Nigeria’s enduring economic recovery will only materialize only when the country revitalizes her investments in agriculture and make it a venture that attracts the bulk of the most productive segment of the population.
 

 
This was the conclusion of the Governor of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, as he brought together all officials of the state involved in the agriculture sector to further find fresh ways to improve the state’s performance in agricultural investments.
At the interactive session with officials of the State Ministry of Agriculture and it’s agencies, Governor Aregbesola painted a gloomy picture of imminent acute famine and drought the nation may likely face if the heavy reliance on oil continues.
A statement by the Bureau of Communication and Strategy in the Office of the Governor signed by the Director, Mr. Semiu Okanlawon, quoted Governor Aregbesola as saying that the Governor declared that oil can no longer be the economic mainstay of the nation if it plans to exit the recession facing it present.
The Governor charged the agriculture officers in the state to sit up, redouble their efforts and re-dedicate themselves towards the transformation of the dreams of the state from peasant, rural, subsistent agricultural state to a modern, industrial and commercial agricultural state.
Aregbesola said, “At this critical juncture and judging from the economic crisis of the present, the country and our state have no alternative than to diversify and stop relying on what comes from Abuja, if we must survive.
“We must forthwith stop importation of food items and start cultivating our own food crops. We have everything we need to be a great agricultural nation. Let us undertake a survey to know where each state has comparative advantage over others.
“Our Ministry of Agriculture and its agencies must put their acts together and go back to massive agricultural practice and production.
“The situation at present requires that we do everything humanly possible to awaken the huge potentiality of our agricultural sector.
“Failure to do this leaves us with only two alternatives. It is either we float or sink, but in our state, we shall float because our administration is determined to leave no stone unturned this time around at ensuring general wellbeing of its citizenry in making the state food basket of the nation.”
Aregbesola was quoted further as noting that unless the nation and the state plunge their resources and energies towards agriculture, millions of people, particularly children, will face serious hunger.
He stated that only agriculture can rescue the nation from the nationwide and global economic meltdown currently being experienced arising from the oil glut and the activities of the Niger Delta militants.
Governor Aregbesola said that the only panacea to the current economic imbroglio is for every serious minded government to rise to the occasion and look for alternative means by exploring the abundant potentialities in agriculture.
The governor said with less than two years to the end of his administration, he would not relent in his bid to turn around the sector so that there would be food security .

Governor Rauf Aregbesola has led a delegation to Germany in search of new insights on modern agriculture in order to further realise the dream of making Osun the food basket of the South West.
 

 
This, the administration believes will help empower citizens and improve the quality of life for residents in the state.
 
On Saturday, the Ogbeni-led delegation stopped at Lindau, in the district of Anhalt-Bitterfeld, Germany. Ogbeni Aregbesola, came with series of questions about modern agriculture, hoping for new insights from German farmers like Arnold de Vries who the Governor visited on his sheep farm.
 
Arnold de Vries had taken-in two interns from Osun State for training on his farm in the summer of 2016.
 
Osun, is an agricultural state and significantly larger than Saxony-Anhalt,  but modern agriculture is still a long shot and the Governor’s team is ambitious to close the gap.
 
That is why the project “Support for Capacity Building in Food Production” was launched in 2012 between States of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany and Osun in Nigeria, for youths of the state to undergo internships in modern agricultural enterprises in Saxony-Anhalt. Well over 40 Nigerians from the state of Osun have already benefited from this scheme.
 
This was confirmed by Ogbeni Aregbesola during his visit to Bauer de Vries in Lindau. “We have to feed our population somehow, and effective agriculture, as it is done here in Germany, can help us,” he says. His visit to Saxony-Anhalt is a kind of educational trip. However, the trip is also intended to thank the farmers who took interns in for hands-on training.
 
The administration has invested heavily in laying the foundations for modern agriculture in the state, and lies in wait for bountiful harvest. Recall that Ogbeni Aregbesola recently ordered the planting of 5 million plantain suckers in the state of Osun as a means of providing food for the citizenry.
 
Governor Rauf Aregbesola was accompanied by Speaker of the State of Osun House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Najeem Saleem, amongst other top government officials.

A retired civil servant in Osun State, Prince Abdul-Wahab Adegboyega Oladunjoye, has been installed as the new traditional ruler of Irepodun town, Oke-Osun in Osogbo local government area.
 

