≈Prof. Olugbenga Oke-Samuel
Idanre Hills.
When the number first went round, many of us laughed it off as rumor. Then Ondo State released the official list: 1 commissioner-designate, 3 Special Advisers, 90 Senior Special Assistants, 910 Special Assistants. One thousand appointees. The joke was never a joke.
Ondo has no industries to speak of. Its infrastructure is begging for attention. Yet the state is about to spend colossal sums on aides who will contribute nothing to its growth. This isn’t governance. It’s waste, dressed up in official letterhead.
No rationale. No cost-benefit case. Just “strengthening governance” and “service delivery” this is the official standard cover language. What problem does an army of 1,000 political appointees solve that a lean, capable team of 100 couldn’t?
This is stomach infrastructure, not state infrastructure. Call it what it is: jobs for the boys. Advanced stomach infrastructure. Many of these Special Assistants will never have an office, a desk, or a chair. Many will never write a memo.
Many will never meet the governor, not once, in his entire tenure. Their appointment letter may be the only proof government ever noticed them. No one is against empowering our young people or politicians, the Governor is known to be committed to entrepreneurship, methinks this should have been a platform to build the capacities of these party hangers on.
Train some of these people, grant them loans and monitor the businesses, with this, the state should expect a multiplier effect in no time. This is more sustainable than doling out money for doing nothing than being hallelujah boys.
In the midst of this, the question is where is the House of Assembly?
Appropriating public funds and checking executive excesses is the legislature’s job. The silence of the House of Assembly while the budget balloons to fund 1,000 largely ceremonial posts is a monumental failure, a betrayal of the trust and mandate of the people just as serious as the appointments themselves.
Welcome to Governance 101 in Ondo State where numbers replace outcomes, and patronage replaces policy.
