Public secondary school pupils in Osun State have lauded the Volunteer Corps Tutoring programme, a private intervention to help less privileged pupils improve through extra lessons.
The programme aims at preparing SS3 pupils adequately for public examinations such as the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO), as well as the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the JAMB.
The programme which features intensive weekend (Friday-Sunday) coaching began in Osun on December 10, last year, though it has existed in Lagos for 25 years.
The pupils and volunteer teachers are fed meals during the classes to avoid distraction due to hunger and tiredness on the Saturdays.
The pupils are being taught Mathematics and English and were given work books on both subjects that contain past questions as well as notebooks.

Teachers got a manual; marking scheme of WAEC standard.
State coordinator of the programme, Mrs Ibiyemi Ifaturoti, said there are scholarships available for those who excel in the examination.
She visited some centres where the classes hold in various schools in the Ife/Ilesa zone recently, where pupils and teachers made positive comments about the scheme.
Ozomue Mathew of School of Science, Ondo Road, described the intervention “as a nice project helping us. It will really be effective in eradicating mass failure in schools; we thank the organisers.”
Abosede Fadare of St. Margaret’s High School, Ilesa, has her eyes on the scholarship.
“(I will) try to be among the best so I can be one of those who will get the scholarship,” she said.
Maths teacher, Mr Segun Lawrence Omisakin, said the programme was yielding fruits.

“The project is fine and the students are responding well. I have no qualms teaching for free on the weekends I am supposed to be resting but it is God that rewards.  No amount of money can ever be enough,” he said.
Mrs Abimbola Awofisayo, also a Maths teacher at the School of Science, Ondo Road, advised the organisers to start earlier with the next set.
“It is a really nice programme but the time for preparation is short. I’ll advise the organisers to let’s start from maybe SS2 so we can catch them young. I have done a lot of volunteering in the past and my joy will be to meet the students in future when they have become successful,” she said.
Hamza Musa, a youth corps member serving at C&S Middle School, Ilesa, but who teaches maths on weekends at St. Margaret’s High School, Ilesa, said participating in the programme was fulfilling.
“I am usually free at weekends and decided to engage myself by coming here to teach. I’m enjoying imparting knowledge to the younger students and I’m happy they are responding well,” he said.
Disclosing the reason for the intervention, Mrs Ifaturoti, said the poor performance of public schools pupils in the last WASSCE was just one of the motives for the initiative.
“It is one of the motivations but it is really high time that we started impacting the lives of children in other places apart from Lagos. Let’s just say the time was just ripe” she said.
The coordinator, who disclosed that convincing the teachers to work free on weekends,  was not easy  however acknowledged the roles played by the three zonal coordinators, Alhaji ‘Lekan Salami, Deaconess Adeola Akanji and Pastor Ayodele Obadire  in getting the programme started.
She also thanked the Osun State governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola for approving the initiative.

With recession ravaging the country after petro-dollar dipped last year, not a few analysts believe that the way out of the crisis is agriculture.
Thus, the Governor, State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, believes that now is the time to turn to massive agricultural practices or else millions of Nigerians would be at risk.
Against this backdrop, between the 17th and 29th of January 2017, Aregbesola led a high-level delegation that included the Speaker, State of Osun House of Assembly, Hon. Najeem Salaam, Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Moshood Adeoti, Director General Office of Economic Development and Partnerships, Dr. Charles Diji Akinola, and the Director Livestock Services, Mrs. Ajibike  Fagbemi, to the  State of Saxon Anhalt, Germany.
This was in furtherance of the established cooperation in the area of agricultural development and in support of the Osun Rural Enterprise and Agriculture Programme (O-REAP).
The expected gains of the trip include engagement of relevant investors and partners with interest in agricultural investment and partnership opportunities in the State of Osun, and expansion of the scope of existing Development Cooperation between the governments of Osun and Saxon Anhalt.