 
A retired civil servant in Osun State, Prince Abdul-Wahab Adegboyega Oladunjoye, has been installed as the new traditional ruler of Irepodun town, Oke-Osun in Osogbo local government area.
During the coronation of the new traditional ruler at Irepodun market square, the head of kingmakers, Pa Liasu Odediran, declared that the nomination, selection, appointment and installation of Oladunjoye as the new king for Irepodun town followed the due process.
Odediran added that the processes fulfilled all the necessary conditions in accordance with the tradition and custom of the people of the community.
Also, the chairman of Irepodun community, Pa Sulaimon Akande said the new traditional ruler was acceptable to the entire people of the town and assured that the people of Irepodun town would support the reign of the new king.
Speaking shortly after the coronation ceremonies, the new king urged the state government to provide basic socio amenities for the people of the area.
Oladunjoye urged the state government to grade the road leading to the the town, provide health care facilities and post more teachers to Irepodun to curb rural-urban migration.

Iwo is a rich agricultural area with distance of about 45 kilometres from Ibadan and Osogbo. It has an area of 245 km² and a population of 191,348 making it the most populous Local Government in State of Osun by the 2006 Nigeria National census figures.
Its agriculturally rich advantage makes it a major trading centre for cocoa, kolanuts , foodstuff, yams, meat and  timber . The popular Odo- Ori market in Iwo attracts traders from within and outside the state.
Iwo is also strategic because the railway tracks from Ibadan passes through the town. This helps the commercial and economic development of  Iwo and other towns and local government around.
The Oluwo of Iwoland is the traditional ruler and Chairman, Council of Obas in Iwo Zone. He is the political and spiritual head of Iwoland. There are about eighty- one (81) district towns and villages, each of which is headed by a Baale (District Head) with his Chiefs, all of whom are appointed by the Oluwo as guardians of culture and tradition of the towns and villages on behalf of the Oluwo.
Important landmarks in the ancient town includes, Bowen University, Sharia College of Nigeria, the meeting point of River Oba and River Osun, a state owned radio-vision station and the recently established Oloba Cattle Hub.
 

State of Osun has come off the perennial phase of delayed salary payment at the tail of last year. It was a cheering news for the people of the state and the government. That the Governor of the
state, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola cleared all the outstanding salaries and arrears owed to the state workforce in the face of economic downtown and recession after a protracted union faceoff with the government is worthy of note.
 

