Okpebholo’s Funeral of State Dignity

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

There are gestures that mark a healthy democracy – robust debate, civil service that answers to law not personality, and symbols of office that point to the people they are meant to serve. Then there are gestures like the one Governor Monday Okpebholo performed in Benin this week: instructing his newly sworn commissioners to wear a Tinubu-branded “Asiwaju” cap to Executive Council meetings and warning that anyone who fails to do so will be turned away. It is an image that captures more than a momentary lapse in taste; it speaks to a worrying habit in our politics where public office becomes the stage for private fealty. 

  There is nothing novel about leaders seeking visible signs of allegiance – politicians everywhere brand themselves and their allies. But the peculiar brazenness here is that the mark of allegiance is to the occupant of the federal Executive, not to the constitution, the electorate, or even the office of the governor. The governor’s speech – thanking President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his help in the state’s election and then ordering public servants to don his insignia – turns the apparatus of state into a branch office of partisan theatre. In doing so, it collapses the boundary between service and servility. 

 This is not mere sartorial absurdity. Symbols change behaviour. When commissioners are obliged to parade a president’s logo into a state council meeting, the meeting’s purpose subtly shifts from problem-solving for Edo people to performance signalling at the national level. The threat to send someone back for lacking a cap tells junior officials what matters most: not the content of policy, not results for schools, hospitals or roads, but visible loyalty to a party brand and its leader. It also invites patronage and partisan policing of the civil service – the very things that undermine delivery and make public appointments into spoils. 

There are a string of recent precedents that put Okpebholo’s cap in context. Governors have more and more been seen performing obeisance to the centre – not only in photographic handshakes at Aso Rock but in public gestures that signal who their true boss is. The wearing of branded caps or other insignia by state figures when visiting the presidency has circulated widely in recent months; in some cases governors have been spotted completing official visits with presidential-branded headgear, a small item that speaks loudly about who gets the public eye. The optics are the policy: if loyalty to a person becomes the primary currency, good governance becomes a secondary market. 

 We should also remember the outraged conversations this kind of worship of office provokes. Nigerians have complained in the past about governors turning up en masse to wave off presidential flights, an act ridiculed as wasteful spectacle rather than governance. There is a pattern – the more lavish the obeisance, the less likely we are to see gut-wrenching scarcity treated with sobriety. In other words, when the choreography of loyalty substitutes for public purpose, priorities get perverted. 

There are two practical dangers here. The first is policy capture: when state executives are expected to demonstrate fealty, their decisions become filtered by the need not to displease powerful patrons rather than by evidence of actual performance or meeting of local needs. The second is institutional erosion: a civil service that is incentivised to show symbols of personal loyalty will naturally cede independence, sparking self-censorship and hampering the checks that federalism and bureaucracy are supposed to provide. For citizens of Edo State, that translates directly into poorer service delivery – a commissioner worried more about how he or she appears in a photograph than whether a clinic has drugs will not fix the clinic. That is not conjecture; it is arithmetic of incentives. 

  Some will argue this is politics as usual: governors thank their patrons, political parties brand their campaigns, and everyone plays the game. But the difference is one of degree and of setting. Elections and campaigning are one thing; the functioning of state government is another. Campaign regalia in campaign season is expected. Ordering political paraphernalia into the day-to-day rituals of governance crosses a line. It makes the threshold for holding public office less about competence and public interest, and more about theatrical displays of loyalty. That sets a terrible precedent as we approach the 2027 elections: what begins as a cap today can become vetting by photo-op tomorrow. 

  There is also an irony in the governor’s rhetoric. He told his commissioners their appointments “did not come as a reward or patronage, but as a call to serve the people of Edo State.” The cap order, and the warning attached to it, tells a different story. It reads less like a sermon on sacrifice and discipline and more like an initiation rite for a clientelist order. The subliminal message to any commissioner is that career prospects and access to power will depend as much on flags worn and slogans mouthed as on the quality of work produced. That is not leadership; it is a licensing of servitude. 

What should citizens expect and do? First, demand clarity: if a governor claims his administration is about “practical governance,” then the evidence must be practical: budgets executed, schools improved, health clinics stocked. Nigerian citizens and the media should press for disclosure of performance metrics rather than fashion statements. Second, institutions must be defended: civil servants, boards and agencies should not be reduced to party messengers. Third, political parties should be reminded that winning votes does not give carte blanche to convert public offices into propaganda wings. If the line between party and state is blurred beyond recognition, the very idea of federalism – subnational governments acting as bulwarks against overcentralisation – is hollowed out.

We have seen, too often, the theatre of allegiance: governors posing, or loitering, at airports, ministers photographed wearing branded caps, and public servants being coaxed into partisan displays. It is time to call such carnival for what it is: a distraction from the harder work of governance. If the Asiwaju cap becomes a uniform for the comfortable and conniving, then the cost will be paid by ordinary citizens who need policies and services, not photo opportunities.

So let those commissioners choose: a cap for the camera, or trousers for the task. The people of Edo, and indeed of Nigeria, deserve public servants who are measured by the lives they touch, not the logos they sport. If Okpebholo wants loyalty – let it be loyalty to the public purse, to the rule of law, and to the health of institutions. Anything less is just political tomfoolery in a suit and cap.