Makinde’s Auxiliary Error ~ Festus Adedayo

Anyone who lived in Oyo State at a time when members of the road transport union called NURTW became law unto themselves, killing, maiming and making the state ungovernable, would applaud Governor Seyi Makinde for the recent Park Management initiative that was launched last week. It was a policy that, according to the cliché, thought out of the box.

He appointed managers who would superintend over the running of motor parks in all the 33 local councils of the state and thus harvest estimated billions in the hands of these motor union kingpins. It is no hidden fact that these kingpins were buoyed in their outlawry by the unfunnelled cash in their hands, got from unilateral collection of fees.

However, the Makinde government hit its foot against the stone by its inclusion in the list of the managers the name of Lamidi Mukaila, a notorious outlaw who had recently been released from jail after serving out term for murder. He goes by the sobriquet, Auxiliary. By this decision, the Oyo government had harvested all the enemies of Auxiliary planted from his years of outlawry. More importantly, having built a name as government that walks on the path of rectitude, Oyo government shouldn’t be seen as walking on the path of same old politics of pandering to whims of uneducated and notorious leeches. These are people who have over the decades profited from the years of divisive politics by government runners.