 
It is more so because Osun is not the only state in Nigeria plagued by delayed salary occasioned by low price of crude oil, but it has become the most violently attacked government and governor. At the last count a few hours ago, 15 states out of 32 have trouble sorting out their wage obligation. That Osun has been singled out for vitriolic media attacks and constant labour unrest gives the impression that there could be other motives behind the unnecessary focus on Ogbeni or pure
politics of bitterness.
The reason might not be unconnected with the personality of the governor in question whose political ideas and ideologies stance on tripod: the people, development and institution building. The trouble began for Ogbeni in 2010, when he inherited virtually a dead state with an empty treasury. Osun was one of the most indebted state in Nigeria at the time he assumed office.
The arithmetic is simple. Since allocation does not come to the state in sacks, all the borrower banks easily deduct their money at source. Sometimes they clear off the entire allocation due the state because the loan is hinged on the allocations from the federal government as
collateral! This is how Ogbeni was caught in the bind. Having subscribed to socialist democracy and welfarism and a buffer for progressive governance in the current administration across the
country, there was no doubt that Nigerians wanted in Ogbeni a miracle worker in the real sense of the word.
Political ideologies shape the way individuals understand the world and how thought and action are connected directly to actual governance process in the life of any nation or state. If borrowing money from financial institutions to service the wage bill of a few civil servants in the face of economic crunch is viewed as failure of government, then the unschooled thrift collector knows a thing we do not know about financial management. If the wage bill of a few civil servants have to erase the monthly federal allocation and the internally generated revenue of the state, then the government has failed in its other contractual obligations to people, like roads and hospitals and schools and agriculture and human capital developments.
Straddling between wage commitment and other compulsory demands on his government, Ogbeni struck the bull’s eye when he said: “just last month, we spent N6.5billion out of N10 billion on salary. The human management science says that the cost of mobilizing workers to work which is called running or operation cost is one and half the cost of labour but because that is the ideal cost for mobilizing workers, if you understand what that means. Mobilization of workers means if you
are engaged to take care of this place. Let’s not go very far, your salary is your salary, it is your income.
“The tools we need to work here must be provided by your employer and everything pertaining to your work here. The only aspect of your wage that is related to your work that will not be reimbursed or that is assumed to be included in your wage is the cost of movement from your
house to your place of work, when you get to your place of work, every other things that the job requires of you is at the cost of the employer.
“It is this that the human management science says that one and a half the cost of labour is the ideal and our own material condition could not permit us to operate at the ideal level. Let’s now say you want to operate at the sub-ideal level, half the cost of ideal of labour is one and a half times the cost of labour in the ideal form.
“You know in the normal natural form it is not half the cost of labour that you need to spend to get labour to do the work for which labour is employed. It is a science, I’m not giving you anything
extraordinary but lets now say its half, half the cost of labour of N6.5billion would be N3.25billion, add N3.25billion to N6.5billion is N9.75billion, you can say it’s N10billion. It is that the people for
which the workers are actually employed have. So, we must review therefore our wage structure – the number of people that must be employed to work for the state.
“If you take out the critical mass, this state must not and cannot afford the number of staff that is costing N3.6billion, N3.7billion at the same time, I am saying all of these because I know you are a
thinker and don’t let anybody bamboozle you whether they can pay or not. The question you must ask is can that state even support this wage bill and then sustained it?
“It’s crazy because at the end of the day, the civil servants have to serve the people when the resources of the people cannot even sustain the civil servants, where do we have the money to serve the people and by the way, I have just picked the financial aspect, lets now go to
the human aspect and proportion of the human resource. How many people take this huge money, 40,000? Lets now for the purpose of extended consideration say that each of the 40,000 have ten dependants and you must factor it in because those dependants are citizens of Osun, 10 x 40,000 is 400,000, 400,000 divided by 4,000,000 × 100 is 10%.
“What logic as human consideration will accept a situation where 10% of the population takes everything. So am not in anyway embarrassed or perplexed by the uninformed condemnation or accusation or denigration on the basis of not been able to pay. Look we are simply an unserious,
unproductive, clearly backward nation and people. Otherwise there is no justification on the basis of reasonable human assessment of performance and development to reduce a government evaluation of an administration to payment or non-payment of salary.
“What will happen to the 90% of unserviced people who do not have relationship with the workers? Finally, will even the workers not use the roads we are constructing with the money. Will they not use the schools. Will they not use all the other facilities like the ambulance that was provided to the extent the workers are still part of those that will benefit from the programmes of government, fiscal capital or service. What we must do is find a balance between the reasonable cost of labour and provision for development”?
One thing Ogbeni traducers can’t confiscate away from him or have accepted as the Gospel Truth is his landmark achievements which Osun citizens and many farsighted Nigerians described as thirty-years of development in a period of eight-years. Comrade Amitolu Shittu known for his bluntness and forthrightness and citizen of Osun says Ogbeni is a generational leader who is mandated to fill the void of absence of governance in the state and nation.
Comrade Shittu listed some of the achievements of the governor to include: 40,000 Youths Employed under the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme; 5,000 Youths trained and empowered in information communication technology under the Osun Youth Empowerment Technology
(OYESTECH), over N2.4 billion injected to the economy as allowances for the OYES Volunteers, 123 kilometres of waterways (streams, arteries, canals) dredged to keep the state flood-free, 750,000 school students provided with school uniform coupled with empowerment of 3,000 tailors, 150,000 students provided with computer tablets (oponimo), an electronic learning tool preloaded with 17 subjects, 54 textbooks, and past questions of JAMB, WAEC AND NECO of the past 10 years, introduction of bi-monthly environmental sanitation exercise under the O’CLEAN Initiative to keep the state clean.
There is the beautification of the 185 km Oyo Boundary (Asejire) to Osun-Ondo Boundary (Owena), trucks provided for a Public-Private Partnership waste management model in the state, Primary School Funding Grants increased from N7.4 million to N424 million a year, 240,000 children feed daily with nutritious meals under the Osun Elementary School Feeding and Health Programme coupled with empowerment of over 3,000 caterers.
Also, Secondary School basic funding grants from N171 million to N427 million per year, Tuition Fees in State-owned Tertiary Institutions reduced by 30%, security of lives and properties being guaranteed with provision of 25 Armoured Personnel Carrier, over 100 security patrol vehicles and one helicopter for surveillance, 2 state of the art police stations built, Internally Generated Revenue(IGR) increased from N300 million to N700 million without increasing tax payable by
citizens, setting up of Omoluabi Conservation Fund with a N4.2 Billion reserve, Osun Debt Management Office established.
Others are building of the largest commercial apiary in Sub-Saharan Africa for refined honey production, over 1,765 hectares of land cleared and prepared to support farmers, Rehabilitation of farm settlements in the state Over N1 billion committed to support farmers, Building of super highways to connect Osun to Lagos and Osun to Kwara States, 81 township roads covering 128km have been upgraded all over the state.
Again, there is the Ede Water Works capacity increased from 13% to 100% capacity, over 3,000 permanent teachers employed into the state education sector, 300 km roads have been built across the 30 Local Government Areas and Ife East Area Office, Modakeke, Osun Ambulance Service Authority Established with 400 youths trained as paramedics, 9 State Hospitals and 12 comprehensive health centers have been rehabilitated in the state; 74 Primary Health Centers built, Osogbo Railway Station undergoing massive rehabilitation.
That is the quintessential unusual governor of Osun. He is of the view that balance of governance and spread of its dividend supersedes parochial mindset of a few who judge/evaluate governance performance on the basis of delayed wages or otherwise.

