Jonathan rubbishing governance– Aregbesola

by Tunde Odesola

Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola
| credits: File copy

Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, who is also the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, in this interview with TUNDE ODESOLA, comments on the forthcoming Osun governorship election. Excerpt.

Your administration has been severely criticised for your educational policies which include provision of same school uniforms for all students and the merging of schools.

We are saying we want to change a new set of Nigerians that will not harbour the weaknesses which our generation harbours. We want to create a new man on which society will be borne and you can’t do it on what is presently here. That is why I said people should visit our mega school in Ejigbo and see what is there. It is named after the best literary icon Africa has produced (Wole Soyinka). It is a worthy investment in education. The idea is you cannot get education and still come out and be the same man. That is how education is supposed to be. Education is supposed to refine you and make you the man or woman you must be. Our high schools are being constructed to accommodate 36,000 students because each of the high schools will accommodate about 3,000 students though the recommendation of UNESCO is that a school must have a maximum of a thousand students. So, what do we now have? We have three schools in one. We will have a school on one side and then we’ll have school A, B, C with three principals and one coordinating principal.

Are you afraid that you might lose the oncoming election going by the fact that Ekiti just fell to the Peoples Democratic Party?

I don’t even think of it and that is the interesting thing. In the first instance, I resolved to be very conscious of a democratic norm. And what is the democratic norm? It was expressed in a statement I issued after the Ekiti election. I said a genuine democrat must be willing and ready to embrace the state. I will accept the result of the election provided the election is transparent, credible, free and fair. So it is not about you, it is about the quality of the electoral process, once the quality is good, whatever the people say, because they are the ultimate decider of who represents them or governs them. I said democratic choices are expected to be correct, good and right but it is not always that the choice is good, correct and right but human beings are forever in democracy for themselves and in choosing who governs them.

Are you worried of losing the election?

Even before I assumed this office, I prepared so well for the office to the extent that I should not be working presently the way I am still working. A commentator said something about me. He said I am one of the few politicians that from day one, I designed my campaign. From the very first day I entered this office, I started my campaign. How many governors walk the streets with their citizens? I’ve been doing that since my first month in office. How many governors create an interactive forum in Nigeria? I was the first governor to devote close to 10-12 hours of continuous engagement with the citizenry on a quarterly basis. How many governors create the opportunity for community meeting where the governor sits and all the stakeholders in the community comment on the government, tells you what you want to hear, tells you want you don’t want to hear, asks you pointedly questions about their lives. We did that in every federal constituency. Every month I take a walk round every community, it is carnival-like. There is no household, including those of the PDP and other political parties that our programmes have not reached, none. I feed 300,000 pupils every school day at the cost of N3.6bn a year. I have been doing it since 2012 so I have spent clearly N10.3bn on that.

Why is your administration having conflicts with civil servants, commercial motorcyclists, and students of higher institutions?

It is impossible for humans to exist without conflicts. Yoruba say even the tongue and mouth fight. The teeth sometime bite the tongue. Please for goodness sake, a sociologist who is a human scientist, will not therefore base his assessment of any sector on where there is disagreements. Let us look at the good that has been done because that is how you must situate your relationship though that you have done well does not mean that some people will not just like you. What should concern you are not those who are opposed to you. What we are doing is to ensure that this section of people that you have mentioned don’t have any basis at all to be opposed to us.

But there was a protest against your administration by students last year.

We met a condition here where students were given N3,000 as bursary and they were not even getting the bursary on time and it was full of scam. Some people would come and negotiate and collect the money and nobody would get it. They brought it to me to sign and I said why would I have to sign N3, 000 for anybody? It’s best you don’t give this bursary or we give it meaningfully. We raised the money to N10, 000 flat. For medical students and law students, we raised it to N20,000. For students in Law School, we made it N100,000. There was a clamour for the reduction of school fees and we reduced it and we have been investing in developing the institutions as hard up as we are, more than any other administration has done in the history of this state. Yes, we are having challenges with the lecturers but it is not peculiar to us. The demands of these lecturers are such that you just have to bear it. I will not say more than that now because it is sensitive. ‘Okada riders’ do not have a problem with us. They may want us to do things for them as we have done to other groups. There is no part of this state where we have not constructed a link road. Roads with drainage, concrete, with stone base, with thick asphaltic covers. Motorists and motorcyclists are enjoying the use of these roads.

