In Osun, Our Liability is Ability By Abdulrasheed Adeleke

IN OSUN, OUR LIABILITY IS OUR ABILITY!

When the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released the debt profile of each State of the Federation on the front page of the Nigeria Tribune’s edition of Wednesday, the 20^th September 2017, almost every economically conscious and literate citizen was interested in knowing the financial state of his or her state. The true financial status of many states has lately been mischievously shrouded in secrecy which has led to the agitation from citizens wanting to know the debt figure and creditworthiness or otherwise of their state, though in most cases politically instigated. Owing to the worst, ever, and monumental economic depression in the history of the Nigerian nation in the last three years, largely occasioned by the sharp drop in our fortune accrued from oil, the fortune of many States of the Federation has equally dwindled significantly. Basic obligations that state had hitherto conveniently fulfilled such as regular payment of salary and allowances, provision of affordable healthcare, provision of educational materials at the elementary level of education, among other government responsibilities became very difficult to meet. When the government is financially emasculated, citizens and businesses will consequently bear the brunt as government, across the globe, is the biggest spender and custodian of the fortune that circulates through the economy and breathes life into the society.

To uphold the social order and salvage their states’ economy from the total wreck and collapse that was imminent then, most state governors explored the last coping strategy which was borrowing, both from local and foreign creditors, to strengthen them to carry on government duties and obligations and meet up with the capital project requirements. In the case of State of Osun, our total debt profile is N179bn, both foreign and local; this is huge, right? But we can technically safely say that this is inclusive of successive governments’ indebtedness since the creation of the state, 26 years ago! One will naturally picture a scary and gloomy future for a state like ours with weak capacity to generate resources locally to augment our monthly federal share to cater for all our needs. But the consolation we have as citizens is the fact that the Debt Management Office (DMO) had assured us that our dear state hasn’t borrowed beyond its capacity to repay!

What keeps agitating the discerning minds of the citizens is the big question that: do we really have commensurate assets with our debt profile? And that is the focus of my discourse and the gap in those agitating minds I want to feel. The economists will agree with me that there are good debts and bad debts. In as much as no responsible individual, corporate entity or government will willingly want to slump into indebtedness and insolvency, some debts are classified as good debt. A debt is good and productive when it’s employed to acquire an asset or assets that are worth the value of the debt, if not more, and have enduring value to the debtor which the debtor couldn’t have had the capacity to acquire without having the credit facility. In our own case, in Ipinle Omoluabi, our accumulated credit facility may appear to be huge, which no doubt is, really, I can say that it is worth it, without disregarding dissenting views, when we compare it with what we’ve acquired with our credit facility! Having said this as a preamble, let’s quickly take a cursory look into the transformation spread across the geographical space called Osun, close to seven years now.

There is no perfection in life; it is an imaginary state that lies only with our Creator. Without overlooking the imperfection of the current administration, even the non-Osun people can testify to the fact that the State of Osun is being piloted by a prepared mind who is ready to govern with all his strength and all the resources he could muzzle around. Osun is being led by a leader who is in a hurry to change the destiny of his people to a much better state than he met it. Osun has at the helm of its affairs, a man who has positive audacity to do the unusual and drive people and their resources to a state where potentials could be maximized and people living with dignity in abundance.

As promised in his Green Book (My Pact with the People of Osun State), Ogbeni promised 20,000 jobs within 100 days in office with a well specified schedule of duties and stipend of N10,000 per month. He delivered this and the laudable social security project is running up till date. More than 40,000 people have enjoyed the programme up to date. As small as their reward seem, at least to those who are comfortable beyond that level, the   gap it feels can only be appreciated by the beneficiaries.

If our state were to solely deploy all its resources, both IGR and federal allocation to road tarring, I don’t think we can have enough to do just that alone because I learnt that as economically buoyant as Lagos State is, it can’t afford that. Good and sufficient road and road network is a sine quan non to good economic activities of a modern state. The residents of Osun without prevarication, today, can say that the state and the number of tarred roads before Rauf came to power had been significantly improve and increased. Each Local Government of our State was adorned with nothing less than 10 kilometers of tarred road in the first term of this administration. This is complemented by the Rural Access Mobility Project (RAMP) that is opening up mobility in our rural communities to facilitate easy access and movement of farm produce and other economic activities. When completed, the Oba Adesoji Aderemi Osogbo bye pass will also adorn the state capital and reduce the congestion within the township routes. The Gbongan-Ila-Odo dual carriage, also under construction, is another great plus for ogbeni administration. The understandable understanding from the government is that the delay of their completion is occasioned by the fall in the fortune of the State from the federal treasury.

