OLUSEGUN Kokumo Agagu, former Ondo State governor and leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state, who died suddenly last Friday, would be remembered for his kind of politics.

If there was any player in the Nigerian political field that didn’t follow the rules of the game, at least the cut-throat, selfish and ruthless approach to power acquisition, that person was Agagu.

Where many had taken to heart the brutal principle of the Italian philosopher, Nicolo Machiavelli and Robert Greene’s postulation of the laws of power, Agagu, a trained geologist and lecturer at the premier University of Ibadan, played a kind of politics different from his colleagues’.

Unlike what is unfolding in the national political scene where politicians are devouring each other in preparations for the 2015 elections, his kind of politics was based on the principle of “live and let live.”

The focus of his administration was spreading the goods to the highest number of beneficiaries.

For instance, due to paucity of funds, he decided in the early days of his administration, to surface-dressed many roads in the state instead of asphalt overlaying, so as to reach the highest number of communities.

In his peculiar brand of politics, Agagu, after acquiring political authority of Ondo State following the tsunami that swept away the Alliance for Democracy (AD), became a statesman who took the interest of the masses far above those of politicians, much to the chagrin of his colleagues in the ruling party.

He disregarded the 15th law of Greene’s “48 Laws of Power,” which stipulates total crushing of the opposition. Rather, he allowed his successor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, as a candidate then, a run of the political field, all to his (Agagu’s) detriment, politically.

When he was about to declare his intention to re-contest the 2007 elections, Agagu called a meeting of his cabinet, which then had Mimiko as the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), to intimate members of his desire.

Quite unlike a consummate student of power and against Greene’s third law of concealment of intention, he had, while bringing the likes of Mimiko on board his gubernatorial team in 2003, pledged to do only one term.

At the meeting, those who were nursing governorship ambition, including his deputy, Omolade Oluwateru and finance commissioner, Tayo Alasoadura, declared that with a change of heart from Agagu, they would drop their ambitions and support him to realise his dream.

All eyes were then focused on Mimiko, whose intention to rule the state had been on the front burner since his former AD was in office. But rather than toe the line of Oluwateru and Alasoadura, Mimiko told the gathering that he would have to consult his followers for their consent before he could make any pronouncement.

The reply was clear enough: Mimiko, already oiling a massive state-wide campaign machinery, was going to attempt to wrest power from his boss. And the parley was abruptly brought to an end.

A follow-up meeting of Agagu’s inner caucus members advised the governor to sack his SSG (Mimiko) but the governor declined, saying he could not constitute himself as an impediment to anybody’s ambition even if it was going to scuttle his own.

Mimiko was to move up the ladder from his SSG position to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development where he consolidated and strengthened his support base with greater inputs from the Abuja seat of power.

There, he reportedly drew more friends to himself, particularly from die-hard politicians, who saw in Agagu a governor that was “too academic and tight-fisted” in his approach to governance and politics without sparing some influence for colleagues.

And presiding over a cabinet that was full of members clandestinely hobnobbing with the opposition, Agagu would not have any advice from his very close aides to relieve the identified culprits of their positions, preferring to crack jokes with the matter.

At one of the meetings of his party leaders, he reportedly entered the room, mouthing the slogan of the opposition party, to tell his colleagues that he knew that most of them had crossed over to the other side.

The governor, however, realised his vulnerability when his photograph with an injured ankle, taken at his living room at the Government House, was splashed on the front page of a local tabloid belonging to the opposition. Still, he refused to sack anyone.

SIGNS that Agagu was not “a good politician” were discernible to analysts moments after he was inaugurated on May 29, 2003. He had declared that he was going to run a compact administration where all frivolities in the act of governance, including indulgence of fellow politicians, would be avoided.

He thanked his colleagues for contributing to his emergence as the state’s helmsman, but told them that rather than wait for patronage, they should see their efforts as part of contributions to national development.

Agagu also announced that unlike when appointments into public offices, especially the civil and teaching services were based on the caliber of politician(s) an applicant knew, absorption into government offices and positions would be based on merits.

Expectedly, the pronouncement drew the ire of other party men, as he followed with action, reducing the number of ministries he inherited from the AD administration from 17 to 11, the number of Special Advisers from 20 to four and Special Assistants reduced substantially.

He also introduced a seemingly foolproof contract-award system, with prices of procurement for government needs verified by a Price Monitoring Office and a ceiling put on the percentage of profits to be made by contractors handling government projects. This was prior to Federal Government’s establishment of its Due Process Office headed by Dr. Oby Ezekwesili.

As an academic scientist with a bias for pragmatic approach and laboratory analysis of matters, Agagu spent his first six months in office, preparing a document titled, “Road Map To Progress,” a blueprint for the state’s development, which, he said was to “chart a definite course of action that we should follow in achieving the status of our dream state for Ondo.”

