2015: The signs for the PDP are ominous – Aregbesola

By GBENGA OLARINOYE
Osun State governor, Mr Rauf Aregbesola, at the fourth edition of
Ogbeni Till Daybreak, an interactive session with the people on radio,
spoke about his achievements and theefforts of his administration to
affect the lives of the people of the state. Excerpts from the
session:-
What are your expectations on the Opon Imo initiative which your
government recently launched?
It is to ensure that education is democratised. When we talk of
democratisation of education, what weare saying is that never again
will anybody be denied access to total learning by whatever reason.
Wherever you are in this state, no matter how remote, education will
be your birthright. And it is not just any wishy-washy education, it
is total, comprehensive education. If you understand, as I do, that
education means access to textbooks, best practice in tutorial, and
whatever that will prepare students for their examinations, internal
and external, then you will appreciate what I am saying.
The 1.1kg tablet has whatever that youneed for your foundation on
education. That is the cardinal objective, but there are associated
benefits. One, with Opo-Imo, we are guaranteeing for our children
access todigital technology. It is also to ensure that from here, the
heartland of the Yoruba nation, we can produce stars like Bill
Gates.
There is an allegation that your son, Kabiru, was the one that handled
the contract of Opon Imo.
In 2000 when I asked my son to go and study medicine in Cuba, he
didn't reject the idea, but, when he got there, he refused to do
medicine. He said he wanted to study informatic, thesoftware aspect of
the ICT and that waswhat he studied. After studying for fiveyears, he
went to London for further study on the same discipline.
However, when the idea of Opon Imo came, Kabiru was not in the know,
but, when our first attempt to do it failed, I was depressed. My son
asked me what happened, I explained to him and that was how he came
in. Then he was working with AMCON. He was the one God used to upload
what we intended into Opon Imo and, up till now, he was not paid
anything, even for the work he did and that is to tell you that he is
not the contractor as being speculated.
If we had wanted to use Opon Imo to acquire wealth, we could go and do
it secretly somewhere and come to sell to government. The truth is
that no government has ever done this, but we used all what we had to
raise the bar of education in Osun, including my son and that is how
we have the Tabletof Knowledge. It was Kabiru that told us that if we
must use Android, we must look for an expert that will put the
software on it and that is how we found two companies from America
and Malaysia that did it.
There are so many other companies and individuals involved in the
actualisation of Opon Imo. All the companies collected money; Kabiru
took nothing.
The so-called opposition raised the alarm that we spent N200 million
to purchase the 56 textbooks for the 17 subjects that we uploaded into
Opon-Imo and that is the truth. However, if we are to acquire hard
copies of only two of the books for our 150,000 students in the high
schools at 1,000 each, that will be N300 million. For the 56 books, we
paid only N200 million.
This kind of device is nowhere in the world.
In concrete terms, what is the debt profile of the state?
A government is an entity just like a corporation. We should
understand that a private company cannot be said to be successful if
all is doing is within the ambit of its own resources.
However, when responsible governments realise the enormity of the task
of development and seek to involve others in the process of ensuring
development in its sphere of influence, some people out of ignorance
raise eyebrows.
While company invests in profit, government must invest in the
peopleso that the people will be economically viable to support
government. If we limit to all the government could get, forget it,
there will be stagnation and underdevelopment. Is the money deployed
to projects and policies that will enhance the capacity of the people?
If the answer is no, then queryit, but if the answer is yes, hail it.
On our assumption, we contended with some issues, including that
short loan was taken for long term projects that had no benefit for
the people by our predecessor. Short term loan can only increase the
burden on the populace because we will be paying commercial interest
on the loan that, on its own, cannot generate return to meet the
interest that we are paying and so it is debilitating.
To make it easier for us to manage, we sought and got credit line with
which we refinanced the loan, we stopped the project that were not
beneficial to the people and we got the balance for serious capital
projects that will impact positively on the people. That is why we
said then that we had N35 billion to prosecute development.Some people
thought what we are saying is a pile up of debt, no. What wedid
thereafter was that the time given on the refinancing arrangement with
the First Bank was used to process access to the capital market which
is the ultimate for investment purpose. So, we used the capital market
to absorb the credit line.
Osun takes N3.4 billion every month from the federal allocation, but
for the ease of calculation let us say we take N5 billion and that
means the maximum we can get in a year is N60 billion. N60 billion in
four years makes it N240 billion. Out of the money, we pay N2.6
billion to workers every month, including pension and gratuity;let us
say we run government every month with N900 million. If you deductall
these, what is less for development every month is N1.5 billion and,
for four years, it is N60 billion. In absolute terms, no bank will
give the state more than its capacity and they will not even give you
exactly what you have because the risk is huge, they canonly give you
50 per cent of your worth. So, our debt profile is within the limit of
N30 billion.
We must add that there are two agencies in Nigeria monitoring debt
ofgovernment. They are the Debt Management Office and Central Bank.
Anewspaper, few months back, published the list of debtor- states in
Nigeria and Osun was not listed amongthem. In the CBN too, Osun is
not listed. If Osun is in a debt trap, we could not have paid May
salaries when we have not received April allocation.
Many people think your courage in governance can work against you come 2014.
