When he assumed office eight years ago, Governor Ibikunle Amosun, had a tall dream or so it seemed from his enthusiasm towards the crowd that gathered for his inauguration then at the MKO Abiola Stadium. Indeed Amosun’s dream were as tall if not taller than his famed long cap, which has become his trade mark.
Among those who witnessed the inauguration on that sunny day, May 29, 2011, was the former Governor of the state, Aremo Olusegun Osoba and other invited dignitaries, who were obviously happy that a new dawn has arrived in Ogun State with the defeat of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on which platform, former Governor Gbenga Daniel, ruled for eight years.
It is however instructive that today, the candidate of the then PDP, Mr Nasiru Isiaka, who is still former Governor Daniels’ protégé, was the gubernatorial candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and is now a member of the transition committee of Prince Dapo Abiodun who won on the platform of the fractionalized All Peoples Congress(APC) having defeated Isiaka and many others in their race for who occupies the Oke Mosan Government House.
MKO-Abiola-stadium
Amosuns dream, which was captured in his speech in his ancient Ilari dress surrounded by his wife, Funso and five children, was to change the development narratives of the state, especially the state capital, Abeokuta, then a rustic and glorified state capital and also arrest the decay being experienced in other sectors like education, health and agriculture.
Today, eight years after his emergence, it is doubtful whether the man with the longest cap can openly claim to have transformed the state’s infrastructure beyond Abeokuta even amidst unpaid settlement and compensation for houses demolished for his utopian Ogun standard roads felt in only the major cities in the state.
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On his assumption of office, he anchored his administration’s goal and aspirations on five cardinal programmes the implementation of which he said would reposition the state for better. He tagged it, Rebuilding Mission. They were: Affordable and Qualitative Education, Efficient HealthCare Delivery, Agricultural Production and Industrialisation, Affordable Housing and Urban Renewal and Rural and infrastructural development/employment generation. Quite a mouthful!
Eight years down the line, in addition to itemizing the above projects and attempting in a way to implement them with its pains and joy, the political landscape of the state have been upturned such that placing it among others ,it has redefined its position among its peers and change the political chemistry such that the state in spite of everything, still retains its sophistication and enlightenment.
HBD
When he settled down to the task of governance, Governor Amosun told the citizenry he met a comatose economy that was reeling on the yoke of N87billion debt profile and an internally generated revenue (IGR) of under N700 million.
Barely, one month into his tenure, Amosun told a bewildered state on June 29, 2011 that contrary to the claim by his predecessor, Daniel, that he left behind a debt profile of N50billion, “I Have come to the conclusion that Ogun State is the most indebted state in the country, officially the debt the last administration claimed to have left behind is N50billion, but the real value of the debt could even be more.”
Ogun State Government House.
Perhaps to prepare the minds of the people for his total economic re-engineering, he added further that those who compare the state with “Lagos and Rivers states easily forget that the revenues from these other states can easily pay off whatever debt we owe.”
Barely three months on September 2012, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, the then finance commissioner, revealed that the administration has started paying part of the inherited debt of N87billion, N22billion to be precise adding, “we are aggressively paying off the inherited debt and very soon, the debt will go down to a reasonable level.”
One of the programmes enunciated by the state government early in the life of the administration was the Homeowners Charter Scheme through which the government issued Certificate of Occupancy to house and property owners.This is rather a novel approach different from the red tapeism involved in getting such vital documents in the past and that has been the practise in the state. While billions of naira was raked in by the government. It was part of the administrative’s Urban Renewal Programme and at the last count, the state have held 38th sessions of the presentation of C of O “other land title documents to the beneficiaries.”
Amosun also assured applicant’s that were yet to obtain their documents that the committee was saddled with the responsibility of monitoring the progress of the scheme and had been working round the clock to ensure that documents were processed on time.
Through the scheme, property owners in the state were given opportunity to obtain legal land title documents at a discounted rate. indeed, many property owners who never gave a thought to acquiring C of O because of its cumbersome nature, had a different story to tell today.
However, as successful as the scheme had been, nobody in the government has come out to tell the citizenry how much was realised and how the money which swelled the states finances and shored up its revenue profile, was spent.
Sola Balogun, a media aide to the governor attested to the state’s finances when he declared that one of the gains of the states economic re-engineering benefits was the increase in the internally generated revenue from ‘a paltry N750m in 2011 to over N6bn monthly’.
Education:
But, Taiwo Adigun, a school proprietor in Ijoko situated in the Ifo Local Government Area of the state thinks otherwise. As for him “increase in revenue generation was done through arbitrary double taxation and killing of old and prospective new businesses.”
Speaking in another vein, Adigun berated the government for refusing to add value to life and business in the area especially in developing state schools but rather withdraw monthly subvention and killing education management.” What is the justification for building model colleges in rural areas with state resources while civil servants cannot access such schools for their children?”
He was probably referring to the building of at least 12 model colleges in the state. The colleges were part of the state’s new education thrust of the governor.
Equipped with state of the art facilities, most of the schools, except the one situated at Akinale village named Akin Ogunpola model college, are yet to admit students, three years after they were opened.
Today, the remaining 11 colleges who couldn’t enroll pupils either due to high operational costs and fees, are rotting away, only occupied by rats and rodents in all parts of the state. To teachers and education experts in the state, the idea of the model colleges which were built for over N1.5billion each was a misplaced priority.
“The resources should have been used to develop existing public secondary schools in the state and make them more functional,” enthused a serving school principal in one of the first-generation secondary schools in the state who preferred not to be mentioned by our reporter.
Besides, the principal said that stoppage of monthly grants and running costs with lack of adequate teaching materials and adequate low morale of teachers in the state, “have made us to drop from ratings among states in the country especially in the West African Examination Council graded Senior School Certificate Examination( WAEC) and other exams. We can no longer compete with other states and this is bad for a state regarded as the foremost in education.”
Ironically, the state leading institution for the production of manpower, both Ogun State College of Education and the Tai Solarin University of Education, all situated in the Ogun East Senatorial District, are reeling over unpaid salaries and allowances carried over from the previous administration. While teachers at the TASUED have just ended a month long strike over unpaid 38, months salaries their counterpart in the college of education are on strike over lack of proper teaching environment.
In addition,lecturers and other non academic staff of the MAPOLY, just converted to a university ,are also reeling under unpaid four months salary arrears.
If they were paid before may 28,when the government expires,it will be another miracle by the government which has promised heaven and earth but did nothing to put smiles on the employees faces.
But not surprisingly last week, the governorship announced and inaugurated new governing boards for newly created Ogun State Polytechnic, Ipokia and the Moshood Abiola University of Science and Technology, Abeokuta and instructed the new Ogun State Polytechnic, which have not admitted new intakes in the past two years to move into Ipokia, their new abode to enable the MAUTECH take over the former MAPOLY campus in Abeokuta. It will be recalled that the sustenance of TASUED was an issue at the early part of the administration as governor Amosun claimed that the state cannot finance two universities.
Today,the state now has three universities to fund with the upgrade of MAPOLY to MAUTECH.
Continues tomorrow...