Politicians in the house, who had been deprived of influence, finally declared a war on the new administration following Agagu’s appointments of mostly non-politician experts, particularly as Special Advisers, to man specialised sectors of governance; his introduction of transparency, including monthly public declaration of what came to the coffers of the state from all revenue sources; and the setting up of a Fiscal Allocation Committee (FAC), made up of representatives of organised Labour, traditional rulers and other stakeholders, to determine how the funds were disbursed on monthly basis.

Within six months of his ascendancy, Agagu’s popularity, which was soaring above 62 percent vote-win during the 2003 polls, recorded an all-time low. Attempts by his image-handlers to describe him as “the repairer of Ondo State” earned him more opprobrium as the image of an old illiterate village bicycle repairer, who was trying to make ends meet while his colleagues were successful entrepreneurs and traders.

Agagu’s fall stemmed from his failure to realise that his fellow politicians were necessary evil he had to accommodate. And rather than assuage their feelings by awarding the contracts to build a six-classroom block in each of the 1,230 public primary schools in the state to them, the governor announced that a new and cheaper technology that “will continuously cool the interior of the classrooms through a pre-fabricated wire-mesh” would be employed.

For more than a year, the new efforts were allegedly frustrated, thereby delaying commencement of the projects. At the end of the day, the government had to succumb to the normal old brick and mortar technology with the politicians as the major contractors, and only about two-thirds of the schools were completed and delivered at the end of his administration in 2009.

It was common then to hear politicians, many from Agagu’s PDP, condemning the governor for “tarring roads instead of tarring the stomachs,” a direct reference to his administration’s policy of preventing people from feeding fat on the commonwealth to the detriment of overall development of the state and its people.

By the time Agagu was three years in office, principal officers of his political party, such as the State Chairman, Alhaji Alli Olanusi, now Ondo State deputy governor and the state secretary, Boluwaji Kunlere, a senator representing the Southern senatorial district on the platform of the ruling Labour Party (LP), as well as several big shots, had parted ways with him.

In a curious twist of fate, it was Kunlere, who, as the candidate of the LP, defeated Agagu in his Southern stronghold, hereby denying the former governor another opportunity to come back into political limelight.

DESPITE the opposition from within, Agagu trudged on and at the end of his administration in 2009, he had opened hitherto inaccessible areas of the state like Irele and Agagba-Obon axis and particularly the oil-rich coastal areas where he completed the about N30 billion Igbokoda-Ayetoro and the Aboto-Olokola roads that had the longest bridge in the state.

He constructed health facilities in every political wards of the state; reclaimed a vast area of Ilaje from the sea through a N7 billion Adagbakuja project; established the Ondo State University of Science and Technology (OSUSTECH) in Okitipupa; constructed and dualised several roads within Akure, the state capital and other urban centres and above all, introduced a fiscal discipline that moved capital expenditure of the state budget from 30 percent to about 70 percent.

He conceptualised the multi-billion dollar Olokola mega-project, which was to have a Free Trade Zone, a natural deep seaport, fertilizer and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants, petroleum refineries and many other service industries. He brought in both the Federal and Ogun State Governments, the latter having mutual boundaries where the projects were sited.

As the Minister of Power and Steel, Agagu was instrumental to the location of the multi-billion dollar Omotosho Power Plant in Ore, Odigbo local council, which was to service both Olokola and the Industrial Park that his administration planned for the area.

Many people would give him credit for resolving the oil-well disputes with Delta State in favour of Ondo, thus raising the state’s receipt in the monthly allocation from Oil Mineral Derivation Fund.

At the twilight of his administration, Agagu commenced several dream contracts, including the N14 billion water reticulation projects from the Owena Multi-Purpose Dam that was to provide potable water to people of the Central senatorial district; the N4 billion construction of the Akure Township Stadium; the new road linking Irele with Okitipupa, which reduced the time of travel by about 80 percent, and the N5 billion buildings at OSUSTECH.

For these projects and many others, his administration paid 50 percent mobilisation fees and was still able to leave N38 billion in the coffers of the state at the time of his hurried exit from the Government House via an Appeal Court judgment that declared Mimiko, his arch-rival as the winner of the April 2007 governorship election.

While many people saw Agagu’s loss of authority as a fallout of his estrangement with his fellow politicians, others linked defects in his politics as being responsible.

The former governor was accused of nepotism, which saw members of his immediate cycle of friends and those of his younger brother, Femi, his Chief of Staff (COS), wielding tremendous power, and misuse of the same, to the extent that they created enemies for the administration.

A commissioner in his cabinet drove the monarch of his community into exile, without Agagu halting the umbrage. The Oba was only reinstated when the Mimiko administration came on board.

While kudos went to the governor for his frugality and simple ways of life, which reflected in his person; many claimed that a lot of under-hand dealings were done by some elements close to the governor and on whose shoulders he placed these responsibilities of transparence and openness.

A case in point was an aide saddled with the responsibility of contracts control who, months after leaving office, opened a massive hotel outlet in Akure.

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