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It is unfortunate that every narrative on Nigeria begins and ends in the negative. It is not anybody’s fault. It is evident that it could not have been different. Patriotism is not about being hypocritical with our national incontinence but about putting things in perspectives for the political leadership to stop indulging in lyrical pontifications and seasonal homilies and do what is right for the citizens. Our nation is a metaphor of the prodigality. Its contradictions and ironies are literally captured in the feat of achieving deficit even in what is surplus. It is a nation where corruption is idolised and the corrupt is pacified by the same law that is supposed to flagellate him to sanity. A nation where health itself is sick; where there is rot in wealth; where moulds grow on gold; where there is decay in glamour. Nigeria is the magic state, the abracadabra nation. The “Ha” and the “Hun” state. The “Ha” expressing our collective shock at the rot that is routing the entire nation and the “Hun” symbolising our hopelessness and helplessness about the communion of ills in this temple of filth called Nigeria. Here is a nation that is surrounded by oil but still lacks the little drops to power itself into motion. A nation of all motion no movement. A nation of forward never backward ever . A nation where even the gnomes marvel at the citizens’ stealing dexterity. The complex state. The mystery state. The strange state.

Leaders and citizens seem covenanted to national profligacy. Leaders are getting it wrong and citizens are acquiescing. The vast land inherited from nature grows weeds and tonnes of thorns instead of crops in tonnes. The oil given by GOD spills endlessly into the canal of waste. Our nation is inching towards the precipice because of our leaders’ lack of vision. Men in power are legion but men of power are scarce. Men in power are not leaders but vampires on the throne who have no vision on how to lead but are enamoured with the wealth around them than the wealth ahead of them. But men of power are those who understand the fact that power is the flashlight of a leader. He uses it to guide his people to greatness. He uses it to crystallize the way for his people to have a picture of his vision for their future. But the mismanagement of our abundance by our leaders has fixated us to an enduring national tragedy.

When the Jackboot occupied the power space, nothing worked, nothing moved and nothing gelled. Their mission in power was unclear but their reason for power was too clear: to loot the vault to the tilt. With their barrels of gun, they stole numerous barrels of oil. We saw their khaki but did not see their idea for progress. They probably had starched their idea with their khaki just as they stashed millions of dollars in their overseas accounts. The Jackboot tenure was a testament to our leadership bankruptcy and deficit. It was a universal embarrassment. Both the nation and its resources were under siege. They excavated virtually every resource that was of value and left the people bereft of any value. Indeed, the Jackboot ruled with intellectual pretension but the empty treasury and plenty sorrows signposting their exit testified to their institutional vacuity.

With the return of democracy in 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo, a man with military orientation and pixilated leadership style, became the nation’s President once again and wanted to continue with his legacy of Olugbon and Aresa but the man called Bola Tinubu punctured his magisterial arrogance and halted his penchant for autocracy. Obasanjo was forced to embrace a new leadership culture, an element of democratic governance, which comes with its attendant accommodationist tendencies. Thus, the ‘Gongoshu’ leadership that had laid siege on the throne of power since independence was tickled from its stupor by Tinubu’s many face-offs with Obasanjo

The Tinubu leadership inspired a renaissance of sort in the nation’s polity with vibrant and visionary leaders like Babatunde Fashola, Rauf Aregbesola, Kayode Fayemi, Ibikunle Amosun , Adams Oshiomole, Abiola Ajimobi scaffolding their way to power. Two members of this team, Fashola and Rauf were strong members of the Tinubu Think-Tank. It is therefore safe to say that Fashola and Rauf served their leadership apprenticeship under Tinubu.

I have had cause in the past to write on BRF AS AN EMERGING PHENOMENON. In this piece, I want to discuss the “Raufist Revolution” going on in the State of Osun that is being spear-headed by Ogbeni Rauf. I say with all boldness that what is happening in Osun is not about the radicalization of governance but about creating a new leadership concept for a nation that had lacked leadership direction for a very long time. Rauf, like a Trojan, galloped his way to power with a legal declaration that was full of the wits and wisdom of Solomon. The celebration that marked the victory also had a tinge of political sensationalism and dramatic triumphalism that astounded his crooked opponents. The only sad commentary to Rauf’s emergence was the fact that the power- that- be decided to make the Tribunal Chairman, Justice Ayo Salami, a sacrificial goat for the expediency of politics.

