“It is not what you say you have done that is important. It is what people say that you have done and benefit from that matters.” – Babatunde Fashola, January 25, 2016.
On December 12, 2023 Dr. Asue Ighodalo was at the Man Round Town Programme of Independent Television & Radio, Benin on invitation where he was interviewed on his gubernatorial ambition.
In his submissions, he led us through his profile as well as politico-economic calculations for Edo State.
He told listeners that he was born on 19th July, 1959 to an Esan father from Ewohimi town in Esan South-East Local Government Area of Edo State.
But he was raised outside his Ewohimi community by his doting father who used to live at Dawson Road, in Benin City the state capital.
According to him, he is a double graduate of economics and law. Later, he spoke about what his political economics would look like when elected the governor of Edo State this year. Simply, he promised to:
– Improve agriculture, boost youth employment as well as put money in the pockets of Edo people;
– Harness the abundant human and natural resources of the state to give the people more basic amenities like water, electricity and roads of good quality
– Work hard and fearlessly to make needed decisions that will transform Edo State into a big economy of world class in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
– Build robust educational and healthcare systems in the state
– Leverage diaspora remittance of Edo citizens to enhance fast economic growth and development by channeling the funds from being spent mostly on feeding and schooling to more productive areas of the economy
– Scale up ease-of-doing-business in the state so as to attract investment capital to the state required for accelerating development.
After the presentation, he made to go with his aides. Then, he stopped in his tracks, saying:”I hope you will invite me again to the studio when you need me”
On December 13, 2023 Mr Clem Agba was invited to the same radio station and interviewed.
He spoke as usual with impressive calmness and gentlemanly restraint at voluptuous attack on the incumbent Governor Godwin Obaseki.
A brief summary of his presentation. I am Clem Agba from Uzanu in Etsako East Local Government Area of Edo State. I am happily married with four male children. I am a grandfather.
I have worked with Chevron, an international oil company both at home and abroad…..As a governor, I will. … employ teachers. Our schools are short of teachers …EdoBest does not go down well with me. Because we are still battling with electricity problems. Inadequate power.
You cannot talk of digital learning when you are not sure of power to charge your phones and other classroom appliances. Or can you even learn in a class with no doors, windows. Leaking roofs? So, we need more red roofs. EdoBEST can wait…
There will be no discrimination between federal and state roads. Edo people use them. When I was commissioner for environment in the Oshiomole administration, we worked on both roads when the need arose. Therefore, no one should be saying that this is a federal road. Not to be touched.
It is only state roads that will be worked on… When it rains Benin City is still heavily flooded due to not continuing with the stormwater project. It was abandoned. We will finish the project if elected governor…. I will work in both the rural and urban areas. Not urban area alone. It is not right to neglect the rural areas. It is responsible for the rural drift to the Benin City now choked with people.
It is wrong to accuse me of only developing my Uzano community. Go round Edo State and you will see the projects I helped to bring for the people. Yet, I was not a full minister and an awarding authority. All I did to attract the projects was to lobby for them. I will do more if elected governòr.
No question asked Clem Agba rattled him, neither did an anticipated one trigger agitation in him..
He was in safe hands. Efe Osafuoman the interviewer and the Man Around Town crew are known to Clem Agba and Clem Agba knows them in return.
He has also been to the studio on several occasions to honour interview invitations as a sitting commissioner of environment. Also, he was called up sometimes to explain gray issues of his ministry’s activites which he did with amazing graceful humility. No airs òf bigmanism. No press antagonism. He is a friend of the media.
Impliedly, the studio of Man Around Town Programme is home to Clem Agba and its crew are his friends. If you genuinely respect media practitioners, they will extend organic respect to you in return.
Indeed, Efe Osafuoman has a liking for the character traits of Clem Agba one of which is the honesty displayed by Clem Agba on resuming duty as a commissioner in Edo State in 2008. Efe Osafuoman informed the listening world how Clem Agba refunded all the salaries paid into his account before he assumed duty because he didn’t work for them. Unearned wages. His colleagues who resumed late like him collected the salaries.
You can now understand the unspoken words of admiration for Clem Agba when he entered the studio for the interview.
Asue Ighodalo diď’nt have this ‘je nous suis quo’ background advantage of Clem Agba.
