-Blank NEWS Online (NIGERIA) –By : Austen AKHAGBEME:
Unlike a child learning how to walk, Gov Makinde’s steps were firm, steady and promising from the very beginning. His audacious disposition drew the irk of those who thought he was not real, especially in the days when governance has become a joke and governmental policies are largely anti-people.
There are those who argues that his often uncommon moves are a shot at cheap populism and a paradigm shift gone awry. Thus, they are waiting for him to make the wrong move and fizzle out. But Makinde’s mindset, demeanour, disposition, audacity and zest to carry out what he believes in, is gathering momentum by the day and the people are at home with him.
He’s a shining example and a study of how a youthful heart should think amidst the prevalence and preference for the destructive politics of greed, hate, prebendalism and primitive acquisition and accumulation of the common patrimony, thievery and the orthodoxy of governance bestriding the nation.
In the days where former governors are being hunted and hauled into jail for greed, avarice and abuse of public trust, Makinde is here, tantalizing the collective pulse of his people, rubbing their ego and giving them the rare opportunity to dream again just as it use to be, from the beginning especially in the West, in the days of Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the old western region.
His audacious declaration of asset shook the political landscape beyond Oyo state and elicited commendations from far and wide. This equally attracted enough public bile from uncomfortable reactionary quaters that have held Oyo state in the jugular in recent years; which is why they dismissed such selfless move as the initial excitement of a moth around a flicker of light in the darkest of nights.
But nine months is gone, the story is still the same: an avalanche of people oriented policies and programs hitherto considered alien in this clime, are being implemented daily.
From the prompt payments of Pensioners monthly entitlements (which was a wide departure from the frustrating modulated system of his predecessor) to the declaration of free education in public schools in Oyo state, it has been an unending stream of the good, better and the best: a dawn of a new day for the ordinary people of the state.
Gov Seyi Makinde sure knows how to apply the balm to an ailing part. His declaration recently of his willingness to pay “the 13th month” salary (double pay)this December, at a festive period when workers are saddled with elasticated demands, shows that this youthful governor has an ear to the ground to hear the real cry of the real people under his care.
Every sector is being touched, every people oriented issue is being looked into all in nine months. How I wish this writer has the privilege of being under a people oriented governor like Seyi Makinde and not under an Agbada cladding goon who superintend over a mayoralty of an over valued landscape, while chasing the natives farther away into the bushes of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Keep the flag flying, Seyi Makinde.