Besides, the trip was also to design the next phase of collaborative partnerships between Osun and Saxon Anhalt.
This trip allowed the delegation to discuss agricultural potential, investments and partnership opportunities in the State of Osun with German farmers.
This is to build on the previous partnership, which was activated in 2012 and involved the training of 40 young farmers from Osun over a period of four years. The beneficiaries of the training were   exposed to knowledge, skills and technologies in practical modern agriculture.
The Osun delegation also met with the umbrella Farmers Association of the State of Saxon Anhalt. At the meeting, a number of farmers in Germany expressed their interest in the proposed farmer-technology transfer programme that is being planned in collaboration with the State Government of Saxon Anhalt.
One of the key highlights of the visit concerned the planned cooperation between the governments of Osun and Saxon Anhalt in setting up ‘Best Practices Demonstration, Training and Production Farm’ in the State of Osun.
The Farm is to target the youth and other farmers and will provide the platform for the acquisition of knowledge, skills and techniques in modern agriculture with a focus on land development and management, new technologies in crops, livestock, fisheries, post-harvest handling, processing and packaging.
In view of the above, the government of Osun has established a Land Bank in the state where those who have fallow land can entrust it to the government.

Government will reach an agreement with these land owners on the terms and duration of usage, and when the parcel of land will revert to the owner.
With this innovative land bank system, land would be available for farming on a commercial scale. In addition, there won’t be shortage of land once government has information on the quantity of land available in its land bank.
This is one of the strategies by the Aregbesola administration to make farming in the state easy for whoever wants to practise agriculture.
Expectedly as well, the establishment of the Best Practice Demonstration, Training and Production Farm in the State of Osun will build on these initial efforts and create an even more cost-effective and sustainable model of cooperation that will achieve broader impact.
State of Osun stands the opportunity to extend benefits to many hundreds of equally motivated and needy young farmers who would not have the opportunity of being attached to host farmers or institutions in Germany.
Accordingly, it is expected that the Best Practice Demonstration, Training and Production Farm will equally serve as a veritable platform to anchor a well-designed farmer exchange programme that will provide the opportunity for German agricultural experts and farmers to provide technological transfer and capacity building to farmers in Osun.
The latest collaborative efforts will involve building on the initial outcomes of the cooperation with the State of Saxon Anhalt under which 40 budding young farmers from Osun had been hosted in Germany for advanced practical training in different aspects of agriculture over the past four years.
This training no doubt resulted in greater opportunities for the young farmers in Osun as they launched promising careers in modern and productive agriculture practices such as piggery, fishery and animal feed production.
They are also involved in different aspects of agriculture including cattle and small ruminants’ production, horticulture and greenhouse farming in different parts of the State.
Other highlights of the trip included planning meetings with the top officials of the Ministry of Agriculture of the State of Saxon Anhalt and members of the State of Saxon-Anhalt Parliament
This meeting was hinged on consolidating as well as expanding the current cooperation between Osun and Saxon Anhalt.
Considering the successes recorded from the cooperation with the State of Saxon Anhalt in the last four years in the area of agriculture, the cooperation is now being expanded to the area of healthcare delivery.
On healthcare delivery, it is important to note  the recent  visit of a team of seasoned German oncologists from the Institute for Operative Medicine of the Otto-yon, Magdeburg, Germany.
They were in the state for three days to train some health workers on detection, control, treatment and management of various classes of cancer in the State.
To make the state self-sufficient in food production, over 17, 000 farmers in the state had benefitted from the QUIIP I and II loan programmes.
Under the Osun State Agricultural Development Corporation (OSSADEC) in 2010, the government had also given out N250 million loans to farmers and N500 million in 2012.
For Rural Accessibility Mobility Programme (RAMP), the state constructed 662km rural roads for easy access to farm settlements. This is to make mobility easy between rural and urban areas, as well as facilitate smooth and fluid movement of farm produce from the farms to the final markets.
According to Aregbesola, agricultural development is the direction to go in order to get out of the economic crisis. As the Yoruba saying goes, when food is available, the pang of poverty is less felt. Massive production of food locally is the answer to the nation’s economic downturn.

Police in Osun State said about 26 persons have been rescued from what it described as, “strange mental home” in Iwo area of the state.
The Commissioner of Police, CP, Olafimihan Adeoye, disclosed this, noting that the 26 victims had been taken to hospital for medical attention, and added that three of them had died.

Adeoye made the disclosure while briefing newsmen yesterday in Osogbo.
According to him, the victims were dehumanised under the guise of receiving treatment for mental illness.
He said four persons connected with running of the home had been arrested.
He said, “At about 16.00 hours on Thursday, we received information of the existence of a camp in Iwo, where some sick persons were being treated in a dehumanised manner.