Asue Ighodalò is not only new to the studio, Efe Osafuoman and his crew don’t know much about Asue Ighodalo. So, he was not on holy grounds. He was therefore a bit jittery, afraid of the dreaded trending unfriendly question of whether Obaseki isn’t his godfather. Well, the poser was not asked. Lucky man!!
Let us now do a cinematographic flashback and examine the contents of the radio presentations of both Asue Ighodalo and Clem Agba. You will discover that of Ighodalo is largely abstract, opaque, obscurantist, grammatical, elitist, wordy and full of windy democratic messages.
He does not specifically tell us in practical terms what he intends to do as a governor if elected. Neither does he connect his electoral promises with the current people’s yearnings and aspirations of eating three meals a day.
In other words, voting for him will amount to giving him a blank cheque to impose his own ideas of development on voters.
In contrast, Clem Agba is forthright on the mandate he will implement as a governor of Edo State. Clearly, Agba reveals that he won’t continue with Obaseki’s IMF, World Bank and Washington Consensus developmental agenda of:
– Commercializing a civil service, agrarian and low income Edo economy which is daily deepening multi-dimensional poverty in the state. Too true, most Edo citizens are being suffocated by the Obaseki administration unable to breathe. Yet, Edo State is an oil-producing state.
– Reducing social spending, a policy that has further increased suffering of the less privileged; vulnerable people.
– Allowing unhindered the operation of free market forces in determining prices of goods and services. The result is that Edo State parades a high inflationary cost of living index.
– Investing more in cash crop agriculture to promote a psychological complex for revenue generation at the detriment of food crop security.
Rather, Agba impliedly states that he will reverse all these projects; programmes and policies. Ighodalo is silent on them. Afterall, he is a siamese twin of Obaseki
As a chairman of the annual Edo State Alaghodaro Economic Summit, he played a role in formulating Obaseki’s economic roadmap. Ighodalo hopes to continue it if he wins the gubernatorial contest.
Of course, Clem Agba will certainly continue with some of Oshiomole’s legacies. But, comparatively, the common Edo person will benefit a lot from them unlike those of Obaseki which profit the state treasury and few privileged rich people more in the state. The poor is not in Obaseki’s dictionary.
Godfatherism!! It exists in politics all over the world without exceptions. America is not excluded. But for the godfatherism of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, there is no way Barack Obama would have emerged as America’s first black president.
So, the issue is that godfatherism abides in Nigerian politics.
Oshiomole is Clem Agba’s godfather while the national chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, appears to be playing surrogate godfather to him. No controversies over this. The matter has not come up for public debate and adjudication.
However, Asue Ighodalo is having a diarrhetic running battle with Obaseki godfatherism. It is always an abbatross that he is finding difficult to shake off.
Once again, he tried to do away with the nagging idea of godfatherism on January 24, 2024 during an interview with Arise Television.
Read him:”I wasn’t invited by Governor Obaseki for what I am doing now and I have explained how I got in here
“You know the final push was the work that we did on the board of the Sovereign Investment Authority
“We did a lot of work that was social investment and I saw the benefits of being able to impact the lives of people.
“My time on the hoard of the Sovereign Investment Authority clearly showed me that there is a path to help people out of poverty, out of want, out of neglect…..I think it is the hand of destiny. I think it is a calling.”
Poor, disjointed, incoherent and unimpressive explanation for his foray into the governorship race.
The more Asue Ighodao tries to extricate himself from Obaseki’s godfatherism the more he is entrapped in the quagmire. No escape. The stain of Chameleon faeces can never be washed off.
Meanwhile, Clem Agba is walking tall uninhibited by any godfather syndrome. Differently folks, different strokes.
A question for defensive Asue Ighodalo. If you are still insisting that you are not a godson to Obaseki, why did he deployed massive Edo State resources and our tax payers wealth to provide hyper visibility, coverage and support for you alone at the state People’s Democratic Party (PDP) headquarters on Airport Road, Benin City when you officially declared for the governorship race?
Meanwhile, Shaibu, his deputy, is consistently being refused access to the facility and government house now your second home?
