Chess is a game that tasks the intellect. Only very deep thinkers and the highly focused excel at it and a typical Chess game is divided into three parts, the opening, the middle and the endgame.
Like Chess, the life of a government is also divided into three: the opening, middle and endgame. While the beginning of the life of an administration is very important, the end of it is even more so. This is why in Edo State, the Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, himself a master of the game, who knows the importance of an endgame has taken the bold move to ensure that his administration finishes well.
To achieve this, key officers of his government, the Secretary to State Government, the Head of Service, the Chief of Staff, the Commissioners, Permanent-Secretaries, Accountant-General of the State, top Directors, members of the State Economic Team, key officers of the Information and Communication Technology Agency, the Bishops, Rooks and Knights of the Oshiomhole Government, swooped on Abuja for a 3-day tactical-thinking retreat to cover all areas and ensure a successful end for the Oshiomhole administration.
Aptly tagged “Finishing Well”, the retreat was designed to raise the bar on governance in Edo; to ensure that an administration which had a great beginning also has a great end.
The Governor himself set the tone of the retrear when he stirred the minds of the participants by challenging them to look beyond the unstable price of crude oil and fashion out good strategies to rise above the level of the mediocre.
He said: “whatever we have done in the past on the assumption that oil money will be available, it is clear that we are no longer going to have that level of cheap oil money. We will have to look inward and this is where the role of everybody present here comes in.
Around this time next month, we will be marking the 7th year in office which effectively means that I have about 13 months to go and we felt it would be useful to assemble both political leadership and the leadership of the bureaucracy in the Civil Service to take a hard look at the past seven years.
We have to revisit the agenda we have set for ourselves, what has been accomplished, what we have not fully accomplished, what the challenges are and going forward over the next one year what do we need to do differently to ensure that we accomplished all that we have set out to accomplish.
We also believed that in the face of the present dwindling revenue, if we are going to remain viable and I define viability in terms of first, capacity to continue to deliver to the people and secondly, to be able to meet your contractual obligations to those who work for government; Civil Servants and other Public Servants.
It is also an opportunity to look at the plan we set out between 2009 and 2020. Now the time to begin to address the issue of the challenges that the next Governor will confront is now, it is not something you want to do after the elections.
We need to begin to try to anticipate what the challenges will be and address all of those critical issues such that we have a seamless transition and the next government is able to build on the foundation that is solid enough to sustain his own vision so that there is continuity and project and programs that have been put in place such that the next person can build on it.
Look at the various institutions, reforms programmes we have put in place, how to deepen those reforms, institutionalise them and encourage our people to imbibe the essence of those reforms such that the task of taking Edo to the next level can be sustained and guaranteed.”
Oshiomhole’s position was corroborated by top economist, Prof Doyin Salami, who was Vice Chairman of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Transition Committee. He agreed that the state must look beyond the oil sector in generating revenue to enable the government deliver even more and consolidate on its developmental obligations to the people even in the face of dwindling resources from the federation account.
Professor Salami postulated that crude oil price will continue to dwindle or remain within the same bracket of its current price and urged the state government to make a realistic budget plan for 2016 within the current price as this price would likely remain the new ‘normal’ price for the next few months.
He advised the state government to harness her agricultural potentials, create and encourage small and medium scale businesses as well as address the issue of social development as these, he said, will in turn not only improve the well-being of the people but also increase the internal revenue base of the state.
After Professor Salami, the ante was upped as Mr. Babatunde Fashola, former Governor of Lagos State made a grand entry.
He said he had a simple task, just to advice the Governor to complete ongoing projects and shun new ones, unless they are key.
According to the Minister-designate, “It is easy to say you haven’t finished the job. So in that sense, there is work to do, you must accept that and you must also be honest with yourself that you can’t finish the work. The reason is that, it is a work of people, a work of human beings and as long as the human civilization remains, work will never finish because it is a continuous undertaking.
If the work could be finished, Ogbemudia would have finished it, he had more time than you and if it couldn’t be finished at that time, Ambrose Alli would have finished it and probably John Odigie-Oyegun, so in that sense, it won’t finish.
In the last few days, there would be a lot of talk about what you did not do, and there will be people asking you, before you go, come and do this, but you must be honest with yourself and be honest with them, having regards to the realities of your resources.
