The Commissioner for Environment and Sanitation in Osun State, Olubukola Oyawoye, in Ibadan disclosed that
Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s environmental sanitation drive had drastically reduced the number of patients going to the hospitals for medi-care.
Reeling out statistics, the commissioner explained that less than 200,000 people now had recorded cases of malaria in the state contrary to the alarming 750,000 and 500,000 recorded in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
She made the disclosure in a paper titled, “Clean and Sustainable Environment, Panacea for Outbreak of Epidemic: The State of Osun Experience,” delivered at the monthly guest lecture at the Correspondents’ Chapel of Oyo State Council of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).
She recalled the challenge posed to the state by flood at the inception of the current administration in the state, wherein some kids, cows were drowned and other valuable materials destroyed but noted that the menace was tackled frontally.
According to her, “flood created a huge challenge for the government of Aregbesola at inception, but as a result of cleanliness advocacy of governor Aregbesola, flood became a thing of the past and cholera has disappeared, with war against indiscriminate dumping of waste sustaining our success story”.
The commissioner, who attributed the beautification of the state to doggedness and determination on the part of the governor, blamed the past administration for the huge dirt that dotted many parts of the state, culminating in the outbreak of cholera then.
Accompanied on the trip to Ibadan by Oyelade Adebayo, the director, Regeneration and Utilization, and Dapo Abolarin, the director of Forestry, the commissioner said the sorry state of things when Aregbesola took over was due to the lukewarm attitude of the past administration.
She recalled that there were incidences of flooding which resulted into loss of lives, indiscriminate dumping of refuse along water courses and roads, resulting into dirty environment and consequently outbreak of epidemic; indiscriminate felling of trees within and outside forest reserves without replacement.
“Governor Aregbesola declared a three-month emergency on sanitation, which, though it inconvenienced people initially, the end result was encouraging.
“In a day, we removed 36 lorry loads of waste from a public dump site and we later dredged hundreds of waterways to avoid flooding and spread of epidemic diseases.
“240 boreholes were sunk at the cost of $2.5 million, public toilets were constructed across the state; we converted wastes to biogas, as well as planting ‘Igi-Iye’ to facilitate clean and healthy environment for our people to live in”, the commissioner explained.
ALL AFRICA
Category: News
The governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola will have another feather added to his cap as National Infinity magazine honours him with an award tagged “Nigerian of the year 2013” on Saturday in Osogbo.
Media Ace Limited, organisers of Celebrity Media Awards and publishers of National Infinity magazine will present the governor with the award at the third edition of Ismail Babatunde Jose Lecture on Media and the Society.
The ceremony will have the Editor-in-chief of the Premium Times, Mr. Dapo Olorunyomi as the Guest Speaker at the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding in Osogbo.
The event which comes up on the 24th of this month will also have the Executive Governor of Oyo state, Senator Abiola Ajimobi and the President of Nigerian Guild of Editors, Mr. Femi Adesina as keynote speakers.
Mr. Olajide Ige of the National Infinity magazine said that the formal presentation of the magazines’ award of Nigerian of the Year 2013 to the governor was as a result of the massive transformation of the state.
Ige noted that the choice of Aregbesola was informed by the governor’s redefinition of politics and governance in the state.
He held that the rate of transformation of the state and the numerous laudable programmes of the government were so apparent to all.
According to him, “Aregbesola deserves the award for re-defining politics and governance in Osun. His dexterity, sagacity, sense of responsibility, fear of God and love for humanity have brought rapid transformation to the state in general and the state as a whole.”
He listed some of the achievements of the Aregbesola government including massive road constructions, construction of MKO Abiola Airport, new school buildings, multi-billion Naira Ayegbaju market, OYES scheme, welfare package for the old and vulnerable (Agba Osun) among others, as some of the people-oriented programmes, which have impacted positively on the people of the state.
A call has gone to civil servants in Osun State to always make dedication, hard work and selflessness their watchwords while at work to take the state to greater heights.
The Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security, Wale Adedoyin, made the appeal in Osogbo at a farewell ceremony organised by the Ministry management staff for the outgoing Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Mr. Sunday Odediran.
While commending the efforts of the outgoing permanent secretary for his enduring contributions while in active service for the state, the Agric commissioner stressed that the state will never forget the selfless service rendered by Odediran towards the growth of the state.
Adedoyin buttressed his point by making reference to the intelligence of Odediran while explaining the ministry’s activities during a meeting with the state Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, who gave kudos to him for the brilliant presentation of his ministry’s activities.
