The Governor of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola has tasked Nigerians to imbibe the culture of taxation.
According to him, for a developing country like Nigeria to confront boldly the socio-economic and political challenges, taxation must be taken seriously.
 

 
 
He said all the responsible, civilised and advanced countries remain successful because they generate their resources from taxes collected from the populace, while under-developed and developing countries remain poor and backward because of their poor taxation culture.
Governor Aregbesola made the statement while addressing leaders and members of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) Osogbo Branch, during the ceremonial presentation of the 2017 Group Dynamics Cup Trophy won by the Osogbo NSE.
Aregbesola explained that the emerging economic realities remained the signal to the fact that no nation can survive without huge revenue from taxation, adding that global economic reality is compelling seriousness on the need for government and the people of any country that desire development to prioritise taxation as the basic way for revenue generation.
He said, “It is unfortunate that most professionals in our state do not take the issue of taxes seriously. That is why I want to appeal to the leaders of the NSE and other professionals bodies in the state to rally round their members to correctly and appropriately assess themselves so as to pay appropriate taxes to government.
“Before the military interregnum in Nigeria, taxation was a serious civic obligation and responsibility of every citizen and as a matter of fact, the liberty of the citizens was defined and determined by how citizens fulfilled their tax obligations.
“At the time, negligence in tax obligation had a citizen’s liberty circumscribed. But the military during its interregnum with the need for it to forcibly acquire legitimacy from the people, overlooked that very critical factor in modern society.
“The reason adults worked then was to serve themselves and serve the government because there was no other way government could get money outside the taxes paid by all entities, both human and corporate in their domain”.
“It is not a doubt that today, all developed nations in the world have one characteristic of sole means of revenue generation from taxes paid by their citizens.
“The advanced nations of the world generate much more of their resources from the taxes paid by their citizens and that is the only way for responsible, civilised and consequently advanced nations to generate their revenues.
“But backward, under-developed and primitive societies depend on natural resources that, in most cases, they do not even know where such resources came from. Their belief was, once the natural resource is bringing the proceeds to them, they don’t want to know how effective their own assessment of the proceeds is.
“We just found that we all depend on rent to live our lives and any nation that depends on such will just be living a mere existence.
“So, we must all come to the need to understand the essence of taxation in ensuring good governance. It is time for citizens of the third world particularly African countries to rise to the challenges of poor taxation culture”, Aregbesola stated.

The successes recorded by the government of the State of Osun on the operations of Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO) have drawn the attention of the Ondo State government, which was impressed enough to send a team to Osun in order to understudy the programme.
YESSO which is an offshoot of the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme (OYES) is a tripartite agreement among the World Bank, the Federal Government of Nigeria and participating states.
The programme was launched in September 2013 with the overall objective to increase access of the poor to youth employment opportunities, social services and strengthen the safety net system.
Addressing the Ondo delegates in Osogbo on Wednesday, the State Coordinator, Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO), Mr. Femi Ifaturoti said that Governor Rauf Aregbesola conceived the OYES idea as a social intervention programme to reduce the unemployment rate among the youths in the state.
The Coordinator declared that OYES, borne out of passion and vision has become a reality, commending the Ondo State Team for choosing Osun to learn from and promised them all necessary supports during the period of their assignment in the state.
He noted that there are similarities between the leaders of Osun and Ondo states in terms of development.
According to him “it is the vision and passion of Ogbeni Aregbesola to put this OYES scheme in place in Osun and we set up this scheme to tackle the problems of unemployment”.
“For the first time in the history of Nigeria, Osun government employed 20,000 youths at a go to reduce unemployment. There are other schemes which have addressed the need of those that are not educated and the vulnerable people in the state”.
In her response, the head of the Ondo State delegation, Mrs. Bunmi Ademosu, who is the Special Adviser to the Ondo State Governor on Inter-governmental Affairs, said the purpose of the tour to Osun was to study the developmental programmes that encourage the youths.
According to her, “We are here to share from the State of Osun experience and to know what the state of the virtuous has been doing to tackle unemployment among youths”.
She said that Osun and Ondo states share the same vision in dealing with youth unemployment, as everybody, according to her, should have the passion and confidence to move the country forward for better.
“With this Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme (OYES) programme in place, the idle hands will get busy with something worthy”, she added.
In his presentation, the leader of the Osun Project Implementation Unit, Mr. Olugbenga Odulaja emphasised the need to develop youths and engage them for better goals.
In his goodwill message, the OYES Commandante, Col. Eniibukun Oyewole (rtd) noted that OYES is a premier project in Osun which 42,000 youths has passed through to better the lots of the people across the state.
He said, “Osun has a low-crime rate, because the scheme has taken many youths off the streets who now work on building a sustainable society”.
He appreciated the effort of the present administration in the state for the supports given to the programme.

The Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO) which is a tripartite agreement among the World Bank, the Federal Government of Nigeria and participating states was launched in September 2013 with the overall objective to increase access of the poor to youth employment opportunities, social services and strengthen safety net system.
YESSO which is an offshoot of the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme (O-YES) was designed to achieve the same feat as OYES which saw unemployment rate plummeting from 12 per cent to 3 per cent in the State of Osun in the year 2010 (Source: National Bureau of Statistics, 2010).
In other words, YESSO was designed to strengthen the safety nets programme through coordination, effective targeting and monitoring and evaluation. Some of the merits of
YESSO are the establishment of Single Register (SR) of poor and vulnerable households which is now building block of the Federal Government Cash Transfer programme, provision of labour intensive work (Public Workfare), skills training for unemployed youths (Skills for Job) and targeted grant transfer in the North East region of Nigeria.
The Osun-YESSO was institutionalized with the State Operation Coordinating Unit (SOCU) as the institution responsible for coordination, management and oversight of social safety nets.
It does these by developing a database of poor and vulnerable households for selection into safety nets interventions that can support their needs. Three important lessons can be learned from the YESSO model of curbing unemployment. First, is the targeting method which demonstrates the important roles communities can play towards the identification of poor and vulnerable households.
Second, it is the selection criteria which limits the error of inclusion and exclusion. Lastly is the output of the Single Register (SR).
Targeting
The failure of previous interventions on youth empowerment programmes to reach the poor and vulnerable groups in the society has shifted the attention towards Community Based Targeting (CBT).
The CBT process involves geographical targeting, community gathering, data collection and analysis, and validation of list of identified households at the community level.
The key distinction of this approach is the substantial role of the community in the overall selection of the beneficiaries, albeit following some selection criteria.
Selection Criteria
The target groups are poor and vulnerable youths within the identified households that will either participate in the labour intensive work (PWF) or skill matching training programme (Skills for Job). The following conditions applied: (a) they have to be between 18 and 35 years old; (b) they have to be in a community identified as poor; (c) they have to be unemployed.
Numbers enrolled
By December 2016 till date, a total of 7,000 households have received direct cash transfer on monthly basis. Also, a total of number 1,000 of youths between ages 18 and 35 have been effectively enrolled in labour intensive work and receive monthly stipends. These numbers increase per phase of CBT which is already at the fourth phase.
Other states adopting similar model will experience the same dramatic improvement in their unemployment numbers.

Information officers in the employ of the state government of Osun has been urged to be abreast of the latest technology available in the
media and in the act of information dissemination.
The Hon. Commissioner for Innovations, Science and Technology, Engr. Remi Omowaye gave the charge while delivering a lecture at the
on-going training workshop for Information officers, Sound, Graphic Artists, Film and Photo Journalists organised by the Ministry of
Information and strategy.
Speaking on the topic, “Information officers and ICT”, Engr. Omowaye stated that information managers have no choice but to key into the new trend in the media industry.
He enjoined information officers as well sound and graphic artists in the Ministry of Information to improve on their style of production as it concerns their weekly documentary programmes on television stations across the state.
He admonished the participants to see it as a point of duty to always propagate the programmes and activities of government as it affects
the masses in the state.
Speaking in the same vein, Commissioner for Information and strategy, Mr Adelani Baderinwa, encouraged participants to justify government’s investment through the workshop by improving on the delivery of their responsibilities.
He assured that the administration of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola will continue to provide the support and enabling environment for information officers to do their job more conveniently.
In the second paper titled “News Writting For Radio and Television” delivered by ace broadcaster and a former Director General, Reality Radio-Vision Services(RRS), Mr Kayode Adedire where he urged information officers to be brave in their report as long as it is the truth they are reporting.
He described objectivity as the hallmark and beauty of journalism, noting that the information officer is the bridge between the
government and the people.
The last lecture for the day featured a one time Director of Programmes, OSBC and former Director of Finance and Administration,
Ministry of Information, Mr Foluso Adedigba who spoke on “Quality Programme Production”
Mr. Adedigba told participants that they must see documentary programmes as a means of communication, stressing that the purpose of
the communication must be to inform, educate, persuade, motivate, entertain and attain goals.
He took participants through the rudiments of diction, spellings and pronunciation, noting that the diction or pronunciation of words by a
presenter could make or mar a well written script.
The grand finale of the workshop comes up on the 20th of December where the Governor of the state, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola is expected to be in attendance to formally draw the curtain on the programme.