Let us see what will happen in 2014. But, really, we have been badly
affected by military rule to the extent that we have even lost our
spirit to resist oppression. We are people with dignity and pride. It
is in defence of the minimum threshold that Rauf Aregbesola is here
and I am so sure that our people are so committed to stand by us
because we are a people with history, tradition, custom and value.
There is no doubt in my mind that we enjoy the total support of our
people, we are looking forward to 2014, and, by the grace of God, we
shalldefeat whoever raises his head to challenge us. We are so
confidence, because we represent the choice of our people; there is no
threat at all.
How are you carrying along your party members?
If they are not carried along, they will not be here; I believe that
our party members are properly carried along. There is a distinction
between the progressive in power and the ones who are not even
qualified to be called anything, they are reactionaries who believe
that the only reason for being in power is to appropriate the peoples
wealth, but we are saying thatis not the purpose of government. The
government is there to relieve the people of their burden and
stregthen them to stand on their own and give the government back in
terms of taxes.
It is observed that many of your road projects are being carried out
on the federal roads. Are you working on reimbursement from the
Federal Government?
We are working on it, but it is not easy.You might want to know that
we have not yet been refunded the N1.3 billion spent by the last
administration on Akoda/Old-Garage stretch of the Federal Government
road. So, if they have not paid us the investment that the last PDP
administration made on a part of the road, you can only assume that
whatever we do, we only pray that they will be responsible enough to
refund our investment. But whetherthey pay us back or not, we are
committed to serving our people and we are not looking back.
Some people are saying that the airport you claimed to be constructing
is being financed by the Federal Government. How true?
On the aiport, I must say that it has been named Moshood Kashimawo
Olawale (MKO) Abiola Airport. And no government is doing it other than
the government of Osun. Though, no airport can be so called without
the approval of the Federal Government and we have gotten that
approval, it will be fallacious for anybody to say that because the
FG must approve, thattranslates to ownership.
What are you doing to further assist the youths, especially to assist
them inself-sustainable programmes like agriculture?
Firstly, the National Bureau of Stastistics has established that there
isno state in Nigeria that has the kind of effective programme of
Osun on youth development. Secondly, the same bureau has established
that Osun has the lowest rate of unemployment in Nigeria.
We have committed about N2 billion to assist farmers in this state. We
are also allocating farmlands to farmers free of charge; we have
provided free transportation through rail for farmers to take their
produce to Lagos for sale and so many others. Many people havebecome
rich through our assistance, while some can only afford to feed
themselves through it, that is life, butwe will not relent in our
committment.
Also, we are feeding our elementary school children and we are using
the egg, fish, beef and so many other farm produce being provided by
our local farmers. Some youths have been empowered to engage in
poultry farming and from them the pupils are being fed with N150,000
chickens every week. Also, the kids are being fed with 5,000 kg of cat
fish. They are also now being fed with about 9,000 crates of eggs. We
have also empowered people to engage in cocoyam planting. So, through
our programmes, we have provided jobs for our people.
We noticed a decline in the tempo of regional integration being
proposed by the South-West governors. What is responsible?
There is no decline in tempo, but for those who don't appreciate what
we do the way we do it will see decline. The recent Oodua Children's
Day was part of the integration agenda and there is no better way to
promote integration. We invited children and traditional rulers from
all Yoruba speaking communities in Nigeria. We went as far as Delta,
Kogi, Edo and outside the shores of Nigeria, like the Carribean,
Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast.
We have a Ministry of Regional Integration. We are very much committed
to the ideals of integration because that is the only way to go.
And if you read our position on the constitutional amendment, we were
clear on the direction we want Nigeria to go and we are not changing
our position on that.
How do you sustain the rebranding of the state, even beyond your term
as governor?
There is legislation now on the issues on which we organised the
rebranding. There is now a law that Osun is 'State of Osun', now there
is law that Osun has anthem, now there is a law that Osun has its flag
and crest as well as epitheth and slogan. It is notjust for fancy
anymore, it is a crime for anybody to call Osun anything than
the'State of Osun', that is the law. Beyond that, the people of the
state have all internalised everything we brought out in the
rebranding.
What is your take on one-term six year tenure for governors and president?
It will reduce the cost of governance inour country. The truth is that
the architecture of governance in Nigeria is too expensive, I want it
drastically reduced to cut cost. Whatever that will reduce the cost of
governance will have my support.
It is alleged that the local governments' Executive Secretaries are
hindered to do much because of your constant inteference. How do you
react?
What we do is that as the allocation comes, we do what is called Joint
Allocation Committee meeting. What we do is to look at the totality
of what is available and take decision on what should be considered
jointly and distribute. We save for the local government all
unexpected income, such as Excess Crude Oil Fund, which is the basis
for the monumental capital projects that you see. We are not doing
this for any peculiar benefit and, as a matter of fact, I don't know
the account in which the money is kept.
So, I do not believe that anybody couldcomplain about our judicious
management of resources available to the local governments.
What is the expectation of your new party, APC, in wrestling power in 2015?
If you look at the strength of the merging parties, the pattern is
predictable. The strength of ACN is in South-west, the strength of CPC
is in the North-west, the ANPP has its strength in the North-east and
the signals we are getting from those still under the shattered
umbrella nationwide is that they are looking at our side. We also have
a section of APGA that is collaborating with us and, even in the
South-south, feelers are coming that some things would happen