How prepared are you to ensure that a repeat of what happened in Ekiti will not happen in Osun on August 9?
Firstly, I don’t even think about it and that is the interesting part of it. I set about this being cautious of democratic norm.
I said after the Ekiti election that a genuine democrat must be willing and ready to embrace defeat as he or she will embrace victory, provided the election is transparent, credible, free and fair. The real issue is not about the candidate but the quality of the electoral process. Once the quality is good and high, whatever the people say, because they are the ultimate decider of who represents or govern them.
Democratic choices are expected to be correct, good and right but it is not always good, correct and right. To answer the question, long before I assumed this office, I prepared so well for the office in a way that going by the normal run, I should not be working as hard as I am working now for re-election.
As a loyal All Progressives Congress, APC, member, I was disturbed, but as a head of a government that has worked so well with the people, I don’t even see the effect. I look at my engagement with the people, the products of my government, which has not left any home unaffected positively, and I said if election is about acceptance, popularity and impact you have made on the people, we are waiting for what the dictate of democracy would be.
In a credible, transparent, free and fair election, Rauf Aregbesola does not have any worry at all about what people will say about his administration.
What gave you so much confidence about your re-election?
From the day I entered this office, I started my campaign. How many governors walk the streets with their citizens? I have been doing that since the first month in office. How many governors create interactive forum in Nigeria before me? There is none. I was the first governor that devote close to ten hours of continuous engagement on a quarterly basis with the citizens. The people ask any question in no barred hold atmosphere.
The ‘Ogbeni till day break’ is a worldwide engagement because we take feedbacks from social media. The ‘Gbangba dekun’ is a monthly community interactive forum where the governor sits with all stakeholders in the community to ask or make inquiries on any issue.
This is the picture of direct engagements that we are doing with the people that no government in Nigeria has ever attempted to do. We also have a carnival like procession in walk to live where we just walk round the communities and it is too engaging and popular because everybody wants to be with the governor. Hardly is there any community in this state that I have not touched personally.
In terms of physical and social services, this is the first government that will say that there is no household that our programmes have not reached, be it Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, or APC or others. I feed 300,000 pupils every school day at the cost of N3.6 billion a year, I have been doing it since 2012 and I have spent N7.2 billion on that.
Long before we commenced the feeding arrangement, we empowered poultry farmers to produce poultry products so that the chicken and eggs the children consumes are all sourced from them. The 3,007 women who cook the students’ meals take money from the bank. We gave the women a seed capital to set up themselves and start. The bank pays them for the numbers of pupils they feed and the bank comes to us for settlement. With that we have been getting value to a large extent for the money we spend.
Also, 1,000 new farmers whom we raised to produce cocoyam are in this. Close to 500 O’YES exited cadets are equally empowered to out-take the cocoyam and give to the vendors. Also, tens of thousands are equally engaged providing different items. From this alone, close to 1 million people are directly impacted from just one program, O’MEAL. We have the second batch of O’YES cadets, the first batch of 20,000 had gone, the 2nd batch of 20,000 is on and they are from homes. O’YES has changed the paradigm; 100 per cent of that N9 billion is in this economy. The programme has huge economic benefit to the state.
You have in that scheme a directly injected N9 billion to the economy that has no means of going out because a man earning N10,000, unless you promised to double his investment, he has no business travelling to Ibadan with that N10,000. If it’s not going to yield anything more, he won’t go to Ibadan. We are one of the few governments that develops meaningful programme for elderly citizens care, and not a blanket social welfare scheme for the elderly. We have a package that did an extensive survey of citizens that are 65 years and above, in our database. We now identified those among them that are without any support.
That is the first time any government will do so in Nigeria. We engaged a consultant, a professor of Gerontology from Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Ile-Ife, who developed the programme and without sentiment or parochialism, got elderly citizens that lack support, we called them critically vulnerable-people who are aged but have nobody to care for them.
If we did not discover them, nobody will know such people exist in Nigeria, because they are waiting to die because they lack everything. We identified 1,800 of such people state-wide. The selection was purely based on their conditions, no primordial sentiment.