The Federal High Court, Abuja that ordered the Central Bank of Nigeria, Accountant General of the Federal government and Ministry of Finance to warehouse statutory allocations to the local government councils in Osun state has fixed January 11, for the application of the state government seeking for the vacation of the order.
The new date, according to the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in the state, Dr Basiru Ajibola, supersedes the earlier fixed date of January 23 by the court.
It was gathered that the court had last week granted a Motion Ex-perte filed by three chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Kolawole Osunkemitan, Chief Douglas Adeyinka Oyinlola and Prince Aderemi Adeniran Adelowo had approached the court with an application for the stoppage of monies for the local government in the state in
an attempt to stop the conduct of the local government in the state.
Contesting the court order, the state government filed an application before the court with a prayer for the vacation of the order.
Filed by Ajibola, the government stated in the application that the court order was liable to be set aside ‘ex debito justitae’ for fundamental irregularity, breach of applicant’s right to fair hearing and manifest lack of jurisdiction.
The government stated that the court order was made in violation of the legal right to fair hearing of the government as guaranteed under Order 26, Rules 13 and 14 of the Federal High Court (Civil Procedure) Rules 2009 and in consequence that it breached the right to fair hearing of the government as guaranteed under Section 36 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
On this, the government argued that whereas the Rules of the court mandated a minimum of three days as return date for the order to show cause, the Applicant only had one day between the day of service of the order on the Abuja Liaison Office on Thursday 30th November, 2017 and 4th December, 2017 when the orders were granted.
This is in view of the fact that Friday, December 1 and Sunday, December 3 were public holidays in the eye of the law and cannot be computed in determining the three day return date.
In the application, the government contested that the court had earlier refused the reliefs sought by the plaintiffs (now defendants) on November 27 for interim injunction in a Motion Ex-Parte dated November 8, 2017, pointing out that the court lacked jurisdiction to grant same reliefs December 4, 2017 as it had now turned around to do.
The government argued that it amounted to sitting on appeal over its ruling and/or orders for the court to grant same reliefs of the Motion ex-parte it had earlier refused, adding the application had become ‘functus officio’.
It explained that court lack requisite jurisdiction to still proceed to make an order to show cause against the defendants (now applicants) in contrary to its earlier verdict refusing the reliefs.
According to the government, there is no urgency to warrant the grant of the interim orders, maintaining that it amounted to using the court as “a vehicle for perpetrating injustice’. The government also argued that the orders are liable for non-disclosure of material facts by the Plaintiffs in obtaining the ex-parte orders by the plaintiffs (now defendants). For instance, that the LCDAs had been operational since 2015.
Apart from the application to discharge the orders ex-parte, the government also file Notice of Preliminary Objection that the matter should be dismissed and/or struck out on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction, locus standi and absence of cause of action.
The government argued that the plaintiffs lacked locus standi to file the suit and that the subject matter of the suit does not fall within civil causes and matters for which the Federal High Court is conferred with exclusive jurisdiction to entertain by virtue of the provisions of 251 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (As Amended).
In conclusion the government asked the court to dismiss or strike out the suit for being speculative, vexatious, frivolous and intended to irritate the state and constituting abuse of court process.
Also, the State House of Assembly and the Osun State Independent Electoral Commission (OSIEC) have filed applications to set aside the order of substituted service granted by the court and all the proceedings of the court.
The grounds of their application are that the court could not competently make an order for substituted service at an address within jurisdiction on a defendant residing outside the jurisdiction of the court.
In the circumstance of non-service of all the processes in the suit on the House of Assembly and the Commission (SOSIEC), government stressed that the court ought to set aside all the proceedings and orders granted in this suit.
No date has been fixed for the hearing of the applications which were filed on Friday December 8, 2017.
By law, the application to discharge the orders granted ex-parte must be heard within 14-day otherwise the orders cease to have effect.

The Government of the State of Osun has approved the appointment of Prince Agboluaje Cornelius Omisade as the Oloja of Ibodi in Atakumosa West Local Government Area and the appointment of Prince Samuel Adeniyi Olaniyan as Edigbon of Edemosi in Ila Local Government Area of the state.
This was contained in a release issued at the end of the state executive council weekly meeting and signed by the media adviser to the Governor, Mr Sola Fasure.
Fasure said “Council approved the appointment of Prince Agboluaje Cornelius Omisade as the Oloja of Ibodi in Atakumosa West Local Government Area. Prince Omisade’s candidature was unopposed, having been presented as the sole candidate by Otemuyi Ogasa Ruling House. Council congratulated and wished him a peaceful and successful reign.
“Council also approved the appointment of Prince Samuel Adeniyi Olaniyan as Edigbon of Edemosi Ila Local Government Area. Prince Olaniyan was the choice of the kingmakers from among the five candidates presented by the Edigbon Ruling House. Council congratulated and wished him a peaceful and successful reign.
The State Government also urged residents to desist from using newspapers and polythene to package food, saying the act is likely to cause harm to the body system.
“Council received report of the harmful health implications of continued use of polythene, especially when it is used to wrap hot food before or after cooking. Council strongly urged members of the public to discontinue this practice and use traditional food wrapping leaves (Eweeran and Ewe Gbodogi) in its place.
“These two leaves contain spices which are medicinal. Farmers are also encouraged to cultivate these leaves in commercial quantity. However, in the quest for using alternatives, food vendors must avoid using newspapers to wrap hot food, since newspapers contain substances which are harmful when ingested with food.” the release read in part.