After some reflection and access to facts, the recent tiff over the delay of Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola to form a cabinet has reminded me about the human obsession with rituals. It has also unveiled how a chasm of communication between the government and the governed can generate needless hoopla.

Ritual is an important part of life, and indeed life will be tragic without it. Lovers of literature, myth and the dramatic arts are enamoured of ritual and rites. Mystics, priests and a whole array of clerics see rituals as their breath of life.

We wake up, worship, greet, kill, fight wars, and eat and procreate with adherence to rituals. It has become the human way of simplifying life, healing it of its horrors and even explaining away some of our many barbarities. We hide our evil behind it. When we kill, it is a prelude to a feast. As the poet Frederick Turner put it, “it is the beauty we have paid for with our shame.”

Forming a cabinet, swearing them in, has become what we expect to happen in a government and indeed the constitution says it should. The Ogbeni has not formed his cabinet and some people are skewering him over that. Two sets of people are triggering the campaign. One, those who are genuinely interested in the progress of the state and governor, especially in the aftermath of the years of struggle to wrest a legitimate mandate from the party of lies and governor as tyrant who held sway for years. The other group is actually within the political circle of the governor himself who are angling for positions within the cabinet, and who believe the governor is dangling their carrots without letting them drop on their longsuffering and outstretched hands.

I had to make personal enquiries and research over the matter. I discovered three things. One, the government is trying to save a lot of money. Two, the government has not done a good job of explaining this. Three, our people are placing more emphasis on appointment than performance.

The government has, by constitution, to appoint a cabinet of commissioners to govern the state. The governor on mounting the seat discovered the shabby state of finances. One, it was paying a loan of about N600 million a month in a state whose total monthly revenue is less than N3 billion. The governor negotiated the loan down to N60 million a month. This should give a breather to finances under siege. In spite of this, the government still has to borrow about N200 million monthly to pay salaries in a pre-18,000 minimum wage regime.

Yet in spite of these, he employed 20,000 youth in Osun State who had no jobs, and who were desperate for a source of sustenance of family and themselves. This issue has been submerged in the staccato of condemnation over the delay in appointing a cabinet. If Ogbeni Aregbesola appoints a cabinet today, they may be about 20 men and women. They would need salaries, houses, furniture allowances, and of course new cars. Once those are accomplished, they would have to employ personal staff. By the time all of that is done, the wage pressure would likely paralyse efforts to pursue grand objectives of governance.

The critics are obsessed with employing about 20 people while underplaying 20,000 persons. These youths are not asking for houses, new cars, travelling allowances, furniture, et al. They will not employ special assistants or other forms of aides. They will not seek imprest or other sundry perks and demands accruing to such positions legitimately. The youth underwent a series of training at a camp for weeks prior to their absorption into the state civil service.

The appointment of youth is important. The nation today is being held hostage by youths on rampage. A significant healing has come to the Niger Delta after militancy. It came with the fertile idea from Governor Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa State. The idea of militancy was pooh-poohed then, but late President Umar Yar’Adua ran with the idea, and today the incidence of militancy has mitigated, although the implementation still falls short of the Sylva-inspired blueprint.

Now, we have Boko Haram, and the young men are holding an errant state to account for years of negligence. The ways of God are being translated into the ritual of violence, triggering supine apologies from men of power. It is youth gone awry. The youth went awry in answer to wayward elite.

“Youth is the time for any extraordinary toil,” noted the Greek philosopher. What we have lost is youth in active service for the people. The irony though is that those institutionalised to serve, a la NYSC, have been quarries of youths who define service subversively. Those who maim, desecrate the bomb and bring down magisterial buildings, send terrors to the high and mighty. With Boko Haram the high and mighty live in fear and trembling. Youth has become the nemesis of the ruling class. It is a revenge of history, a history of official neglect. Rather than employ and educate them, former Governor Modu Sherriff Musa ignored and pauperised them. When the media skewered him, he scoffed that his people could not read. It is that ignorance that has come to haunt him. He is now apologising to them in English that he deprived them the opportunity to learn.

Ogbeni is averting this. He even organised a summit on education in keeping with his pledge to abide by the Awo vision. We shall see how he translates the ideas.

He also came up with Jigi Omoluabi, a free eye care service to the people. About 18,562 people who had a variety of eye afflictions benefitted from this programme. He has done some work in the area of the environment with inspection bodies already at work and N187.5 million released to clear drainages in parts of the state.

While the ritual of government is important, we should not mistake it for the purpose of government. Government exists for the provision of the goods, to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and make way for them to realise their individual powers and happiness. He will appoint his cabinet as he says. I don’t know, though, how much he wants to save before he can do that. The law does not give a time limit to appoint cabinet. So, he has not erred. Rather he has used his sagacity to turn time into money, and that is the sort of creative gusto we want of our leaders.

But he ought to communicate this. It was my concern that made me to come to this understanding. Governance is not only about doing well but being seen to be doing well.

However, we should not levitate ritual over substance, appointment over performance.