What About The Flood They Left Behind?
By John Mayaki
It is about the flood they left behind but there is something poetic about this photograph accompanying this piece.
Someone said it connotes frustration. Another said confusion. And I asked, what about stress and fatigue?
You see a governor, buried in files, phone pressed to his ear, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. One can only wonder what occupied his thoughts at that moment. Whatever it was, one thing is certain: the flood that swallowed Benin City’s GRA was not occupying government with sufficient urgency.
For eight long years, the Government Reservation Area (GRA), once the pride of Benin, became a monument to neglect. Roads collapsed. Gullies widened. Floodwaters reclaimed streets after every heavy rain. Residents learnt to navigate craters instead of roads, while government officials perfected the art of explanations. It was under ex-governor Godwin Obaseki.
Today, the very apostles of that administration have rediscovered their outrage. I saw a video where one of them stood in a flooded ditch in the GRA to lament but she will not take her camera to the spot where Obaseki’s convoy was stuck on Sapele road that has been fixed by Governor Monday Okpebholo.
Suddenly, they have become road engineers. They are now erosion experts. Every puddle is a breaking news headline. Every damaged road is proof of governmental failure.
Curious.
Where was this righteous indignation when the GRA was deteriorating under the watch of governor Obaseki they so much defended with religious devotion? Where were the daily press releases when erosion chewed through roads year after year? Why did their voices become loud only after power changed hands?
That is the oldest trick in politics: create a mess, leave office, then sit abroad and hire urchins to start complaining that the new tenant has not finished cleaning the mess you left in your house.
It is called buck-passing.
The Okpebholo administration inherited roads that were already broken, drainage systems that had long failed, and erosion that had been allowed to mature into a crisis. No serious observer believes problems accumulated over eight years can disappear within months.
Criticism of any government is legitimate. Selective amnesia is not. Whenever you see them complain of roads in the GRA, show them the drainage and erosion work Okpebholo has embarked upon. They are everywhere in Tempoga. Ohogobi, Utteh, Sapele road, among others.
The GRA did not wake up one morning after November and decide to collapse. It was a slow decay, supervised by an administration that had eight rainy seasons to prove it could tame the floods and restore the roads.
It failed. Obaseki failed.
Those who applauded that failure now seek to rewrite history by blaming its consequences on those who inherited them.
History, however, keeps better records than political propagandists hired by Obaseki.
The roads remember. The gullies remember. The flood remembers.
And so do the people remember the flood they left behind. @all
It is about the flood they left behind but there is something poetic about this photograph accompanying this piece.
Someone said it connotes frustration. Another said confusion. And I asked, what about stress and fatigue?
You see a governor, buried in files, phone pressed to his ear, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. One can only wonder what occupied his thoughts at that moment. Whatever it was, one thing is certain: the flood that swallowed Benin City’s GRA was not occupying government with sufficient urgency.
For eight long years, the Government Reservation Area (GRA), once the pride of Benin, became a monument to neglect. Roads collapsed. Gullies widened. Floodwaters reclaimed streets after every heavy rain. Residents learnt to navigate craters instead of roads, while government officials perfected the art of explanations. It was under ex-governor Godwin Obaseki.
Today, the very apostles of that administration have rediscovered their outrage. I saw a video where one of them stood in a flooded ditch in the GRA to lament but she will not take her camera to the spot where Obaseki’s convoy was stuck on Sapele road that has been fixed by Governor Monday Okpebholo.
Suddenly, they have become road engineers. They are now erosion experts. Every puddle is a breaking news headline. Every damaged road is proof of governmental failure.
Curious.
Where was this righteous indignation when the GRA was deteriorating under the watch of governor Obaseki they so much defended with religious devotion? Where were the daily press releases when erosion chewed through roads year after year? Why did their voices become loud only after power changed hands?
That is the oldest trick in politics: create a mess, leave office, then sit abroad and hire urchins to start complaining that the new tenant has not finished cleaning the mess you left in your house.
It is called buck-passing.
The Okpebholo administration inherited roads that were already broken, drainage systems that had long failed, and erosion that had been allowed to mature into a crisis. No serious observer believes problems accumulated over eight years can disappear within months.
Criticism of any government is legitimate. Selective amnesia is not. Whenever you see them complain of roads in the GRA, show them the drainage and erosion work Okpebholo has embarked upon. They are everywhere in Tempoga. Ohogobi, Utteh, Sapele road, among others.
The GRA did not wake up one morning after November and decide to collapse. It was a slow decay, supervised by an administration that had eight rainy seasons to prove it could tame the floods and restore the roads.
It failed. Obaseki failed.
Those who applauded that failure now seek to rewrite history by blaming its consequences on those who inherited them.
History, however, keeps better records than political propagandists hired by Obaseki.
The roads remember. The gullies remember. The flood remembers.
And so do the people remember the flood they left behind. @all