We didn’t do the selection, Professor Ogunbameru of OAU administered everything, gave us the list and the addresses. We have been giving them N10,000 monthly since 2012. We are tied to the farmers and there is no farmer that does not benefit one thing or the other from Osun State government. We are almost concluding a process in which all farmers in the state would have credit cards with which they buy their farm inputs at their doorsteps on guaranteed credit and pay back with either their commodity or they sell and pay back.
Are you in good terms with the four critical sectors – teachers, civil servants, okada riders and students – that constitute the electorate?
Most people don’t even know how to assess relationships. They assess it from the complaint they get from the dissatisfied section of a critical lot, it cannot be. It’s impossible for human to exist without conflict.
The Yoruba has an idiomatic way of expressing it, they said teeth and tongue fights, but they are always still together. Let us start with the students.
We met a condition when we came in that students were given N3,000 bursary which they won’t even get on time and was full of scam. They brought it to me to sign and I said why do I have to sign N3,000 for anybody? It’s best if we don’t give this bursary or we give it meaningfully. We raised the bursary to N10,000 flat.
For medical and law students N20,000 while our indigenes in Law School get N100,000. The school authorities give the money to students in their system. I don’t see how such students will hate us in the majority, I can’t see it.
The increase wasn’t solicited; we did it out of our own understanding of the reality of what the students are going through. There was clamour for reduction of fees; we reduced the fees to something comparably affordable.
Also, we have been investing in developing the institutions much more than any administration has done in the history of this state. Yes, we are having some challenges with the lecturers but it’s not peculiar to us. For okada riders, they have no problem with us.
They may want us to do things for them as we have done to some other groups, but it not as if they said compared to others, these are the problems.
The roads here are appreciated even by those who used legs. There is no part of this state that we have not construct a new road and it’s not just any road but roads with concrete drainage, with stone base and kick asphaltic cover and above all when I get to campaign grounds, I say our roads have tribal marks.
We now have special roads, when we complete some of them, they will be tourist attraction and centres on their own. The road we are building in Gbogan, people will be coming to look at it, mark my words.
That road you see, Gbongan to Akoda, will be a tourist attraction because it is not an ordinary road; it’s a road that took me time to conceive and design and we are taking our time to develop it. I have two major objectives on earth; one is to help in the process of eliminating poverty because I hate poverty. I wasn’t born poor but I feel bad to see people in destitution, secondly I don’t like how blacks are in the world today.
As long as I live, I must be part of the process that will give the black man a good reckoning where they are because sadly, we are in the lowest part of non-civilisation. Before our advent, the civil servants never knew that salary could be paid before the end of the month. For seven and half years, salaries were never paid here before the end of the month.
But from when I assumed office, we changed that. Before the year ended when I assumed office, I paid 10 per cent of their basic as 13th month salary and paid December salary before the end of the year, the civil servants were dazed. Since that day up until December 2013, I pay salary on or before the 25th of every month. But as from January 2014, we ran into trouble which we explained to everybody six months before then.
What was the trouble?
In July 2013, the Federal Government began a squeeze that they themselves know that nobody believed. They said 400,000 barrel of crude oil is being stolen daily. We didn’t know problem was coming. Instead of collecting N4.6 billion, they gave this government N2.6 billion, 40 per cent slashed. We thought it will be temporary because after that month, they said the stolen crude has reduced to 200,000 barrel per day.
When the oil being lost reduced, would you still expect a 40 per cent cut? From that July to now, the maximum allocation this state has ever received is N3.2 billion which was in November 2013. Now ask me how was I able to pay up until December 2013? My people are called ‘osomalo’- they are very deft in the management of money and I took this from them.
I had been saving through the Omoluwabi Conservation Fund in which 10 per cent of all allocation must just go and rest. So, I had money in reserve, which was a build-up for my refusal to form cabinet for 10 months.
Whereas my income fell to N2.6 billion at the lowest and N3.2 billion at the highest for a month, my statutory expenditures which are expenditures that I have no control over once we have agreed on it, for instance salary, pension and they are N3.6 billion every month, I have no power over it. I can’t say no, am not paying, Between July and December, I augmented my income with N5.4billion. All in the hope that this thing will go, it didn’t go.