The narrative on Rauf’s revolutionary background and zeal is located in an incident that happened way back in his primary school days at St. Gregory Primary School, Ikare-Akoko, between 1964 and 1969. He led a popular protest against the administration of one Mr Okitika, the headmaster whose administration was adjudged biased and consequently unacceptable because of his double standards in dealing with the pupils of the school. His favour were pampered and protected while non-favour were exposed and dealt with severely. Rauf, along with other impatient but daring brats, launched his own local protest which naturally failed. He was subsequently punished at home and in school. All through his school days till he became the Governor of the State of Osun, Rauf was an unrepentant and focused revolutionary. However, this incident has made him to appreciate the convenience of using power to redress injustice and fight poverty. Rauf’s zero-tolerance for systemic decay and neglect influenced the critical elements of his Action- Plan for the recovery and transformation of all decaying institutions and values in Osun that were remnants and vestiges of a failed state.

The mess that was Osun prior to Rauf’s emergence required a more potent implement for cleaning than the symbolic broom of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). After about one year of strategic reflection, Rauf constituted his Cabinet. The Cabinet was a consortium of radicals, human rights activists, labour veterans, social crusaders, enterprising business managers and creative political practitioners. Few names will suffice: Gboyega Oyetola, Gbenga Adebusuyi, Gbenga Akano, Laoye-Tomori (Mrs), Omotunde Young, Wale Adedoyin, Wale Bolorunduro,Sunday Akere, Muyiwa Ige, Bola Ilori, Semiu Okanlawon, Sola Fasure, Sola Ayebola and a host of others. It did not take much time for these people to key into the vision of the Osun avatar.

Before the Raufist revolution, the entire State of Osun was in paralytic condition. Most of the roads had become crater-friendly because of lack of maintenance, the Osun youths were peregrinating in the wilderness of indolence, farmers were more engaged in weed-management than crop-planting, hospitals were mortuaries for the living as people now took refuge in “paraga” centres and “Ijaw-model” therapy. Service delivery by all government agencies felt more comfortable sitting on the wheel chair than moving on roller-skates, the drainage system was a disgrace to modern engineering, the whole environment stank to high heavens with pyramids of refuse competing with the hills of Erin-Ijesa, the beautification of the streets of Osun was considered a luxury, workers salaries were paid on the 50th day of the ‘month’ , schools were cracking and falling while education was in a head-shaking state. The rural areas were reclining into their ancient beginning and there was nothing urban in the urban centres. In fact, the pressure of lack was visible in the tension in the land. There was government but there was no governance. The people of Osun were wondering if the government that was in existence was a government of the people by the people and for the people.

When Rauf began his carthatic mission, within a short period, things got jazzed up in Osun. The treasury was reloaded, loans were renegotiated, debts were repaid, salaries were and are still being paid 25 days into the month, workers were jubilating, service delivery abandoned its wheel-chair, people began to smile. “Agba Osun” whose scanty teeth were never seen before were grinning with the grit of the past because the government now remembers them with the “Agba Osun” monthly allowance of ten thousand naira. The “Omode Osun”,that is, the youths, were not left behind. They became jubilant with the “O Yes” programme which guarantees them twenty thousand naira monthly for services rendered in any sphere of the state. With these two programmes, the Raufist revolution has been spread to every home in Osun because it is difficult not to find a single beneficiary in any home in Osun. The heaps of rubbish had disappeared from the streets, the drainages had been reconstructed and engineering has been rediscovered. The roads have been resurfaced, some expanded and many have been rehabilitated. From Ita Sapon to Temidire in Ila Orangun, from Lagere to Ita-Merin Iraye-Toro in Ife, from Osogbo to Ibokun to Imesi Ile, and from Gbodofan to Jolayemi and Gbemu junction in Osogbo, the road network and rehabilitation are being fast-tracked and re-engineered. Young and old farmers are assisted with loans and given free fertilizers to boost agriculture, primary health care is given a boost. The schools are being rebuilt into acceptable world-class standard. Here is what the iconoclastic Comrade Uche Chukwumerije, a powerful member of the Senate, said about Rauf’s revolution in Osun: “The states and the country owe Governor Rauf Aregbesola a lot of gratitude for promptly laying a formidable foundation in the state. I will like to use this opportunity to advise other states irrespective of your political affiliation to learn from Osun State. You must drop your ego and learn from the people-oriented projects and programmes of Governor Aregbesola.”(THE NATION, Wednesday, October 10, 2012, page 9)