Yes, the facts speak for themselves. It is not possible for Asue Ighodalo to escape the truism that Obaseki is his sponsor. Also, he cannot run away from the logical fact that he is being barnstormed into the governorship race so as to enable Obaseki go for a defacto, unconstitutional third term mandate to ensure that he continues and completes his outlandish, anti-people policies like refusal to pay gratuities, forcing private firms to enrol in Edo Health Insurance Scheme, paying attention more to developing urban Benin to the neglect of rural areas, accelerating the transition of Edo economy to the inhumane, money-driven capitalist private sector and setting up a Tier 4 Data Centre in preparation to adopt Artificial Intelligence at a time people lack basic amenities like food, water, shelter and mediicare.
Besides the godfather plaque, another issue that sets Asue Ighodalo and Clem Agba apart is the ‘home boy’ question.
See, from the records, Asue Ighodalo is not an organic home or native boy but a verified outsider in Edo politics in which he is a new comer to the new PDP of Obaseki as his party card shows.
Moreover, his PDPness does not have a deep grassroots ambiance having, like Obaseki, only registered as a party member in Metropolitan Benin City not in his Ewohimi ward. This means that he is an elitist, urban personage without an original, strong, extensive as well as durable interlocking grassroots mesh of mileage no matter how hard he now tries.
Connecting genuinely with Ewohimi people should not be inspired by cheap political opportunism as it is now the case. The process only makes you a disposal synthetic, emergency Ewohimi man without organic Ewohiminess.
Cultural geography teaches that you need a localized intensive communion with your people and imbibe its language, values, norms and practices before you can lay claim to be a homeboy. Hence, Asue Ighodalo today is putting the wrong foot forward by pricing and purchasing his Ewohiminess for use in politics. He remains a fringe, Ewohimi outsider.
His plight is made worsen by the fact that he doesn’t speak the Ewohimi language that confers bonding cultural uniqueness to every true indigene of Ewonimi. Yet, language communication is the grammar of culture, according to Prof. Yemi Ogunbiyi former managing director of Daily Times.
In contrast, Clem Agba is an organic Uzanu homeboy. Everyone in his Uzanu village and neighbouring ones know him even on native name level. He doesn’t need an interpreter or a grout to relay his ancestral lineage to him or tell him Uzanu history. He knows them off head.
His home in Uzanu is always Mecca of visiting joyous community men, women, elders, leaders and youths who come to eat, wine and celebrate with him during his frequent trips to Uzanu. No gate or sentry keep people sway. He is happy to be in the midst of his people.
He has cited projects in Uzanu through need assessment leading to the transformation of his village unlike Asue Ighodalo who only put projects in Ewohimi sporadically.
Now, tell me. Who has more electoral value? Asue Ighodalo or Clem Agba?
Now, let us assume that Asue Ighodalo becomes governor!! His political inexperience will make him to experiment with governance in the state already bedevilled with so many Frankenstein monsters.
Put simply, Asue Ighadalo won’t hit the ground running even with Obaseki in the backwaters telling him what to do. Before he grapples with the contending complexities of governing the state, its challenges would have overwhelmed him and considerable time of his first tenure would have been lost.
Edo State cannot afford any time mortgage at this critical period when the state has already lost so much time doing irrelevant projects unconnected to growing the welfare of the people.
Clem Agba as an experienced insider in government since 2008 will be able to start functioning as a governor at full throttle from Day One. Furthermore, he has the required emotional intelligence for relating well with people at the state, federal and international levels.
What is more? Clem Agba will budget for social capital expenditure and de-emphasize Obaseki’s pathological fixation for revenue. His foundation for combating hepatitis is giving succour to victims of the ailment and helping to prevent the scourge. Not economicism for him.
He will therefore stop collecting revenue on Saturdays and Sundays, a shameful novelty in the world.
He won’t warehouse pallliatives meant for impoverished, hungry Edo people. Bye-bye to cold insensitivity. Empathy will return to deserted Government House, Benin. Also, for Clem Agba there will be no more compromised Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) leadership in Edo State.
Trust, Clem Agba will have a place for Babatunde Raji Fashola among his luggage.
Read Fashola: “it is not what you say you have done that is important in a democracy. It is what people say you have done and they benefit from that matters.”
Hmmm, Asue Ighodalo will be governor of the elites, by the elites and for the elites.
Clem Agba will come as a governor for everyone buit with emphasis on wiping off the tears of poor, hungry Edo people that Obaseki is still generating each passing day.
Culled from: https://bendelmirror.com/difference-between-asue-ighodalo-and-clem-agba/?amp=1
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