Osogbo the capital of Osun lies on coordinates 7°46′ North 4°34′East with an area of 47kmsq. According to the 2006 Population and Housing Commission Census, the city has a population of 156,694 people. Osogbo shares boundary with Ikirun, Ilesa, Ede, Egbedore and Iragbiji and is easily accessible from any part of the state because of it’s central nature. It is about 48km from Ife, 32km from Ilesa, 46km from Iwo, 48km from Ikire and 46km from Ila-Orangun.
Osogbo is a commercial and industrial centre. This started in 1907, when the British Cotton Growing Association sited an industry for growing and ginning of cotton. The Nigerian Tobacco Company (NTC) built its first factory in Osogbo. In this same year, a major turning point for the city which helped in its industrial and commercial development occurred.  The railway tracks were constructed linking it to other parts of Northern Nigeria.  This attracted people from far and near.
The Ataoja of Osogbo is the traditional title of the King and he is the political and spiritual heads of Obas and Chiefs in Osogbo and Olorunda Local Government Areas.
Osogbo is famous for the annual Osun Osogbo Festival which attracts tourists from different part of the world.
 

Osun government has been praised for swiftly resolving a miscommunication that could have degenerated into a religious crisis. The incident involved Muslim (veiled) sisters who had to participate in a biometric data capture that required removing the veil by Chams Plc., a consulting firm engaged by the state for its bio-metric data capturing.
 

 
Praises have poured in from diverse groups including The Believing Women, Al Mu’minaat Organisation which hailed Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s quick intervention in a situation that could have snowballed into another religious conflagration. The president of the organisation, Hajiyah Mulikat Abiola-Hassan said the Governor’s sagacity at resolving the crisis was worthy of commendation.
According to a report by The Ranaiisance, an online platform. “Chams PLC was engaged by the state government to do a bio-metric capturing of it’s workers. The members of staff of the company had, during the exercise, insisted that female Muslims must uncover their ears for them to be captured and those who refused the order were turned down from taking part in the exercise. They claimed such has been the practice in the past and that women in Islamic head cover, hijab had cooperated, insisting that the latest exercise involving new members of staff of the state government could not be an exception.

“At least 30 women refused to expose their ears. A member of the Muslim Students Society who is also a Civil Servant in the state, Mrs S. A Okunade relayed her experience with the organisation. “I was one of about thirty women who refused to expose their ears during the massive biometric capturing. We refused and this caused disruption in the exercise. They later pleaded with us and promised to capture us the next day. We went as far as going to the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB and the Permanent Secretary addressed us to co-operate with them because we are the last local government to be captured and that there was no complain from other local governments. He even claimed that they have done it for a Niqabite (veiled Sister) and she complied.
“The case went to the Muslim community and we were compelled to do it privately within SUBEB. Perhaps, the issue was more pronounced within the Ladoke Akintola University Teaching Hospital, LAUTECH where many concerned individuals (new members of staff) refused to yield to pressure. Dr Abdul Hakeem Ogundapo, who witnessed the capturing of medical consultants in LAUTECH said: “Chams insisted that a female colleague must expose her ears and she refused, which caused delay for the exercise. As such, the management had to intervene. Of course they were pleading with the Sister to uncover the ear. She persisted and was eventually captured. But Chams staff threatened she would most likely be deleted during review.”