It has not gone as we speak, it is even worse. Before, when you get your allocation, you will cash it by the 15th of every month, which was why they are paying salaries on the 15th of the month before we came in. But now, because they want to squeeze the opposition, they even squeeze themselves.
Nobody gets the reduced allocation earlier than the 26th of the following month. But before now, I wasn’t waiting for their money; I just pay on or before the 25th To make up the deficit in what I received and what I must pay, I spent extra N5.4 billion.
However, I told you earlier that I gave 10 per cent of basic salary for 13th month salary; the second year I gave 25 per cent; the third year I gave 50 per cent; the fourth year, I gave 100 per cent. In December of 2013, every worker in the employment of Osun got 100 per cent of their basic salary as extra income, which I paid before the end of the year.
Ordinarily, why should any worker say I am not worker-friendly? Before, workers here collect their leave allowances enbloc at the end of the year; I told them this is unreasonable because we don’t go on leave at the same time, so choose when you want your leave allowance to be paid.
Is it at your birthday or the anniversary of your employment into the service? So, whenever you summit your birthday, your leave allowance will be credited to you. I don’t know if any other government in Nigeria does that. Go and visit the secretariat and see what we have made of their work environment. If these are things that should motivate workers, I stand tall and proud because I have done my best.
No matter what anybody tells me, majority of them will appreciate these things. The difference between me and others is that I don’t hide anything; I tell whosoever cares to listen. I am the most loquacious governor in Nigeria. I went to the retreat of lawmakers and I said what is happening in Nigeria today is equivalent to the declaration of economic war on the states. If it is just mere shortage and it comes early, of course we will pay, it doesn’t come early.
As we speak, we have not collected June allocation. What we are saying is that is either people don’t even care or they think you can just conjure money or they know what you are going through. I said at a rally recently that from what I have heard from the grapevine, they had a meeting where they said ‘squeeze them, if they can’t pay salary, you will create problem for them’.
Mark my words; they might not give us June allocation until the end of August. But we will pay our workers, already we have paid June. I am happy to tell you that majority of our civil servants see and appreciate what we are doing.
We increased car loan by 400 per cent; increased housing loans by 100 per cent. For 36 out of 43 months, we have been paying regularly, let’s even assume that there is a problem of delayed payments now, I cannot believe all the workers will be against us because I have done my best.
If the demonstration of interest of workers in their remuneration and allowances counts and with what we have done, I don’t think they will be against us. Our teachers in the state are now very well motivated such that you cannot distinguished between them and bank workers.
When you see a teacher in Osun before you know: they were so depressed, unmotivated and absence of facilities. Our teachers now appear corporate and well-motivated. It is not that there won’t be some of them who for whatever reason don’t like us, but they are in the minority.
Don’t buy the talk that you hear that teachers don’t like him, I don’t believe that. We do independent, scientific opinion poll which does not support all these talks. I have never being in a place where my presence does not generate euphoria. You don’t get such reception if people have problem with you. I don’t really believe I have any problem with any critical sector. We are the first government in Nigeria to give free uniform to all students.
The first government that will say that you don’t need to buy textbooks for your children in the high school, Opon Imo and its targeted at 150,000 students. One of the attractions is that it reduces the cost of books. We procured the e-books at N200 million for 53 books, which means that each of those books is about N25 when you divide N200 million by 53, and divide the outcome with 150,000.
Opon Imo should be celebrated by all because it reduces capital outlay on books. Tell me any government anywhere in the world that can provide eight textbooks free of charge to students. How many parents can buy all books required by their children, but we have changed this by putting into the hands of all our students in high school a library of 53 textbooks.
Are you prepared for a possible lockdown of the state few days to the election, are you prepared?
You see, I came here from the street and it is easy for me to go back to the street. My real home is on the street and whoever will hold me on the street will try. I laugh when they talk about me because they don’t know I am from the street. Culled from Nat'l Mirror
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