti democratic tradition of hand picking candidates to fill political offices. Candidates with political ambitions are afraid to throw their hats into the ring because doing so without first hearing from the oligarchies would amounted to a political suicide. I have always had problems with the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for its notoriety in this kind of anti democratic practice. This is not to say that other political parties are free from the practice.
To save the leadership of the PDP the agony of humiliation, the Warri North PDP should feed-in sellable candidates and allow proper elections to hold. An iron in the hands of a blacksmith comes out in the finest shape when it is fiercely heated; candidates who got into offices without proper elections abuse such offices. The reason proper elections should be encouraged in Warri North is for the past not to repeat itself. The past where round pegs are fitted in square holes is chiefly responsible for our woes in Warri North.
The Itsekiris and the Ijaws of the Benin river are suffering the most for this new normal. Ironically, the Warri North LGA is 95% of the Benin river, and those from the Benin river, politically, calls the shorts! All the chairmen that had presided over the LGA were from the Benin river, yet, the Benin river is at best a euphemism for gross neglect.
