Governor Seyi Makinde Needs To Calm Down By Asubiojo O. Marshal
It took Gov. Seyi Makinde a great deal time to completely form his cabinet, but when he eventually did with the last batch of Commissioners, Special Assistants and other aides, many people, like myself, excused the late selection as a result of careful consideration from the poll of names he would have to pick.
With a Professor manning the Ministry of Education, the youngest Commissioner of Youth and Sports in the country. A brilliant and experienced Kehinde Ayoola (God rest his soul ) heading the Ministry of Environment and some equally capable Special Assistants. It appeared to be a perfect cabinet, at least on the surface.
But in less than 2 years into the administration, the Governor seems to be tearing the cabinet he formed apart. With overnight re-deployments, queries and outright sacks flying around the Agodi State House.
The first public indication that all is not well with the cabinet was the redeployment of the Commissioner for Education, a professor and his close ally, who coordinated Omituntun in Diaspora (OID) – a group that focused on mobilizing foreign support for the Governor’s election.
The professor was replaced with a Lawyer and moved to the Ministry of Establishment and Training. I’d say a lawyers no matter how brilliant, can not perfectly take the place of a Professor, not in the Ministry of Education.
He would naturally find the environment confusing as nothing in his training would have possibly prepared him for such.
Before tongues stopped wrangling about the Ministry of Education, the Governor, again, sacked his Media Aide, Muritala Adigun, very shortly after his appointment. The media aide had in his overzealous effort to portray his principal as performing, lifted pictures of a project by Governor Sanwoolu of Lagos State and credited it Seyi Makinde, totally embarrassing the governor.
His action, without doubt, shouldn’t have gone unsanctioned, but his outright sack appears too much, a strong reprimand or redeployment would have been enough. Needless to say, a person with his limited command of the English language had no business as a media aide in the first place.
The governor has also at a point tried to “sack” his deputy governor but the move was aborted because of the Deputy’s popularity In the House of Assembly.
Today, again, the governor welcomed the hitherto Commissioner of Works with a sack, only a few hours into his resumption to office after battling the deadly COVID-19 Virus.
The Commissioner not knowing what awaited him had earlier uploaded pictures announcing his resumption to office. What could have been more embarrassing?.
Engr. Seyi Makinde executes his termination of appointments and redeployments in ways that suggest he derives pleasure in deliberately embarrassing his erstwhile aides. Or how would one describe the sack of an aide the same day he returned to office after fighting a virus to whom thousands of previous lives and rare gems have been lost.
I can only pity the New York trained professor who resigned his job and crossed many seas to serve his fatherland, only to be sacked with such cruelty.
There are thousands of technical ways to relieve people of positions aside this style of public embarrassment, the Governor surely knows this. One of those ways is to demands immediate resignation, such an aide will remain forever grateful for that m face-saving gesture.
The governor, of course, reserves the right to sack at will, as he who hires, can fire, but he must exercise restraint lest he misfires.
The shot of sacks he is firing is beginning to take chunks of goodwill from him by portraying ing him to the people as cruel, insensitive and indecisive.
Mr Governor needs to calm down, make a once and final decision of either completely reshuffling his cabinet or managing it till the end.
Once again, Your Excellency, CALM DOWN!
Asubiojo O. Marshal writes from Ibadan, the Oyo state capital.