He then enjoined officers still in the service to emulate the good work of the retired permanent secretary so as to take the state to greater heights.
Today’s Quote is by the Ooni of Ile-Ife on the GOVERNANCE of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola of the State of Osun. Visit the website at www.osun.gov.ng or Twitter @stateofosun for more updates on the State of Osun and its projects.
The Osun State government will soon issue smart cards to pupils for its school feeding programme.
Governor Rauf Aregbesola spoke in Abuja at an event sponsored by the Federal Government and the Partnership for Child Development (PCD) to promote home grown school meals for Nigerian pupils, tagged: “Investing in school feeding in Nigeria: Opportunities for advancing home grown school feeding programmes for the benefit of school children and farmers in Nigeria.”
The programme has only been implemented by Kano and Osun states.
Aregbesola said though the programme had been devoid of manipulation since it was repackaged in 2010, there was need to digitalise it.
He said: “We are advancing to a point where nobody would manipulate the process. By the end of this month, we will issue our pupils, particularly those at the elementary level, electronic smart cards with which they will register for meals consumed on the Point of Sale (PoS) terminal. Once they do so, the caterers will take their PoS to the bank where the number of pupils fed will be analysed. We are digitising the process in a way that there can’t be manipulation. This means it is one programme that is worthy of every naira and kobo invested in it.”
Aregbesola said the programme gulps N12.7 million on every school day.
He said N601,400 is paid to 3,007 caterers daily as transport fare, adding: “Today, with Osun’s elementary school enrolment figure of almost
253,000, the implication is that of increasing our annual expenditure on O’MEALS to about N3 billion. This does not include staff salary.”
The governor said the cost of the meals is shared by the state government and local governments on a 40/60 per cent ratio.
He said the programme has helped his administration to achieve many of its objectives, such as the increased enrolment of pupils in elementary schools.
Aregbesola said: “The programme is consistent with our government’s goals of banishing poverty and hunger, creating work and wealth, creating functional education, restoring healthy living and engendering communal peace and progress.”
PCD Executive Director Dr. Les Idris urged all tiers of government to collaborate and ensure the success of the project.
She said PCP will support any state that shows interest in the programme.
THE NATION
No one doubts that Nigeria is a (potentially) wealthy nation. Here is a country that ranks among the top 10 oil producers or exporters in the world and is now the largest economy in Africa.
Besides, Nigeria has the largest corps of trained professionals in Africa, some of whom were loaned to other African countries at the dawn of independence. Today, many of these professionals are scattered throughout the world, contributing to growth and innovations in education, health care, business, engineering, and technology, wherever they are.
Paradoxically, Nigeria is also among the “extremely poor nations” on earth, when the focus is on the number of citizens living in abject poverty. Nigeria also ranks very low on the Human Development Index, especially in life expectancy and in the quality and distribution of political goods. Moreover, Nigeria’s unemployment rate is among the highest in the world. It is not enough to explain this paradox in terms of the concentration of the nation’s wealth in very few hands, leaving the rest of the population to scamper for the crumbs.
Amplifying the paradox is the wide gulf between the nation’s oil wealth and the quality of political goods made available to the citizens by the political class. This gulf is particularly evident in poor infrastructure and inadequate investment in education, health care, and social welfare.
The trio of poor leadership, weak institutions, and corruption is often blamed for the existence of this gulf. Some have argued that once corruption is removed, all will be well with Nigeria. But then, strong leadership is needed to reduce or control corruption. The strongest of institutions can be weakened by poor leadership, thus allowing for various loopholes that allow corruption to thrive. Although this is the situation at the federal level, there are a few states that paint a different picture.
Against the above backgrounds, I was curious about the maiden edition of the Business World’s Most Innovative Governor Award, which celebrates innovative approaches to governance and development. The ceremony held at the expansive Zanabab Hotel and Resort in Ilesa on Saturday, May 3, 2014. After a survey of first-term governors across the country, 12 were shortlisted for the award, two from each geopolitical zone. A team of experts was despatched to each state to document and assess major innovations in governance as well as the nature and extent of development. After all the data were assessed, analysed, and compared, Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State emerged as the overall winner.
