By Minkail Olaitan
Every society has its unique goodness and attributes that elevate the status of its people, a silent scent that follows them wherever they go. Ogbomoso is one such notable society, with brilliantly loving, industrious, and valiant people. In the words of a friend, “The last trail of communal glory is tangible in the land of valour.” Yet, in recent years, certain anomalies have been rearing their heads in the form of wokeness, twisted elitism, and hardcore ignorance. The majority of these telltale signs are expressed with placid fervour, and it’s scary.
The “Dark Age” was the period that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire. It was said to have been one of the many bleak consequences associated with the collapse of Western Europe. Several centuries later, Francesco Petrarca, an Italian philosopher, wove a string of sentiments describing what he saw as an era of devastating decline in true intellectual engagement, cultural development, and what was later understood as social awareness. Petrarca believed the “Dark Age” was a phenomenon that occurred when the quality of citizens tilted toward passivity and lost the ability to understand governance.
Ogbomoso, in recent years, has been slipping fast into a similar rut, not because there are no longer books to read, discourses to engage in, questions to ask, or answers to give. Rather, it is because the system upon which genuine social interaction and constructive, factual engagement are built is tumbling down rapidly.
More than anyone else, political officeholders are both victims and, to some degree, beneficiaries. Victims because, regardless of spreading themselves thin in every direction to ensure their leadership is felt tangibly, they are met with shrugs, attacks, and erroneous assumptions emanating from ill-constructed arguments that the public picks up and runs with without a second thought. Meanwhile, many politicians benefit from the overflow of frivolous requests by followers.
Unfortunately, this is not a close-ended problem, especially when there are too many who haughtily call themselves “elites,” whereas they fit perfectly into the “intellect-selling business,” a form of clientelism in which they rarely choose the general good of the public. They come across as propagandists by practice and are directly from the order of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s right hand. They manipulate Ogbomoso people with doctored facts and half-witted perspectives without ever considering the implications associated with the decisions they are instigating the public to take.
For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I came across a post containing a long list of what Hon. Olamijuwonlo Alao-Akala had done since he was inaugurated. While the comment section of the post was a battlefield, one of the comments that stood out to me was from someone who claimed the Honourable had received ₦1 billion allocated to the Ogbomoso constituency for the year.
Fascinatingly, the person’s claim cannot be answered with a simple yes or no because it contains a little element of truth but is largely false.
First, no lawmaker received such an amount directly into their account. Secondly, the amount, ₦1 billion, claimed to have been released barely crosses into reality due to revenue shortages and fiscal constraints. Hence, the projected lawmaker allocation was slashed down to ₦500 million. Thirdly, the fund is directed to ministries, and the ability of a lawmaker to exhaust the allocation depends completely on a muddled chain of executive approvals, bureaucratic procurement processes, and, most importantly, political long legs and associations.
Public demand for accountability is one of the last threads holding democracy together. It can take the form of a dissenting voice and other constitutional means. But when this last bastion, which the elites hold, becomes uninterested in objectivity and constructive discourse, it denigrates into a cave for heinous public engineering.
Ogbomoso has stopped demanding accountability. Most of the elites and social media warriors have lost the ethos and ethics of elitism. Noam Chomsky left a rather brilliant remark on this: “The role of the intellectual is to challenge authority, not serve it.”
Another issue is the convolution of executive and legislative functions. Again, Olamijuwonlo Alao-Akala has been pulled by the hair to account for the consequences of a dysfunctional executive system and irresponsibility.
Several times, I have marvelled at how people spare the executive branch for its laxity and blame the legislature for their backdoor bridges that are barely holding up. It is like letting a hyena stroll untouched, only to lodge fusillades of bullets at a lamb on account of killing.
Recently, a woman called into a radio programme:
“Hello, can you hear me? Please help us tell Hon. Olamijuwonlo that our road in [the] area is bad; he should please fix it for us. Accidents are becoming frequent.”
She said this in Yoruba.
Also, some time ago, Hon. Olamijuwonlo deployed boulders into a dilapidated Adiatu/FGC Road, which had deteriorated into a death trap for users. Rather than acknowledging the gesture as a way of bringing relief and demonstrating active leadership pending when the appropriate office would bring a permanent solution, many attacked not only his intervention but also demanded that he fix the road entirely.
This neglects, or rather “chooses” to ignore, the possibility of expanding his legislative cover into an executive function overnight, without a second thought or budgetary plan. This convolution of responsibilities and offices has festered into reality distortion. People are not interested in knowing how the underlying functions of federalism work.
Ignorance is another plaguing problem affecting the quality of citizens in Ogbomoso, but not just ignorance that has to do with innocence or lack of information. It is what pre-Socratic philosophers such as Heraclitus and Euripides called “amathia,” or “intelligent stupidity.” This phenomenon has to do with the unwillingness to learn more about what a person thinks he knows. It is the halting state of knowledge-seeking.
Many Ogbomoso political actors and politicians barely understand the role of a local government chairman in comparison to that of a member of the State House of Assembly. Many barely know the points at which these public offices converge to function effectively. Yet they refuse to revisit the basics of the O’Level subject, “Government.”
It’s disheartening that this simple lack of interest in learning influences the public demands placed on political officeholders. An easy pointer to this is the uniformity of requests across the political ladder. For the majority, the demands barely go beyond money, and when those demands are not met, it simply means such a leader is irresponsible.
Socio-political research on developing countries has shown that these countries do not only require responsible systems and leaders, but also conscious, informed citizens who understand those systems and how to influence them and make proper demands of them.
No doubt, Ogbomoso North, South, and Oriire constituency has a vibrant and capable representative who is bureaucratically savvy, possesses institutional leverage and interpersonal influence, and has what it takes to continue navigating complex political networks, interbranch diplomacy, strategic off-mandate project packaging, and the hustle required to follow up.
Yet, the question remains whether or not the public would desist from opaque, sentiment-ridden evaluation and move toward a proper understanding of the three tiers of government, engaging accordingly and unsparingly.
Or we may slip swiftly into the “Dark Age.”
Question of the Day
Do we really understand what we are asking our elected leaders to do, or have political arguments become more about sentiment than understanding how government actually works?
Stay in the Mood
Accountability is one of democracy’s greatest strengths. But accountability requires something from citizens, too: knowledge.
Before we condemn a politician, share a claim, or demand that an elected official fix a problem, do we know whether that person actually has the constitutional authority, budget, or institutional pathway to do it?
Perhaps the most powerful form of civic engagement is not simply demanding more from our leaders, but learning enough to demand the right things from the right people.
Because an informed citizen does not ask fewer questions.
An informed citizen asks better ones.