In his pact with the people of Osun, Ogbeni also promised the promotion of functional education. Sufficiently stimulating facilities and decent environment are pertinent to the attainment of this exalted ambition. The Governor felt what he met on ground weren’t good enough for his vision to deliver a function education and immediately put up an educational summit to chart a new course in the education sector of the State. The product of that summit is the enviable transformation we all witness today in the sector. following the reclassification of the school system into elementary, middle, and high, good and decent structure sprang up across the State except for towns and villages where there is no population to fill the number of classroom the new buildings will provide. The carrying capacity of our elementary school is 1000; the middle carries 1200, while the high school has space for 3000 with the world class standard of 40 students per classroom. Personally, I wasn’t much freaked by the new structure not until we hosted Miss Africa of Great Britain Beauty Pageant, who is our daughter and came to execute her pet project, child education, in her father land and she and her entourage confirmed that our new schools competently compete with and beat the public school structures in the United Kingdom, hands down!

The reclassification of the school system created a distance which was more than what the students covered to access their school before. To cushion this stress, the government provided school buses (Omoluabi Scholar Bus) to convey students who have longer distance to reach their place of learning. For the benefit of those who don’t know, to my best knowledge, Osun is the only place where public school students ride in government school bus for free! The award-winning and best digital learning tool ever in the African continent, Opon Imo added colour and glee to our high school learning. To our delight and glory of God, many institutions of higher learning such as University of Ilorin, and National Teachers’ Institute have copied this bold innovative learning idea to train their students.

Further, to the credit of this administration is a social intervention scheme that takes care of the vulnerable elderly called Agba Osun. Over 1200 aged people earned N10, 000 per month to take care of some of their basic needs and prevent them from sliding into nuisance and suffering of the old age. Also residents of Osogbo will honestly confirm that the old Old Garage up to the popular Ola-Iya junction was a slum and unbefitting of a 21^st century state capital! Today, the same space is occupied by a standard park named after the late iconic South Africa freedom fighter and former President, Nelson Mandela and a cosy amusement park with modern aesthetic adornments.

Restoration of healthy living is also part of the integral agenda of this administration led by Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. To realize this, the bold and courageous Rauf upgraded all the state hospitals and equipped them with modern tools and drugs for the downtrodden he leads to enjoy and lead a healthy life. Complementing the healthy living policy is the provision of clean environment. On assumption of office, the Ogbeni led government scooped loads of sound from our major streets and clean up drainages for free flow of water. The government further initiated and mobilized its citizens to cultivate the culture of building and maintaining clean and healthy environment by making it mandatory on every Thursday morning for private citizens, market men and women, bureaucrats, and corporate bodies to clean up their surroundings before setting out on their lawful businesses. The O’Clean programme with waste management agency of the governement (OWMA) ensures strict compliance and success of this programme. Today State of Osun can pass as one of the neatest states in the federation.

With due respect to those who might not see the situation the way I have reasoned and painted it, which is allowed in a civil rule dispensation that we all enjoy, the accomplishments I have x-rayed above, among others couldn’t have been possible without the foresightedness and ingenuity of Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola to acquire those funds and deploy them to socio-protection and development projects. We also have justifications and exonerations in the fact that some of Osun programmes such as O’YES and O’MEALS have been successfully adapted and adopted by the almighty Federal Government. The latest is the Sukuk bond of N100bn that the Federal Government has reached advanced stage to raise, which the State of Osun trail blazed!

That said, another perspective is to think of the time value of the funds we borrowed then with the assets we deployed them to acquire and compare them to their purchasing capacity of our currency if we were to build those assets now! If Osun were to be like corporate bodies that use other people’s fund to lubricate their operations to build and multiply their wealth, what Rauf did would have been much more appreciated! With time in Osun, we will still appreciate the vision Ogbeni drove and infrastructural assets he had built during his reign, a Yoruba adage says “tita riro la n kola, to ba jinna ta a doge” meaning that the process of circumcision is excruciatingly painful but after it heals up, it becomes adornment!

It therefore behoves citizens of each state to query their governments about what they’ve used the borrowed funds to acquire and compare their assets with their liabilities. In Osun, since we now know our liabilities and have seen our assets, I want to implore all citizens and residents, corporate and individual, to regularly render our civic obligations (taxation) to our government to strengthen it to maintain the tempo of the development strides and ensure the repayment of the credit facilities in due time! We must also ensure, as guaranteed by the constitution, that citizens are not shortchanged by heaping the debt on us while the political elites are living large from the fund that is strategically supposed to better our lots and lift us out of squalor as a people and race. When this is done, we will be all assured that our suffering, which must be collective both the leaders and the led, is temporary and will be worth it, in the long run.

In the heat of his election in 2016, American President Donald trump said “I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me. I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing”. Like Trump, I equally want to believe that what we’ve done is smart and not stupid and when our debt burden is not making things to work out fine for us anymore our leaders will be smart enough to renegotiate it with our creditors so that the fortune we intended making out of it could be enjoyed by all! Osun to ti n dara koni baje o!

Abdulrasheed Adeleke is Information Officer, Bureau of Government House and Protocol, State of Osun.