As President Buhari visits Osun State

As President Buhari visits Osun State

Osun State is currently awash with the news of the Presidential Visit to the state on September 1, 2016. According to the Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola-led Osun State government, the visit of President Muhammadu Buhari will be used to show the government’s achievements, some of which will be commissioned by the President. With this visit, Osun State government wants to rubber stamp its policies and actions. We expect that the federal government and the presidency would have done its research and investigation about the activities of the Aregbesola government; and this must have informed the President’s accession to visit the state. Thus, the federal government seems satisfied with the activities, including financial, of the Aregbesola government.
However, there is the need to state the facts of the state of Osun State in terms of her finances and welfare of the people under the current government:

1.  Osun Finances and Infrastructures

a.   On Osun State finances, the state earned over N300 billion since 2010 when Ogbeni Aregbesola came into power. However, the state indebtedness has grown from about N20 billion to N147 billion. N88.6 billion out of this debt has been restructured by the federal government on a 20-year tenor and 15% interests. This means that every 7 years, the state would be paying another N88.6 billion as interests alone (aside the principal). This is aside the bailout fund of N34.9 billion gotten by the state from federal government. This is a ‘soft’ loan with interest of 9 percent, implying that the state would be paying, in the next11 years, another N34.9 billion to service the original loan. Clearly, the future of Osun State has been mortgaged. This means that unless the debts are canceled, generations will be bogged down by debts and debt servicing.
b.  The government of Ogbeni Aregbesola claimed to have committed most of the funds to ‘massive’ improvement in infrastructures. Such projects include the 18-km East- Osogbo West Bye-Pass (N14.5 billion), 36.85-km Osogbo-Ilaodo road (N17.8 billion), 30-km Osogbo-Gbongan dualization (N29.2 billion) and Gbongan-Orileowu-Ijebu-Igbo road. Also, the government claimed to have spent over N10 billion on rehabilitation of 292-km intra-township road.
c.   The central denominators in these projects are the cost inflation, and unfinished state of these projects. A cursory look at these projects will show that the inter-city roads averagely cost between N500 million and N1 billion per kilometer. Do we need anyone to tell us that these contracts are political contracts to enrich the few? Even, the intra-township road rehabilitation that should be cheaper cost more than N34 million per kilometer. Also, aside the intra-city rehabilitated roads, the long-stretch inter-city roads listed above have not been completed. All of these projects should have been completed at least a year ago but are still under construction, despite several billions of naira purportedly incurred as debts by the government on them. This, aside posing inconveniency to the people of the state, also leads to rise in costs of these projects.
d.  Furthermore, local government funds were used to undertake the 292-km intra-township roads, which purportedly cost over N10 billion. With absence of democratically elected local governments since Ogbeni Aregbesola assumed power about six years ago, there is very little transparency in the use and disbursement of this N10 billion. It is thus not accidental that the roads rehabilitated with this fund cost a whooping N34 million per kilometer.
e.  Aside this is the issue of lack of priority in project undertaking. While all roads connecting Osogbo, the state capital with major towns in the state, such as Osogbo-Gbongan road, Osogbo-Ilesa road, Sekona-Ife road, Osogbo-Ilobu road, Osogbo-Iwo road, and Osogbo-Ikirun road, are in terrible, in many cases impassable, conditions, the same government awarded a contract of over N11 billion for the construction of an airport. These roads are aside several others connecting one town or city to another, but are in terrible conditions. Despite spending over N3 billions of naira on the airport project, there is very little to show for it.
f.  Similar stories lie behind the so-called school infrastructural projects of the government. Osun State government claimed to have committed over N14 billion on constructions of 30 new schools. This is an average of about N500 million. But there are over two thousands public primary and secondary schools in the state, which the government has purportedly merged into 900. Which government spends N500 million on 30 schools, while over 850 merged but overcrowded schools are left behind? 
g.  The government budgeted over N15 billion to procure computer tablets for secondary school students. Out of this amount the government has spent an estimated N4 billion to procure computer tablets for final year students of senior secondary, meanwhile the basic facilities in schools are in terrible conditions. Worse still, teachers are disconnected from the use of these tablets, as they were not provided any, neither were they trained on how to use the tablets to teach students. The government claimed it wanted to reduced cost of procuring textbooks for students, hence the introduction of computer tablets. But the N4 billion-worth tablets were only given to final year students few months before their external examinations WASSCE and UTME, while majority of the students had no access to either computer tablets or functional libraries and computer laboratories. In fact, the billions spent by government on the computer tablets can build functional libraries or computer/ICT centres in majority schools in the state.
h.  Worse still, the conditions of teachers were not improved. For instance, for the first 7 months of 2015, teachers in the state did not receive a kobo as salaries, while the government has been paying half salaries for up to a year now. Furthermore, no new teachers have been employed to meet the size of the new 30 schools. It is therefore no surprise that in spite of the billions purportedly spent on computer tablets and school infrastructures, Osun State, for two consecutive years ranked distant 29th in West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) ranking. Only 8, 000 students out of 48, 000 who sat for the last WASSCE actually passed.