“On receiving the information, we contacted the necessary agencies of government to join us to visit the place and arrested four persons who are currently undergoing interrogation.
“About 26 fellows were found in the camp and had been taken to the hospital for necessary medical care.
“We also discovered that two of them have passed on just yesterday; I have just been informed that when conveying them to the hospital, another one gave up the ghost.
“So, we now have three of them that are dead. But, we hope that further investigation will reveal some other things.”
The CP further assured that investigations would be carried out with the view of determining the culpability of those involved in setting up the camp.

He added, “For now, the state government has taken up the responsibility to ensure that those rescued are effectively taken care of.”
Meanwhile, the suspected owner of the camp, Kamardeen Akanmu, claimed the home was a ‘spiritual healing centre’ for mentally challenged persons.
Akanmu, who spoke to journalists in Yoruba language shortly after his arrest, said that some of the victims had died and buried in the camp with the consent of their families.

As South-Western Nigerian leaders of thought, policy implementors and technocrats converge at the ancient city of Abeokuta for the Southwest governance innovations summit, I am moved to recall two past incidents; the one, a historic meeting which started at about 6pm and rounded up just before 6am sometime in December 2010.
The venue was the “situation room” at the Bourdillion Road, Ikoyi residence of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. A new Governor had just been sworn in, a week prior, after three and half years of protracted litigation to regain a misappropriated mandate. That Governor is Rauf Aregbesola.
The purpose of the meeting was to share thoughts with the core leadership of the then Action Congress and a handful of key elements who served in the Lagos cabinet when Asiwaju Tinubu held sway as the Chief Executive, on the policy thrusts and the direction in which the new government in Osun was going to drive the implementation of its electoral promises. Seated at the long table were the party chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, the National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, and, as I recall vividly, also present were Prof Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, Yemi Cardoso, Dele Alake, Leke Pitan, Dr. Charles Diji Akinola, the Osun Deputy Governor, Mrs Titilayo Laoye- Tomori , this writer, and a couple of other associates from Osun.
At this meeting, those of us close associates of the new governor who were key architects of the Osun renewal took turns to unfold the vision and invited those with cognate experience to critique our game plan and how we were going to execute the “PACT” of Rauf Aregbesola with the people of Osun. The conversations were robust, and centred around the narrative of “Government unusual.” This new governor was going to demystify the office and get really down to the task of serving. Key radical reforms were going to be put in place in vital areas of massive food production, roads, infrastructure, functional education, youth empowerment, communal security, affordable healthcare delivery, restoring the status of Osogbo as a vital commercial hub, and engendering socio- economic inclusion.
During the course of the night, we addressed the issue of the declining economic fortunes of the country insofar as it continued to rely only on oil as its main revenue base, and came to the conclusion that something drastic had to be done to address the humongous cost of governance occasioned largely by an over bloated bureaucracy, as it was not sustainable. We told the audience that our principal was going to make a stab at pruning down the number of MDAs and collapsing them into efficient and manageable units with appropriate nomenclature.

Recalling the glorious days of the old West with nostalgia, the necessity to harness individual strategic strengths of the sub-region’s components was not lost on anybody around that long table. We therefore agreed that impetus was to be given to the on-going endeavour efforts to institutionalize the peer review mechanism that would allow the weak to benefit from the experience of the strong through cross border replication of success stories with a view to better the lot of our peoples and create sustainable even development.
One key point that stood out is Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola’s declaration that there was going to be a Ministry of Regional Integration and Special duties that would institutionalise the interface with other states in the region and that other Governors in the South West were to be encouraged to establish similar structure in their respective states.
The other incident; sometime in 2011, I had a one-on-one discussion with a Southwest governor in his private study which, again, drew far into the night during which the Governor lamented with regret: “ Papa Awo (Chief Obafemi Awolowo) had no business trying to rule at the centre.”
According to him, he had it very well made and the old West was notches ahead of the pack at a pace which, if sustained, would have engendered unprecedented growth and development. The forays into national politics, in his view, truncated the rapid economic growth of our people. I couldn’t agree with him more. Six years on, current trends in the polity has reinforced my conviction that this error has now become a conundrum which the Southwest must quickly disembark from.
Although the “error” seemed an unending dialogue, akin only to the conversations on Nigeria’s proverbial “potentials” , yet some people were not going to just sit down and moan.
Not surprisingly, a community of interests and tendencies had arisen, working tenaciously parallel to the self-determination, restructuring and diverse agendas, to ensure that the economic emancipation and therefore the developmental growth agenda of the South-west was to be rigorously pursued. And how better to do this than to create a United common platform for the actualization of the noble task of reversing the diminished opportunities of the South-west for advancement and developmental growth.

