A Thousand Ways to Spend What You Don’t Have By Olaitan Adesina

A Thousand Ways to Spend What You Don’t Have

By Olaitan Adesina

There is something almost poetic about a government that cannot grow its revenues but has mastered the fine art of multiplying aides. In Ondo State today, Internally Generated Revenue limps along like a reluctant civil servant on a Monday morning, but Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa is having an eureka moment: sack the old aides and prepare to appoint one thousand new ones.

One thousand! Not ten. Not fifty. One entire thousand!

We are not talking jobs in agriculture, teachers in classrooms or doctors in understaffed hospitals here. We are talking about aides—most of whom have no work schedules or even desks.

If governance were measured by the density of special assistants per square kilometre, Ondo would be competing with Singapore by now.

Let us not pretend this is reform. It is recycling. A bureaucratic reset button dressed up as efficiency. The same system that comfortably accommodated over five hundred idle aides not too long ago is now, apparently, too lean. Too efficient. Too underpopulated. The solution is to double down. Because nothing says fiscal discipline like expanding a wage bill in an economy already gasping for breath.

At a time when inflation has turned basic living into advanced mathematics, when households are performing daily miracles just to put food on the table, the Aiyedatiwa has decided that what the people really need is more aides. Perhaps the logic is that if everyone becomes an aide, nobody will complain about unemployment. A bold strategy. Questionable, but bold.

We are told this will strengthen coordination and inject fresh capacity. These are the kinds of phrases that sound impressive until you remember that governance is not a group project where everyone must have a speaking role. Coordination of what exactly? Hunger? Underdevelopment? Insecurity? Or the delicate choreography of patronage?

Because let us be honest. This is not about governance. It is about politics. It is about building a loyal army, one appointment letter at a time. One thousand loyalists spread neatly across 203 wards. That is not administrative necessity. It is simple electoral mathematics.

And who pays for this grand experiment in political generosity? The same citizens whose businesses are suffocating under poor infrastructure, whose incomes have been eroded by inflation, whose expectations from government have been reduced to the barest minimum – Just do not make things worse.

Yet here we are.

Ondo State is not a wealthy state. Its N45 billion annual IGR does not support extravagance. Its development indicators do not justify this indulgence in squandermania. Every naira committed to maintaining an army of aides is a naira not spent on roads that do not destroy vehicles, schools that do not destroy futures, or hospitals that do not resemble waiting rooms to the afterlife.

But perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way. Maybe the Governor is about to do something revolutionary. Maybe the real infrastructure Ondo State needs is human. Thousands of assistants standing shoulder to shoulder, bravely assisting one another in assisting the Governor. A self sustaining ecosystem of assistance. Aides aiding aides in an endless loop of administrative enthusiasm. It would be funny if it were not expensive.

Leadership is, at its core, about choices. Hard choices. The kind that require saying no to excess, no to patronage, no to the easy applause of political beneficiaries. Choosing instead to invest in what actually moves the needle for ordinary people.

Appointing one thousand aides in this economic climate is not a hard choice. It is the easiest choice in the book. It is governance by generosity with public funds. Charity that begins and ends in the corridors of power.

Someday soon, Ondo State will have a government that understands that efficiency is not measured by how many people are on the payroll, but by how many lives are improved. Until then, we watch, we calculate, and we sigh. Because, it seems the only thing growing faster than inflation and insecurity in Ondo State is the number of Mr Governor’s aides.

Olaitan Adesina is a renowned poet, author and social critic. He writes from Akure.

31st March 2026