After verifying the innovative programmes identified in the award citation and brochures, I decided to share the award experience for at least two reasons. First, in performing the traditional functions of the Fourth Estate, the press must be careful not to be seen only as a one-eyed critic, who sees nothing beyond the government’s shortcomings. The other eye must be opened to see good models that are driven by innovations. Indeed, if the goal of critical commentaries is to provide the basis for desirable social change, then good models, typified by innovative programmes, deserve our attention. I made the same argument when I wrote about Dr. Olusegun Mimiko’s innovative health, education, and community development programmes in Ondo State during his first term.
Second, there has been so much negative press about Aregbesola, due partly to his initial over-enthusiastic approach to governance and partly to his outspokenness on the issues he cares about. As a result, his achievements have been overlooked, misrepresented or completely distorted.
One such achievement is his wide-ranging education reform, which is beyond school mergers and reclassification of grade levels into Elementary, Middle, and High Schools as reported in the media. It also involves the provision of lunch for Elementary grades, textbooks for Elementary and Middle grades, Opon Imo(Tablets of Knowledge) for High School grades, and uniforms for all grades and for the food vendors in all Osun schools. These innovations are complemented by a massive construction of distinctive mega schools. On completion, 100 Elementary, 50 Middle, and 20 High Schools would have been built. Furthermore, the teachers’ morale is boosted by capacity building programmes, rewards for excellence, and transparent promotion exercises. Appropriate security and quality assurance measures were also set up for all schools throughout the state.
A unique feature of the state government’s education reform is how well it dovetails into the provision of employment for contractors, building materials suppliers, daily wage labourers, food vendors, farmers, tailors, and youths. For example, the garment factory established for the production of uniforms, the food vending project, and the empowerment of farmers and youths for food production to feed the schoolchildren have generated nearly 10,000 employment opportunities across the state.
Furthermore, Aregbesola’s innovative approach to employment led to the establishment of a popular youth employment scheme, which recruits at least 20,000 youths, who are deployed to various jobs for a period of three months, at the end of which some are permanently recruited by the state and a new batch comes on board. The youth employment scheme is complemented by a social security programme for vulnerable adults throughout the state, who are paid a monthly allowance and provided with free medical care.
Realising that farming provides employment for many Osun residents, Aregbesola embarked on a massive, but highly integrated, road construction and rehabilitation projects across the state, including boundary highways; township roads; inter-city roads; rural roads; and a 17-kilometre, dualised, ring road around Osogbo. Where necessary, untarred roads are opened up by direct labour to provide access to remote farms.
Furthermore, to facilitate the movement of goods to Lagos, which has the largest concentration of consumers of Osun goods, a new road project was embarked upon, linking Osun with Ogun State along the Gbogan-Odeomu-Ijebu Igbo axis. The railway station in Osogbo is undergoing massive restructuring not only for the movement of farm produce but also for the movement of passengers, especially during festive occasions when the state provides free rail transport.
According to Muyiwa Ige, the state Commissioner for Lands, Physical Planning and Urban Development, the station is being developed in terms of the Chicago Michigan Avenue concept of the Magnificent Mile, connecting the station with Osun River, the Old Garage, and Omiseke. The transport network is capped by an airport, whose 3.2-kilometre runway and Tower are under construction.
Because many of the innovative projects are visible throughout the state (see Business World, Vol.8, No 22, May 5-12, 2014 for details), let me highlight an invisible one that really drives the wheel of efficiency and transparency in project execution throughout the state. It is the Bureau of Social Services, the first of its kind in the country, established by Aregbesola and headed by Femi Ifaturoti, an engineer and Project Assessment Manager. BOSS is staffed with administrators, engineers, architects, quantity surveyors, and IT specialists.
According to Ifaturoti, “The mission of BOSS is to leverage human resources and technological innovation in driving effective monitoring and evaluation of social service delivery, thereby ensuring public val
ue and fiscal discipline”. BOSS functions as a conduit between the governor and the commissioners, by monitoring and evaluating all state projects and ensures that comparative data on all projects are collected, analysed, tabled, and archived, thus facilitating quick checks of project status and comparisons across similar projects. The monthly evaluation meeting between BOSS and state commissioners keeps commissioners on their toes, while leaving the governor free to pursue other ways of improving citizens’ life chances.
Aregbesola’s innovative projects have attracted partnerships from local and international organisations, because they are functional and cost-effective. And BOSS drives them to successful implementation. That’s why he has been able to achieve so much in so little time. This has helped unravel the Nigerian paradox.
THE PUNCH
The Deputy Governor of the State of Osun who doubles as the state Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Titilayo Laoye-Tomori, has reaffirmed determination and commitment of the present administration in the state to provide functional and qualitative education to citizens and residents of the state.