It soon began to dawn (pun intended) on Yoruba thinkers that the future portends grave danger for any component of our federation tying its economic fortunes to handouts from the centre which, itself depends on a failing international commodity.
It was time to be creative and innovative. And those elements eventually found a round peg for this round hole, in the person of Oladipo Famakinwa. A new platform was formally launched and called Development Agenda for Western Nigeria.( DAWN) with this dynamic young man as the first Director General. This is not an attempt to rewrite the DAWN story. Indeed it has been, and continues to be written by the appropriate authority through the plethora of initiatives and activities it has undertaken so far in pursuance of its mandate either suo motu, or in collaboration with other agencies.
Perhaps, one Governor who personified innovation in governance is Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. He hit the ground running in 2010 and in a matter of days he embarked on the rebranding project which saw Osun having an Armorial bearing (a replica of the Old Western Nigeria coat of Arms), a state anthem, flag, the components of which, when interpreted, speak to the struggle, rich historical, socio-economic and cultural heritage of Yorubaland. Then of course was the flagship Osun Youth Employment Scheme (OYES), through which the governor had promised 20,000 jobs in the first 100 days – a promise that was actually delivered in 97 days!
What followed was a comprehensive package of radical reforms in the Education sector; notably, the introduction of the Educational Learning Aid (Opon Imo), an unprecedented schools infrastructure project, and, perhaps, the largest volume of road construction projects ever embarked upon by any government in Nigeria. But he didn’t stop there. He wanted an OMBUDSMAN and due process office that would put all policy implementers on their toes, in order to achieve maximum delivery.
And this brings to mind the remarks of Ban Ki- Moon, the then UN Secretary General in his remarks to the Council on Timor- Leste on December 19 2009:
“…as we all know, infrastructure is not just a matter of roads, schools and power grids. It is equally a question of strengthening democratic governance and the rule of law. Without accountability, not only of the government to its people but of the people to each other, there is no hope for a viable democratic state. .”

This statement aptly describes the mission of the Bureau of Social Services (BOSS). Having been involved in the design, incubation and execution of this pioneering initiative, I am moved to congratulate Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola for the success stories that Osun has brought to the table during the just concluded Southwest Governance Innovation Summit 2017.
Ogbeni’s reforms in good governance through radical interventions are too numerous to be mentioned here, but permit me to single out three particular polices reforms which have been selected by DAWN and deemed worthy of replication by other states. The first is the Agricultural Land Holding and Development Authority Bill, which, though yet to be passed by the State of Osun House of Assembly, however,the Executive Order has has been signed by the Governor in order to meet current exigencies. This Law is designed to mitigate hardships occasioned by the Land Use Act militating against agricultural land ownership by small holder farmers and cooperatives.
The second is (O-Meal) the elementary School Lunch programme which received high acclaim and concerning which the governor had course to address a session before a committee of the British House of Commons.
The third one is the establishment of the Bureau of Social Services (BOSS), an OMBUDSMAN agency with overarching powers to ensure accountability and public value delivery across the parameters of Programs, Policies, and Projects.
Innovation has thousands of differently documented definitions. There are diverse interdisciplinary perspectives to defining this word the simplest of which is to be found in WIKKIPEDIA: ”innovation is a new idea, device, or method”. In the domain of practical economic analysis, and I daresay, governance, innovation can generally be considered to be the result of a process that brings together novel ideals in a way that they affect society. (Still quoting Wikkipedia), innovation drives idea to value. Creativity is the capacity to generate novel and pragmatic ideas, but unless applied, it remains just an idea.
Innovation therefore can safely, in my view, be described as Applied Creativity.
What Ogbeni has done in Osun is not only to bring creativity to designing his ‘government unusual’, but also to apply that creativity in the delivery of public value. It certainly gives one a sense of pride to be part of that effort.
Ifaturoti is the Director General, Bureau of Social Services, Osun State.