Is Governor Dapo Abiodun Using Coronavirus as Revenge against the President?

Sina ODUNTAN

I don’t think I can do this much longer: it is too dispiriting, too confusing, and lacking in altruistic. When I crack my brain for ways to understanding this clueless, lackadaisical, and inept government of Prince Dapo Abiodun in Ogun State I get short-circuited as to the direction of his government. It is all motions heading to nowhere. Dapo Abiodun administration has the penchant to traveling in obscurity and pernicious recalcitrance. And each time Dapo Abiodun’s lackluster regime gazumps me by doing something so fabulously absurd that any attempt at satire is rendered otiose.

What could it be said of the recent cacophony between the President’s order for lockdown and Dapo Abiodun’s counter orders? It’s like Governor Abiodun was in competition with President Mohammed Buhari. I saw the State government enmeshed in its own diabolic approach to governance.

Without going through so many sins and ineptitude of the incumbent administration in Ogun State two incidents occurred consecutively within last week that suggest that the governor was trying to assert his authority and power over Ogun State. Unfortunately, it is needless. On Sunday night, March 29, President Mohammed Buhari addressed the nation over the Coronavirus pandemic, a speech that had received commendation and condemnation. The President had ordered the “cessation of all movement” in Lagos, FCT, and Ogun State. The lockdown was to last 14 days in the first instant. He further pointed that the governors of those States had been consulted before the decision was arrived at.

There was nothing new, novel about the speech. The order is not also new. It is one of the measures applied to prevent the spread of Covid-19. All Nigerians had been expecting their President to address them, which was considered belated. The lockdown was to commence at 11:00pm Monday, 30 March. Every citizen of those States and FCT had geared up for the challenge. They had gone to the markets to stockpile food that would last them for 14 days of lockdown. They were only expecting their governments to bring palliatives to cushion the effects of the disruption in their socio-economic life.   

In order to tell the whole world that President Buhari never consulted him, and buoyed by Professor Wole Soyinka and some Senior Advocates of Nigeria who argued that the President had usurped the power of the two governors of Lagos and Ogun States, Prince Dapo Abiodun, through his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Somorin, summoned his selected media organisations (the supposed “boys working for the State”) and left the other critical media organisations, to attend opening of two Isolation Centres at Ikenne, Ikenne Local Government of Ogun State. The programme that was supposed to commence at 11:00a.m. on that same Monday never took off the ground until about 4:00p.m, full five hours behind schedule, perhaps with no apology.  By the time the subsequent press briefing that followed could be concluded it was about 5:00p.m. By the time the news could get to the people of the State they were already returning homes to face the lockdown the following Tuesday.

I watched him on the State television station, OGTV, booming garrulously before the glitz of cameras like a canon in the desert struggling to assert his power. His media handlers also posted the clip of his address on his official Tweeter handle. I felt giddy and ashamed as he failed to match his cool, urbane look with the anger in his voice. The first thing that crept into my mind was that who was this governor angry with. He was addressing the State combatively perhaps to prove he is the governor of Ogun State. The high pitch of his speech left no one in doubt that he might be taken his pound of flesh from the Presidency. It also proves that the President must have lied to the nation that the governors were consulted before imposing unilaterally lockdown on the Ogun State and the other.

Governor Abiodun in his resplendence of power now shifted the lockdown till Friday, April 3.

I could not believe that the people could be tossed from and to between the President and the Governor. If the governor thought the lockdown order did not give the people enough room to plan against the lockdown why did he take him the whole day to announce his amended plan? If Dapo Abiodun administration had acted fast, it would have taken the trouble from the people to stockpile food on Monday. It would not have caused the prices of food commodities to skyrocket exponentially. A kongo of Garri that hitherto  sold for N150 went up by 125% to N350 per Kongo; rice and beans also went up by 150%., which remain same till today. While the governor was flexing authority with the Federal Government he inadvertently inflicts more pains on the people than he had envisaged. Poor thinking.

As if that was not enough. When the Presidency Friday, April 3, relaxed the lockdown that markets should open between 10:00a.m. and 2:00p.m. daily from Monday, April 6 our governor again gathered his “media boys” leaving large number of journalists representing other media organisations, rushed them to Iperu, the seat of his government, where he addressed the State, saying that as far as he was concerned market should open between 7:00a.m. and 2:00p.m.

Why should the governor wait for the federal government to make its move before he counters the former? Why the rivalry? What is Governor Abiodun trying to establish? The governor of Ogun State has succeeded to bring the President to ridicule, disrespect and disgrace. He has exposed the President to the world that he runs a clueless, directionless and weak government. It is innocuous demonstration of a governor at war with his president.

What Prince Dapo Abiodun and his Cabinet fail to realise is that people are being encouraged to obey the State law to the detriment of the federal law. In this case, however, the federal government adjusted lockdown time is easier to obey than the state government new order. Though, it is not likely that most people would get to their houses by 2:00p.m. Thus the rate of compliance with the new federal government order would be higher than the State’s; more so, within two to three days people would be able to adjust to 10:00a.m. to 2:00p.m. daily from Monday, April 6.

The governor has put his people in more difficult positions to adjust to 7:00a.m. to 2:00p.m. every order day from Tuesday, 7 April. The people would not be able to key into the zig-zag situation until the end of the lockdown on April 14. Secondly, both governments have succeeded to dirupt the normal life of the people without really achieving the essence of lockdown. By relaxing the “cessation of all movement” the interaction of people in public domain has failed. It is double jeopardy for the people of Ogun State. The failure to commence the lockdown at the same time with Lagos State has put the people of the State in difficult position. When Lagos opens its inter-state borders, Ogun State still shuts down her borders with Lagos State. Instead of spending 14-day lockdown, the Ogun state people would observe lockdown for 18 days, giving that the first five days supposed free in actual fact were not normal days in the lives of the people.

  

Consequently, the lockdown has failed. It would be a classical example of making law/order that is unenforceable. It is a deliberate disruption of people’s lives. No amount of palliative could compensate for the loss of incomes, loss of businesses and wastages of resources invested into very many social events and parties that have been cancelled as a result of the lockdown.

The point is that why should Governor Dapo Abiodun counter the order of the Federal Government. Are they having some misunderstandings? Is the governor fighting somebody’s cause? Is he paying President Buhari back in his own coin for not differing to him as a State governor in making appointments from the State? There are still more questions to ask to unearth the underlining cold war between the governor and President that the Coronavirus pandemic has brought to the open.

The exclusivity of the governor’s administration is becoming something unknown to Ogun State, whereby the government identifies some persons or group to accommodate in his administration to the exclusion of the majority of others. It only shows that the slogan of the government is simply a lipservice. It is unprofessional to segregate, marginalize and discriminate against journalists in the State. It is disproportionate and discriminatory to identify some certain journalists as “the boys that work with us”. Such a description does not only undermine the credibility of a good government, it shows the government is parochial and underdog.