Mrs. Laoye-Tomori stated this after receiving on behalf of the state government, a cheque of N500,000 presented by the LASACO Insurance Plc led by its Managing Director, Mr. Olusola Ladipo Ajayi, in support of the state’s school feeding programme of the Aregbesola administration, O’MEAL, held at the state government house, Osogbo, the state capital.
The deputy governor said records available to the administration of Governor Rauf Aregbesola at its inception in October 2010 stated that only three per cent of secondary school students from schools in the state qualified for matriculation into the university.
She said ways to correct the anomaly and other rots found in the state’s education sector led the state government to convey an education summit for stakeholders in the education sector in February 2011.
According to her, the sector has been repositioned and improved tremendously as more than 43 per cent of students who finished from public schools in the state are now qualified for matriculation into universities of their choice. Mrs. Laoye-Tomori said the state’s school feeding programme is in line with the United Nations Education Scientific Cultural Organization ‘s (UNESCO) recommendation, noting that the programme has led to an increase in school enrolment geometrically as the state now has the highest number of elementary school enrolment in the country.
Mrs. Laoye-Tomori disclosed that the present administration committed over N3.6 billion to O’MEAL programme annually, adding that commercial activities of the state have witnessed a lot of transformation following the introduction of the O’MEAL programme as over 1,000 female farmers, 1,500 farmers and over 3,000 food vendors have been empowered through O’MEAL.
Recommending the programme to other states in the federation to curb the menace of out -of -school children, the state deputy governor appealed to other wealthy Nigerians and corporate organisations to partner with the state government in the people-oriented programme, saying the Aregbesola led administration is poised at taking education to the next level in the state of Osun.
DAILY INDEPENDENT
Olaposi Adiatu, the Programme manager of the state’s Rural Water and Environmental Sanitation Agency (RUWESA), said in Osogbo on Monday that the project was a collaboration between the state government and the African Development Bank (AfDB).
He said that contractors who would handle the projects had signed an agreement to complete them in three months.
The RUWESA boss said the provision of the boreholes was part of state government’s efforts to make potable water available to people in the rural communities.
Adiatu said that the agency completed more than 139 hand pump and motorised borehole projects last year.
“We have awarded the contract for the construction of 564 boreholes in the rural communities and this is to be completed in the next three months. This 564 boreholes’ project is in addition to no less than 139 which were inaugurated by the state government in the rural communities in 2013. It was done by the state government in collaboration with the Africa Development Bank,”he said.
Adiatu said RUWESA was also constructing 52 modern latrines in 36 public schools in the rural areas, to enhance environmental sanitation there.
He said that the agency had also embarked on sensitisation programmes in the rural communities
“We have been sensitising the people at the rural communities on the need to have latrines where they can defecate rather than doing it in the open, to prevent the outbreak of cholera. Our agency is like an health institution but ours is preventive and that is why we are telling people at the rural communities to always keep their environment clean,” he said.
Adiatu added that the African Development Bank had committed N2 billion for water and sanitation projects, manpower development and provision of office equipment in the state.
CITYVOICE
Mr Peter Babalola, the Chairman of Osun Local Government Service Commission, on Monday urged technical officers in local councils to give priority to maintenance of government’s infrastructure.
Babalola, who made the plea in Osogbo at the opening of a workshop on efficient maintenance culture, said this would sustain government’s assets.
He said: “ If all saddled with maintenance of equipment see themselves as crucial to the efficiency of such implements, they would be more dedicated.
‘’No matter the amount of money committed to acquisition of capital assets and infrastructure, if not properly maintained, it will result in waste of resources.
‘’Many Nigerian industries have become comatose due to lack of commitment to maintenance needs.
“ It is wrong for employees not to be concerned about the state of tools provided by the employers.
‘’Technical and maintenance officers in the employment of the commission in Osun are enjoined to have a change of attitude by keeping all facilities safe from encumbrances and neglect.’’
“When infrastructural facilities are maintained, they tend to have a longer life span while people enjoy and benefit immensely from such facilities.
“ With the rate at which the government is constructing roads and putting up other capital intensive infrastructure, the issue of maintenance must be properly addressed,’’ he added.
Download inspiring Quotes from the Governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. Today’s Quote is focused on the impact of the O’MEALS Project. Visit the website at www.osun.gov.ng or Twitter @stateofosun for more updates on the State of Osun and its projects.