Professor Moses Ochonu has this to say of embattled ex governor, Tunde Fashola:
"Former Governor Fashola has no one but himself to blame for the N78 million website upgrade fiasco and for spending billions of naira to build a few pedestrian bridges, among other outrageously inflated and fraudulent expenditures in the spending list strategically leaked by the Ambode administration. Clearly, the non-stop stream of revelations against the man (some of them on target, some of them off) is being orchestrated from a political source and for a political purpose. Either Fashola has crossed Tinubu and Ambode or both of them see him as a potential rival or inheritor of the political empire of Asiwaju. It seems to me then that the duo are determined to damage him enough to clip his political wings so that he does not take his political stature on the road beyond Lagos. A quietened, tamed, and stagnant Fashola is a non-threatening one. Personally, I have no dog in the fight and I refuse to pick a side. None of the camps gets my sympathy. Everyone comes out stinking in this one: Fashola for the shady deals, Ambode for abandoning his gubernatorial duties to do his godfather's dirty work, and Tinubu for, well, being Tinubu--slimy, egomaniacal, and controlling."
And he has this to say of rehabilitated el-Rufai:
"Whatever you may think of Governor el-Rufai of Kaduna State, and you probably won't find a harsher critic of the man than yours truly, he continues to demonstrate the value of preparation, forethought, and prior planning in public office. He clearly came to power with a plan, which he is executing.
He is methodical, deliberate, and almost textbookish in his implementation of what is clearly a blueprint crafted ahead of his governorship run. There is a method to the man's governing madness. We can quibble about the substance and details of what he is doing. He may be as ethically challenged as other politicians, and this is not to suggest that preparation guarantees effectiveness, but there is no doubt that power did not just happen to el-Rufai or catch him flatfooted. He may have written a narcissistic book titled "The Accidental Public Servant" but there is nothing accidental or improvisational about his governing acumen and temperament.
Contrast el-Rufai with many members of his governorship cohort across the country. Most of them simply do not know what to do with power. They seem flustered, overwhelmed, and unprepared. As a result, they are tentative, improvisational, and arbitrary in their governing acts.
Public service is not for everyone. Many of these governors were thrown up by political circumstances beyond them, opportunistically tapped into fortuitous political situations, or found themselves well positioned to grab the mantle of leadership and lacked the discipline to resist doing so.
We can see the resultant signs of unpreparedness everywhere. The unprepared governors seem scatter-brained and confused, substituting boastful swagger and exaggerated projection of power for purposeful, calculated governance.
Unfortunately, in Nigeria, we don't have a winnowing, vetting mechanism for separating the prepared from the unprepared prior to elections. Elections are hurried, chaotic affairs--no debates, no clear articulation of plans, and no demands for actionable platforms that would compel those interested in public office to give the endeavor some thought."
Contrast el-Rufai with many members of his governorship cohort across the country. Most of them simply do not know what to do with power. They seem flustered, overwhelmed, and unprepared. As a result, they are tentative, improvisational, and arbitrary in their governing acts.
Public service is not for everyone. Many of these governors were thrown up by political circumstances beyond them, opportunistically tapped into fortuitous political situations, or found themselves well positioned to grab the mantle of leadership and lacked the discipline to resist doing so.
We can see the resultant signs of unpreparedness everywhere. The unprepared governors seem scatter-brained and confused, substituting boastful swagger and exaggerated projection of power for purposeful, calculated governance.
Unfortunately, in Nigeria, we don't have a winnowing, vetting mechanism for separating the prepared from the unprepared prior to elections. Elections are hurried, chaotic affairs--no debates, no clear articulation of plans, and no demands for actionable platforms that would compel those interested in public office to give the endeavor some thought."
Well, there are three Nigerian public intellectuals I read without snorting with derision; Moses Ochonu, Okey Ndibe and Farooq Kperogi. They get what I have been waiting about for decades. They don't just make noises like drunken vuvuzelas; they are thoughtful and constantly remind us of the need to take structural approaches to Nigeria's issues. I applaud Moses on his dogged and practical strategies. He is a better person than me.
I will say this to Moses: There is still a lot of fight left in Fashola. All he needs to do is look in the direction of El-Rufai. That man and his cronies looted Abuja, but today he is deified as a visionary and a technocrat par excellence. It is what it is. And timing makes the difference. It is not clear to me that Fashola is any more corrupt than El Rufai. He simply is caught in the self-righteous tyranny of social media. I think they are all criminals of course but folks keep reminding me that we have no choice. We are stuck. Let them be. Let them rule.
el-Rufai is a lucky man, outside of this comprehensive analysis of his misdeeds by Moses, public intellectuals have draped their arms around el-Rufai and canonised him. Shameful.
http://saharareporters.com/2011/08/17/dealing-el-rufai-nuisance-moses-ochonu
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