2. Workers’ Welfare

a.  Resident doctors in the state are owed salaries of more than 7 months. Hospitals were shut down for months as a result of the non-payment of salaries of medical personnel. The impact of the shutdown and low morale of medical workers, resulting from non-payment of salaries is better imagined. The doctors, disturbed by the worsening health situation in the state called off their strike, yet the government refused to pay their outstanding salaries.
b.  Retirees on state's payroll have not been paid their 'half-pensions' (half of a monthly pension) since April, 2016, while government still owes arrears of half payment of seven months. Thus, effectively, government owes them pension arrears of nine months.
c.  Those retirees on contributory pension scheme fare worse. The government has failed to make its contributions to the scheme. As a result, many retirees on this scheme have not been paid their entitlements, several months after retirement. Many cannot pay their bills including children’s school fees, rents, etc., while many others have died as a result of inability to pay medical bills or feed properly.
d.  Public sector workers have not been paid half-salary since May, 2016. If this is added to the half payment arrears of ten months, it means the government effectively owes workers full salary arrears of eight months.
e.  Many workers have been put into financial woes with the illegal half salaries being paid. Many workers, when salaries were fully paid up till 2014, have had to resort to loans from banks and cooperatives for major expenses such as payment of children's school fees, attempt at building a house, etc. If salaries were regularly paid, many of these loans would have been repaid. Now, interests and loan repayment have made nonsense of the half-salary the government claims to be paying. Now, many workers are collecting little or nothing from the half-salary paid to them. Many workers and pensioners also owe local creditors from whom they resolved their daily survival.
f.   Also, scores of teaching staffs in the state-owned polytechnics and colleges of education have been illegally demoted. The tactics is to remove their names from the payroll and wait for them to complain endlessly in order to wear them out. The government, through the various institutions’ managements, will then re-enroll them into the payroll but demote them to lower grade levels. This has meant loss of over a quarter of the half-salary the staffs are being paid.
g.  The same government that has no money to pay its impoverished workers and pensioners ensured that fat-cat contractors and financial institutions, that were used to enrich few politicians and big business people, directly deduct billions from state's federal allocations even before such allocations get to the state. Meanwhile, salaries and pensions that are statutory are left unpaid, thus impoverishing several thousands of workers, pensioners, their dependents, and by extension, other strata of the working class who depend directly or indirectly on the working class.

Therefore as President Buhari visits Osun State, the good people of Osun State, nay Nigeria should not be hoodwinked by the high-sounding propaganda of Osun State government under Ogbeni Aregbesola. As much as we will welcome any little effort in infrastructures, we make bold to state that the projects and contracts were organized as to bleed the state dry and enrich a tiny clique of rich people in politics, financial sector and contracting business. This has led to huge financial and debt crises for the state as depicted in the fact that the same state that earned over N300 billion from federal revenue and borrowed N147 billion in five years cannot pay salaries. Moreover, in spite of the so-called multi-billion naira infrastructural projects, most parts of the state are still undeveloped while social services like education and healthcare are still in terrible conditions. All this underscores the call for a thorough probe of the finances of the state under Aregbesola government.

Kola Ibrahim
Author and Activist is the Osun State Secretary of Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN)
123 Station Road, Osogbo, Osun State
08059399178