By Faruq Atofarati
Before Abdulrazaq’s ascent to power, he had already let us know that his government was going to be a kakistocracy. As such, his despotic look reached to his gesture; he made some of the best minds the worse in the state. His ideology is stale. Even the worst of the worst in Nigeria is amazed.
Therefore, no one is entirely surprised at the thorns in his garden. Yet a good student of art knows that kakistocracy destroys more than it builds. That’s why we have a demolished “ile arugbo” with no substantive replacement. A destroyed ministry of works, a destroyed state assembly, a few out of the litany of destroyed.
Other states are strengthening the course of good governance; imitating the West, exploring the vulnerabilities of the poor, and providing solutions. In Kwara State, it’s not the same; good governance is experienced in the media and on paper. Held in captivity by a man who has no record of success without prefacing it with chaos.
So, the idea to kick the butt or to blunt the knife before it cuts us dates back to the 17th century, in Paul Gosnold’s A sermon Preached at the Publique Fast the ninth day of Aug. 1644 at St. Maries:
We need not make any scruple of praying against such: against those Sanctimonious Incendiaries, who have fetched fire from heaven to set their Country in combustion, have pretended Religion to raise and maintaine a most wicked rebellion: against those Nero’s, who have ripped up the wombe of the mother that bare them, and wounded the breasts that gave them sucke: against those Cannibal’s who feed upon the flesh and are drunke with the bloud of their own brethren: against those Catiline’s who seeke their private ends in the publicke disturbance, and have set the Kingdome on fire to rost their owne egges: against those tempests of the State, those restlesse spirits who can no longer live, then be stickling and medling; who are stung with a perpetuall itch of changing and innovating, transforming our old Hierarchy into a new Presbytery, and this againe into a newer Independency; and our well-temperd Monarchy into a mad kinde of Kakistocracy. Good Lord!
At one point, the Governor had no cabinet; the public thought it had none, but a Jumoke was giving Kwara State’s Treasury a run for its treasure, making laws and preaching optics over substance through the man in charge. Such an encapsulation to find a messianic-proposed governor.
Is it from such unsettled biases in marriage and governance that the governor is found wanton on other people’s wives? Throwing empty and watery jabs at the previous administrations? What a shame!
