You’ve gotta love our people, the beautiful people of Edo State. As 2024 rolls around, a new word has emerged on the political landscape:
‘Homeboy,’ as qualification to run for Governor.
I became curious after hearing the word a number of times, and I decided to take a moment to examine the reasoning behind the clamor. In the last 7 years, in Edo State, the political elite has had its nose bloodied. It’s not been business as usual. Governor Obaseki goes to work, closes from work and goes home to his family as everyone should. The political class does not like that. They want a Governor who will show up at the pepper soup joint after hours, to be with the boys. If we were in an ideologically driven society, clearly, from all indications, Obaseki would be a Republican, a man driven by Conservative ideas, a concept where government provides an enabling environment to help businesses to thrive.
In order words, let the environment drive itself.
This concept of governance is too complicated for simple minds to understand for the simple reason that simple minds are more at home with the distribution of government patronage. These largesse in the past have come as contracts for the boys.
Let me quickly state here that there’s nothing wrong in giving contracts to the boys. After all, someone has to do the contract. The problem has been that, many times, the contract does not get done, and so, the people suffer. They suffer because the contractor does a shoddy job or does not do it at all, even though money has been paid in full. The contractor is more than likely, a homeboy.
A few years ago, I traveled with a friend who had executed some Red Roof contracts in the early days of Oshiomhole’s administration. I was surprised at the great care he took, and the quality of his work, which caused me to ask him why he was putting so much detail into his work. He said to me, “O’l boy, this school wey I dey build so, who knows, one of my distant cousins may die here if the building collapses in five years time because I did not do a good job, when I had the chance.”
I had a tear in my eye. I knew where that mindset was coming from – it is the mindset of someone who has traveled and lived abroad. There’s just something about a man who has traveled that you will not find in the homeboy. It does not make the homeboy a bad person. What it is, is that the homeboy is unexposed to the finer things of life. We can’t blame him for that. You cannot give what you do not have.
A homeboy has a yardstick for his measurements and assessments. He alone knows where his measuring stick is calibrated, and because he does not read widely, when you are in a conversation with him, he shouts to try to intimidate you. He thinks it a sign of weakness to bow to superior opinion. Not so, homeboy! What’s so wrong with following the trend of a conversation and conceding when you need to? It takes a different kind of mindset, the enlightened mindset. Homeboys shout you down. How else should they show themselves?
Homeboy as status quo. “No be so we dey do am before.”
What one finds very curious is the tendency of the homeboy to talk from both sides of the mouth, and this takes me to the concept of Right or Wrong.
Is right an absolute or relative virtue?
Is what is right today going to be right in five year’s time, or in twenty years’ time?
Is the age-old axiom “What is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander,” a truism?
For the homeboy, nothing is fixed, nothing is always true, nothing is always right.
The only thing that’s constant for the homeboy is the “I.” – “What I need” – everyone, every previous “right or assertion” be damned, and, my friend, that just ain’t right. Should we call that arrogance or entitlement?
Sorry, homeboy, society does not run and breath on your say-so. You, like all of us, like the earth itself, depending on where you’re looking from – are just a speck in the grand scheme of things.
Finally, I decided to look up the definition of homeboy in the dictionary, and it blew me away. Among other fairly not-so-nice things it had to say, it now said this:
Homeboy as gangster.
What??????
Anyone still wanna be a homeboy?
In the final analysis, I would like to echo Otto Von Bismarck, Chancellor of the German Reich, (1871—1890), who spoke about the “Great questions of the day.”
Great people of Edo State, we have Professors who, at the top of their game, earn a paltry N400,000 as take-home pay monthly, and therefore, have been relegated to the ranks of the educated poor. How can we grow the Edo economy to give him N400,000 as his weekly take home pay? This is one of the “great questions of the day.”
Too many of our women die at child birth. If they manage to survive childbirth, their milk dries up and they are unable to feed their newborn babies due to chronic poverty. This is one of the great challenges of the day.
Too many children are out of school. A good number of those who manage to go to school are too hungry to learn. This, my friends, is one of the great questions of the day.
Our farmers are too scared to go to their farms, thereby contributing to food scarcity and leading to high food prices. This is a great question of the day.
Many of our roads are in dire need of fixing. IGR is shrinking as the government continues to tax the same group of people—market women, and drivers—slamming them with multiple taxation, on a daily basis. These struggling poor, bear the brunt of excessive taxation in a shrinking economic environment. These are some of the great questions of the day.
Breast cancer is ravaging our women and killing them in their prime, leaving for the most part, an already struggling family in deeper distress and calamity. These are the great questions of the day.
2.4 million youth, representing approximately 70% of our population graduate from school without any skills, and there are no factories to hire them, thereby causing them to turn to crime as nature abhors a vacuum. This is a great question of the day.
Inflation bites hard. Families are in great distress. Many have been pushed over the cliff, or are in the process of being pushed over the cliff. Some have resorted to selling one child so that they can feed the other three. This, my friends are some of the great issues of the day.
The current annual IGR of the State at N48 billion is too small. The state’s budget of less than N300 billion is not big enough to take care of great infrastructure, and at the same time, cater to the welfare of 5.2 million people.
How do we bake a bigger pie?
This is probably the biggest question of today.
Friends, if these challenges are beyond your ability to comprehend and proffer solutions to; if a sense of entitlement is all that qualifies you to be the next Governor; if tribe or zone is your only basis for running for office; if the possession of great wealth which was acquired by virtue of political office or being close to people in power is your raison d’ être for running:
I have news for you.
It’s a new day.
The great people of Edo State are now on a train which has left the station. The train is on its way to a place called Eldorado—a place where the drive for excellence is at best, a starting place.
We, the Edo people are too smart to submit ourselves to men whose only call to fame is the toga of homeboy.
This job is beyond your pay grade. It is time for great minds to aspire to power in this great Commonwealth of over 1,416 villages, each of which boasts a doctor, a professor, a teacher, a principal, our hardworking farmers, market women, and decent everyday people who just want an opportunity to work, and live a decent life of respect, and dignity.
I am sorry, but we are confronted by a myriad of challenges that need addressing by great minds of which you, my friend, may be one. We need solutions or else, homeboy, if that’s the only thing you bring to the table, you may need to go home.
Michael Ovienmhada
Author, Poet, Playwright, Public Affairs Commentator and aspirant for governor on the platform of the New Nigeria Peoples Party(NNPP).
omeekey@hotmail.com
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