The Roman Emperor Pliny is often quoted to have observed that “out of Africa, there is always something new”. We can take liberties with this position and say that out of the Osun State in Nigeria’s south west we have seen a host of policy thrusts and initiatives now being adopted at the centre.
 

 
Recent examples include the launch nationwide of the conditional cash transfer which is aimed at tackling long term structural poverty. We also have the free schools feeding program through which the state government has provided nutritious school meals to thousands of its students. In the case of the school meals program there is a clear economic synergy. The program is interwoven to increase food production and thereby elevate living standards in the rural economy. These programs represent a fundamental social advance. They are also one of the few evidence available of the provision of “ a dividend of democracy”. For a change, to paraphrase a lyric from the sixties rock band The Christians, there is now the making of a harvest for the people. And about time too!
Much of the policy thrusts came out of the seven point’s agenda, the manifesto upon which the present governor of the state Rauf Aregbesola was elected. However, in the implementation of the agenda, the fingerprints of a coordinating agency of the state government – The Bureau of Social Services (BOSS) which the Aregbesola government specifically set up as a special purpose vehicle can be detected in these path breaking social intervention thrusts.
The eponymous BOSS is in itself coordinated by a Director- General, Femi Ifaturoti, a lawyer who is propelled by an philosophical belief in social intervention policies as a decisive element in the execution of the social contract which binds government with the people.
Under his beady eye, the agency has developed the framework to carry out its overarching responsibility to supervise, monitor, evaluate and report the performance of all the heads of Ministries,Departments and Agencies (MDA’S). A key mechanism used by the coordinating bureau has been the design and implementation of a framework for public value assurance.

The task requires paying meticulous attention to details. They have set the parameters for determining good governance which includes embracing democratic principles, developing apparatus and implementation, and finally ensuring that all the components stay on course to guarantee public service delivery which can only be measured by its impact on the off- takers which is defined as the citizens.
The quasi- independent agency of government is not just involved in project monitoring, but also measures the social impact of the activities of government. Its evaluation unit for example, can apply its performance measurement templates as evaluation parameters.
In the process they have developed the framework for the federal government to use as a prototype for its social intervention programmes.
A good example here is the federal government’s conditional cash transfer which is aimed at tackling long term poverty and is just taking off. The BOSS model pioneered in the state of OSUN has a prototype which drives the beneficiary. This is achieved by the design of a targeting mechanism in conjunction with the custody of a Beneficiary register for all the social safety net programs in the state.With the country belatedly developing social safety net programs, the data base is crucial for effectiveness, efficiency and transparency. The work of BOSS in OSUN state has provided for the federal government a veritable framework.
As the federal government commences the disbursements of N5000 stipends to poor and vulnerable households in nine states the BOSS model has been pressed into play. The pioneering work done in the state of OSUN is now the operating model. Of note is the development of the community- based targeting (CBT) mechanism.
The CBT exploits the personal knowledge that community members have of each other, so that the community itself takes responsibility for identifying vulnerable household’s and individuals. The CBT approach is a combination of three major actions (a) geographic targeting (b) community sensitisation (c) data collection and validation (proxy means and testing) exercise and entry into the database.
The same data driven methodology propels other initiatives such as the much admired school meals program.Apart from the federal government, Kaduna state is also using this mechanism as a social intervention programme.

The BOSS himself(the pun is intended) Femi Ifaturoti through this agency has demonstrated, not least to donors such as the World Bank that a social intervention agency can  effective in delivering on its mated objectives, but that it can also be transparent. It is a testimony to the ongoing debate in economic circles about government as social entrepreneur and innovator.
From this perspective, Femi Ifaturoti is adamant that government can be both innovator and social entrepreneur, “Governance after all, is about the welfare of the generality of the public. We are acquiring appropriate world class software to complement our process flow which has been designed as a hybrid, borrowing from the western, oriental and African democracies to evolve our own unique forms”.
As the country initiates more social programs BOSS will continue to be pivoted having initiated and pioneered so many schemes. It deserves a credit in the evolution of Nigeria’s social safety nets.