The pressure can be enormous, but don’t see that it as a negative, it is not. See it as a positive because they are asking you to do it only because they trust in your ability to do it, that is why they are asking you.
I would advice, you should resist the temptation of starting new projects unless, and unless only, they become defining in terms of timing, and in terms of so many other considerations and all of these must agree that this one or two projects are so defining, we can start them.
Your political opponents and adversaries will likely highlight those things that are yet undone so you must expect it but really, that is all they would be able to say, what you did not do but I would strongly recommend, that you do not fall into the error of succumbing to the temptation in trying to do more than your resources can allow. You may end up doing little or nothing.
The more of what they say you haven’t done, the more of what you have done that is what your discussions and commentaries should be about. Emphasise those things you have done well as proof that you can always do more, if time is afforded.
So, all of what we are doing now is to make the process of getting out easier and I must tell you that getting on to the seat of government is simpler than getting off. Closing down is harder. So it seems to me you are doing the right thing by seeking to take control of the exit rather than allowing your exit to take control of you.
I am very proud to be associated with your team, not only because of our political party affiliation, but more importantly you have demonstrated the capacity to change things in Edo for the better and I think you must all be proud of yourselves and I say so, not only because I was in Edo during your election petition so I saw things first hand and I have been in Edo subsequently and I saw change being wrought slowly but purposefully.”
More was to come from the World Bank, which gave thumbs-up to the Governor for his reforms programmes in the state.
Represented by two top executives, Mrs Gloria Joseph Raji, Senior Economist, Macro-Economic and Fiscal Management and Dr Khwima Nthara, Programme Leader, Equitable Growth, Finance and Institution, the Bank said “each time we came to Edo, we were quite impressed that we were taken around to see the results of these reforms and that is why it was easy for us at the world Bank to sell the reforms programmes in Edo to our Board in Washington.”
According to her, “through programmes for result financing, the World Bank provides finance for governments with a focus on result and capacity building. So disbursement of funds is based on specific program results that have been pre-agreed on between the bank and respective governments.
When we disbursed $75 million under the First Developmental Policy Operation to Edo State, we did not say to Edo State, you must use it to build this hospital, or this school or all of that, it was on the basis of your completion of critical policies and institutional actions which we call ‘prior actions’.
So, the focus of Developmental Policy Financing is policy and institutional reforms. We work with you to implement certain policies and institutional reforms and on the basics of implementation of certain critical reforms and actions that we agreed on, we will disburse the entire trunk of the funds.”
She said, “Institutional reforms are very important because they outlived government regimes so, it is important for governments to undertake reforms of their systems and processes, institutionalized them and that is what the focus of DPO are, to support policies and institutional reform efforts and the bank is usually on hand to provide Policy and strategic advice, so we work with the governments in designing, in thinking through your policy and institutional reforms actions and then we provide advice as necessary.”
She stressed, “The Bank provides significant funding to only governments it trusts will use the funds properly to achieve its development results because if we do not trust that you will use this fund judiciously, it would be a risk of the fund. So DPO’s are provided basically to those governments that the Bank trusts to use the funds for development results”.
Also speaking, Dr Khwima Nthara said, “reforms have to be institutionalized. Edo is very lucky today to have a very reform minded Governor, next year, he leaves office. We pray that a like-minded Governor takes over from him but circumstances change, you don’t know who else is going to come with the Governor and that is why it is important to institutionalize reforms so that they should transcend individual personality.
“Even when Comrade Adams Oshiomhole is not here, his legacy should remain, not just what he has achieved, but the building blocks of the reform programs must remain so that even when the regime changes, the reforms might stay. That is why institutionalizing those reforms are important.
The World Bank team noted that of the 36 states of the federation, only Lagos and Edo State Government have been able to access its developmental funds and therefore called on other state governments to embark on critical, efficient and Developmental reforms project to enable them quality for the World Bank Developmental funds.
Indeed, top members of the government learnt a lot at the 3-day retreat and must have keyed into the vision of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, who having mastered the endgame like other grandmasters, is on the right track to finishing well.
. Samuel Eguaikhide writes from Benin City, Edo State.