Osun, Aregbesola and the price of commitment

According to him “…the long-term advantages of democracy are not readily apparent. They can’t be grasped in the moment. They need time to reveal themselves.” In its crisis mode he noted that “Democracies are caught between their impulse to precipitate action and their instinct to wait. There is no equilibrium between these states of mind.”
The state of Osun under the leadership of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola between 2010 and now approximates Tocqueville’s appreciation of democracy in America. Today, there are few governors in Nigeria well-loved by his people like Ogbeni. I was fortunate to witness his first inauguration and could vividly recall the ecstasy and frenzy of the day in Oshogbo. For the people of Osun, Ipinle Omoluabi, it was a new dawn. The bond between the governor and his people was displayed in his re-election.
Ogbeni’s re-election took place against a background of a dip in the price of oil in the international market and for a country solely reliant on a mono product from which it merely extract rents, it was a matter of time that the entire economy would reveal its structural weakness. With a paltry internally generated revenue and with over 50 percent cut in accruals from oil revenue, the chicken came home to roost. The distributable pool in the Federation Account could barely pay the salaries of workers across states of the federation. At the last count over twenty states were unable to settle their wage bills, some, for upwards of eight months and even the central government with its buffers owned workers in many agencies and institutions of government.
As at 2014, the domestic debt of states was put collectively at about N1.7 trillion by the Debt Management Office (DMO).
Currently, Osun State owes its workers up to five months salary arrears. As Olusegun Adeniyi has observed in his ‘States of Emergency’, Ogbeni was the only governor of the lot to admit so. Sincerity ought to be a distinguishing character of democracy as Tocqueville found out in the case of America.
At this point, the pertinent question is why the disproportionate focus on Osun State? Recently, the Osun State House of Assembly inaugurated a seven-man committee to probe the alleged financial recklessness of the governor. Indeed, the commonplace narrative is that the governors mismanaged state resources. Whereas this may be true of some states, there are other objective factors that we ought to relate with, they are in the main developmental and go to lengths to explain the Osun dilemma. They flow from the commitment of the governor of the state to his state and his people whose price he is currently paying as the butt of sometimes extremely uncomplimentary remarks coming from grossly ill-informed and bellyaching commentators. Again, this is the beauty of democracy. The governor comes from the most oppositional crust of the Nigerian polity and we cherish that value. Amidst the chaos of the babel, the truth must find its way and that is the providence in democracy. I shall present in what follows concrete development steps which Osun State governor has embarked upon since 2010 when he assumed leadership of the state.
Upon his inauguration, Ogbeni provided jobs for 20,000 for the youths within the first 100 days in office under the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme (OYES), a social welfare programme in which the youths are involved in community service as well as capacity building that costs the state about N8.8 billion so far. This has been acclaimed by the World Bank and other multilateral institutions. The governor introduced a school feeding scheme for about 252, 000 school children at a yearly cost of about N3.5 billion. Over 3000 community caterers and sundry commercial farmers benefitted from this scheme. The education development also include Opon Imo, an electronic learning tablet provisioned for about 150,000 high school students gulping about N1.67 billion, the development of model school infrastructure, teacher-training School, uniform harmonization which has stimulated the largest garment factory in West Africa. The state’s pathway to diversification of agriculture led to investment in agro-business which resulted in the development of one of the largest poultry producers in the country while the cocoa factory in Ede are equally being restored. Oshogbo town is undergoing one of the most ambitious urban renewal projects in the country with the development of road infrastructure.
It is pure miracle that Ogbeni could make this mileage with the state paltry fiscal profile. Resources from Federal Allocation Account (FAAC) between November 2010 and April 2015 was about N121.4 billion. Personnel cost alone gulped about N121.4 billion between November 2010 and November 2014. Internally generated revenue, capital receipts as well as proceeds from bonds went into recurrent expenditure and capital projects.  It is clear beyond doubt that Ogbeni is paying the price of commitment to his people. He may have made some mistakes inadvertently but he means well for his state. The democratic instinct to wait will justify the Osun project and elevate the status of Ogbeni in the service of his people.

Dr. Akhaine is a visiting member of the Guardian Editorial Board