Would Osun Be Like Ekiti, Collect Free Beans And A Few Coins As Trade For Development ?
The Oasis Reporters
July 4, 2022
By Greg Abolo
Osun, would you be like Ekiti, collect ‘coins’ and trade your future? Swapping beans for a brighter future?
I knew a Well growing up as a child in the old northern region, early 60s.
By the time I went back there for my service in 1983, there was ‘change’.
Piped water ran even in my bedroom, the kitchen and my flower garden. Virtually all villages had pipe borne water. The few that didn’t have were included in the water inclusivity plan.
Development!
Col. Ahmed Daku was the governor at that time and I heard him on Kano State radio mention the next set of villages that would be beneficiaries of the water inclusivity plan. I just happened to be in Majia Tasha (a railway settlement attached to Majia village in Ringim local government) when the announcement was made.
Lo and behold, in less than six months in 1985, the settlement had running water. It was wonderful. Government was working!
In Kano city too, you paid your water bill monthly and you’d get water constantly provided by the water board.
When I relocated my family about eighteen years ago from Kano to the South west, my children were seeing a Well for the first time.
In my son’s essay in an Ibadan private secondary school back then, water provision was the theme of the essay he wrote about his shock at Well water in Ibadan, whereas in ‘dry’ Kano, water was everywhere. The experience was a culture shock to him.
This is the failure and cluelessness of governments in the South west. Unfortunately, the people see it as absolutely normal that their State governments needn’t provide this service. They love Wells, and it is very Well.
The Niger Delta has been putting their governors to task. And happily most communities in Delta had piped water.
That was thanks to former governors James Ibori and Emmanuel Uduaghan. The problem there now is lack of maintenance. In virtually every Community, individuals sink private boreholes now.
Water is basic to life. Sinking boreholes in the South West especially in Ibadan that sits atop hills, makes this very difficult for individuals on a personal basis. Thus the South west needs to insist on their ‘change’. They should learn from their northern brothers where Yoruba, Igbo and Niger Delta engineers get jobs in water projects there.
This post was originally published several years ago and I thought of reproducing it to make a write-up about the certain agony of Ekiti State about their inability to attain lofty heights in politics of development in the state reputed to produce a Professor in every square meter, so to speak.
The essay you are reading here was originally meant to include the “Diary of An Ekiti Corper” titled
‘It Is Well With Ekiti’.
She started her narration from the Bible story of Rebecca and Isaac where their “romance” unto marriage started by a Well.
I had applied to the writer of the story for permission to reproduce her diary in reflecting the pathos in the undercurrent of the recently concluded Ekiti gubernatorial election in which the PDP placed third.
But the writer hasn’t replied yet to my request.
Thus I leave her interesting diary alone.
At the Ekiti State gubernatorial election, we contacted some boots on ground. From security forces and political analysts who watched events on ground, to actual voters. We were shocked to learn that voters in some areas collected one thousand naira each to vote.
“Vote and collect 1k”.
But hear this:
“I was utterly surprised upon my arrival in Ijero Ekiti to see water Wells in almost every compound. I had never seen one closely or used one before”.
Candid expression made some years back!
People who are suffering and smiling, educated ones at that, cannot negotiate with a candidate and exact the promise of infrastructural provision for their vote, but would rather happily collect a thousand naira for a vote and abandon the promise of a better life ? Are they happy to still remain with “Well water” experience that Kano citizens know absolutely nothing about, and believe that it is life ?
Quo vadis, Ekiti?
Osun, would you be like Ekiti, collect ‘coins’ and trade your future? Swapping beans for a brighter future?
It’s a shame, when a people can only get leaders who serve, but only with a disgraceful lack of distinction.