Many see the various construction works your administration is doing as cosmetic and unnecessary.

I have two challenges that motivate me: The mass poverty and the hopelessness of the black man. So, I was so determined to get to where I am today because I wanted to make my own little contribution to change those terrible things. Part of what I have started to do is to build roads. We need to lift up our spirits. No city was built in heaven and brought back to earth, they were built by human beings. Are they more brilliant than us? When Maktoum started the construction of Dubai, he was not older than me. He was 40 something while I am 57. So, if people in other parts of the world are using their God-given abilities to change their landscape. What stops us from developing ours? Six years ago, I visited Dubai, a semi-desert. Such a nation that was an arid land 15 years ago is now a place that everybody wants to be.

Why are you in conflict with workers?

As for civil servants, before my advent, they did not know salaries could be paid before the end of the month. Before December 2010, salaries were not being paid before the end of the month for seven and a half years. Nobody even knew it was possible to pay before the end of the month. I resumed office on November 27 and salaries had not been paid and no one expected salaries to be paid. Anyway, by December 3, I paid November salary. Before the end of the year, which ends at December 25, I paid 10 per cent of basic salaries as 13th month salary. I paid December salary before the end of the year.

Since that day, up till December 2013, I paid salaries on or before the 25th of every month but as of January 2014, we ran into problems which we explained to everybody six months ahead. In July of 2013, the Federal Government came up with a story that 400,000 barrels of crude oil were being stolen every day. When we first heard we did not know that a problem was coming. Instead of collecting N4.6bn as allocation, they gave us N2.6bn, 40 per cent was gone. We thought it would be temporary because after that month, the Federal Government said only 20,000 barrels was being lost per day. When the oil being lost reduced from 400,000 to 20,000 per day, should we still expect a 40 per cent cut? From that July till now, the maximum allocation this state has ever received is N3.2bn which was in November 2013.

Now ask me, how was I able to cope till December? I had been managing the money such that 10 per cent of allocations and generated money was put in reserve which was also a buildup to my refusal to form a cabinet for 10 months. I saved the money that I should have paid to commissioners for 10 months. Whereas my income fell to N2.6bn at the lowest and N3.2bn at the highest for a month, my statutory expenditures, these are expenditures that I have no control over once you’ve agreed on it. An example of such expenditure is salary and pensions and it costs N3.6bn every month. I don’t have power over it; I cannot say I am not paying it. Between July and December last year, I augmented our income with N5.4bn all in the hope that this thing would go. It has not gone till now. It is even worse. Before, when you get the allocation, you cash it on the 15th of the following month and that is why they were paying salaries on the 15th of every month before we came. But now, because they want to squeeze the opposition government, they are also squeezing themselves. Nobody gets allocation before the 25th of the following month.

In your manifesto, you promised that you’ll create a market environment that would make people buy goods in Osogbo for the prices they are sold in Lagos. This has not come to pass.

By the sixth month of being in power, I got a deal from a Chinese company to give me five locomotives without paying a kobo. I had this programme then of transporting goods, farm produce from here to Lagos free of charge. I also transported finished products from Lagos to here and it is still there so as to turn this place into a hub for people to come from the hinterland and buy things because once you remove the cost of transportation, goods would sell here at the price of Lagos. I stayed in front of the President’s Office in Abuja for close to three hours in the night just to get the President’s approval to use the rail. By 3am the President came and said ‘Governor of Osun you are here.’ What was I requesting? Allow the use of your tracks. Once you allow it, the Chinese people are ready to give me the five locomotives. I can’t bring the locomotives in here if I can’t use the railway. I went back and they said write another letter which I did. I am telling you what is painful to me. I am not talking about my achievements now but how totally insensitive some of us are to these critical issues. These are issues that I can’t even understand. It is not about whether you are in All Progressives Congress or Peoples Democratic Party. Your mandate is to improve the lives of the people and when you get to office, you must shun partisanship.

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