Mimiko’s Mimicry

Ok, folks, I’m tired. O su mi. Something happened in Ondo state recently that made it into only two or three newspapers as a minor story. In the theatre of the absurd that Nigeria has become – pardon the cliché – only the outrageously absurd makes it to the forefront of national discourse. As we grapple with Turai Yar’Adua, Jos, and other national traumas, a million little absurdities crawl daily beneath the radar and pursue their corrosive course through our system.
I have written a lot about the psychology of the rulers of Nigeria. They are mimic men and women. They copy and magnify bad examples from one another.  That ritual of petty mimicry has been going on for a while in Ondo state. The Legislature does something really stupid. The Executive enters mimic mode and begins to look for ways to repeat and magnify the stupidity. In the end, they put Ondo state in the news for the wrong reasons, smile to the bank, and the people of Ondo state, like ordinary Nigerians all over the country, remain the eternal victims in this unending game of elite rape and plunder.

First, a necessary recap. Late last year, members of the Ondo state House of Assembly dreamt up a jibiti scheme to milk the people of that state dry. They were all going to travel to the US to attend what they called a “two-week seminar on law making”! The United States Embassy in Nigeria came to the rescue of the people and treasury of Ondo state by denying twenty-two of them visas. I wrote to thank the Embassy at the time for rendering that great humanitarian service to the people of Nigeria. I wondered where Governor Olusegun Mimiko was and what his role might have been in the sordid affair. I had a hunch that he would not be outdone by the lawmakers. Sooner or later, the mimic virus that afflicts the rulers of Nigeria would make him come up with his own brain-dead scheme. I was sure of that.
Governor Mimiko has not disappointed me. He has delivered. Here is how Punch reported things on Friday April 2, 2010: “Ondo State Governor Olusegun Mimiko has approved the payment of N866m to former political office holders that served in the 18 local government councils in the state between 1999 and 2007. The Commissioner for Special Duties, Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs in the state, Mr. Niran Sule-Akinsuyi, who stated this at a news conference on Thursday, said the decision was ratified at the state's weekly executive council meeting held on Wednesday”.

The story continues: “Sule-Akinsuyi, who addressed journalists in company with{sic}his counterparts in the Ministry Information, Mr. Ranti Akerele, and that of physical planning and urban development, Mr. Sikiru Basaru, said the payment would begin next week, and that it would be in five tranches. He also explained that chairmen, their deputies, councilors and supervisors, who served within the period, not minding their political affiliations, would benefit from the largesse. He said, "All political office holders in all the 18 local councils in the state during the administration of the late Chief Adebayo Adefarati from 1999 to 2003 to that of Dr. Olusegun Agagu from 2003 to 2007, will benefit and there will be no discrimination in the payment."

If you are tempted at this point to ask why it has become a matter of life and death for Governor Mimiko to divert money that could be spent on health, education, and rural development to make past looters and political jobbers happy, wait for this part of the story: “Basaru also told journalists that the governor had approved N70m as housing loans for all categories of civil servants in the state and that N17.5m of the amount had been released to his ministry for immediate disbursement to the first batch of beneficiaries… Basaru, who said a committee that would disburse the fund would soon be inaugurated, added that the state government planned to spend N604m this year to construct low cost housing estates for interested residents of the state. He said the estates, which will comprise of 454 housing units and constructed on 302 plots, would be handled by the state housing corporation”.

Here then is Governor Mimiko’s sense of initiative and priority. He has approved eight hundred and sixty six million as payment to former political office holders, seventy million as housing loan for civil servants (halleluyah!), and plans to spend six hundred and four million to construct low cost housing estates. Remember to place the emphasis on “plans to…” One does not need to write a long treatise on this subject. The picture is sufficiently clear. There is something awfully wrong with a Governor who considers the happiness and comfort of past looters priority and proceeds to allocate more financial resources to them than he allocates to housing for his civil servants. This brings me back to my persistent advocacy of craniology as a pathway to understanding why political office holders in Nigeria are so prone to irresponsibility. Permit me to quote extensively from the op-ed I wrote for NEXT newspaper on the matter of the aborted US trip of the Ondo law makers:

“Often, I try to teleport myself imaginatively into the heads of our government officials. I try to understand the neural/electrical activities going on in their brains; how certain ideas that are outrageous by every standard to the ordinary Nigerian somehow germinate in the heads of our officials; and which parts of their brains rationalize such outrage and make them exclaim: “oh, that’s a great idea”. This trip germinated as an idea in somebody’s brain in Akure, who sold it to his or her colleagues in the House. Twenty-six of them discussed and it all somehow sounded nice to them? Not one of them thought of the drain on the scarce resources of a poor rustic state like Ondo?

I have even recommended craniology in our quest to understand why we are so blest (apologies to Ayi Kwei Armah) in the area of leadership. We need craniology and I’m dead serious. In the collusion between science, racism, and imperialism, western scientists tried to prove that the craniums of Blacks and Native Americans were smaller than those of white people. They went about collecting and measuring the skulls of dead black and Native American people to prove their foregone conclusion. A smaller cranial cavity meant smaller brain matter and hence less intelligence.

We have reached stage in our national crisis where we need to measure the skulls of people going into government and take the measurements again when they leave office. My theory is that there is something in government that shrinks the skulls of these people and reduces the size of the human brain. I can’t think of any explanation for the action of the Ondo lawmakers other than smaller craniums and smaller grey matter. We usually evoke wickedness and insatiable greed as explanations for the congenital corruption of our rulers. I am no longer satisfied with that explanation. Whatever is wrong with them goes much deeper.”

Some of my readers claimed that recommending craniology was a tad extreme. I ask them now: how are we ever going to be able to account for the unbelievable irrationalities of these folks at all three tiers of governance in Nigeria? Has Governor Mimiko not made an even stronger case for craniology than the Ondo law makers I was writing about? Other than a severely diminished cerebral capacity, how else does one explain one man’s crazy decision to dole out N866m to past political office holders at a time like this? Just like that! This is the same Governor who recently lost forty-two nursery school pupils to a road accident in Ore. It was reported that most of those children would have been saved had the local hospital been properly equipped.

I therefore call on Governor Mimiko to rescind his outrageous decision to waste so much money on past looters. I call on him to spend that money – N866m – renovating all or select general hospitals throughout Ondo state in memory of the forty-two deceased pupils of Aricent Nursery and Primary School. If he fails to do this and proceeds with this crazy waste of the scarce resources of the state on past looters, I call on the good people of Ondo state to rise up against him and say: No!

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