Rauf once told this writer in an interview that the force behind the revolution is not about making history but simply to continue the tradition and culture of development that is embodied as a critical component of Awolowo’s political ideology and legacy. As a student of history, I have not seen or read in history where men who begin a revolution, men who sustain a revolution and men who complete a revolution are denied the annotation of history. Rauf will discover to his chagrin, just like Awo his idol, that long after he has gone, he is still being re-created and reprocessed by history because of his revolution. Men who never bother about making history end up being made by history. Man being an integral part of the process of history is automatically a man of history. If therefore, an ordinary man on the street is captured by history, surely, a man like Rauf will not escape the positive content and judgement of history.

Absentee teachers, unscrupulous education officials fingered for stemming the tide of development in public schools in Edo State, are getting the edge of the tongue from Governor Adams Oshiomhole, writes 

There was no inkling where the fast moving convoy was headed early that morning. None of the aides was cock sure about the mission either. This was not out of place for an administration dogged by surprises.

In what seems to have underscored the style of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as Edo State helmsman, his hectic site inspection schedules will catch even his sentry panting. It could either be late into the night or span into the small hours of the morning, depending on his fancy.

Suddenly his convoy screeched to a stop at the expansive New Era Girls’ School along Mission Road in the heart of Benin City. Alighting from his car, Baba Oshio, as the governor is fondly called, was stern and brisk, some signal that something was amiss.

He barely had time to acknowledge cheers and pleasantries from the principal and other senior teachers before hopping into one of the classes. Like a school master, he was soon immersed in the task of engaging the pupils.

His hunch paid off as one of the female students tinged his ears: “Our teachers are usually not around to teach us.” A bemused Oshiomhole had gotten the lead into what he smelt was a rot that had taken over public schools in the state despite the huge intervention by his administration to rehabilitate them. His inquiry into the staff attendance notebook further stirred the hornet’s nest. Many teachers are just being paid without offering any service.

Not given to hearsay, the comrade governor paid more impromptu fact finding visits to some other public schools within the state capital. What he found was most disturbing. He decided to wield the big stick by sacking 20 teachers with immediate effect. The affected teachers, he found out, no longer performed their legitimate responsibilities to the state government that pays their monthly salaries or the children they are paid to mentor.

Barely a week later, the governor continued with his unscheduled visits to some more public schools, including others he visited earlier. The result was a can of worms. Apart from discovering that a vice principal was a perpetual truant, he found that the Zonal Chief Inspectors of Education, ZCIE, and Chief Inspectors of Education, CIE, whose responsibility it was to monitor and ensure that head teachers and teachers live up to their responsibilities, were simply non-challant. They were equally relieved of their jobs to send a clear message that this matter would no longer be treated with kid gloves.

As the comrade governor puts it: “If I find the courage to collect taxes, I have to find the courage to ensure that those who are beneficiaries of the tax payer’s money also render corresponding services. I have a duty to remind you that when you abandon your job, you also lose it.”

Upon his re-election recently, Oshiomhole made it clear that as part of his promise to the people to rebuild the state, his major policy thrust this time around would centre on the need to pay more attention to human capital development. His reasoning is premised on the belief that human capital is the most important element required in the race towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs.

The comrade governor was emphatic that his administration would insist on removing any obstacle on its way to rejuvenating the education sector such that his administration would wield the big stick if it realises, for instance, that teachers and all those given the responsibility of ensuring that the investment in the sector are not living up to their assigned duties.

“My promise to Edo people is that we are rebuilding the state. And human capital development is the most important element. But our investment in schools would be useless if our teachers are not doing their jobs properly. It is worse if those that should help to ensure that people are teaching are not doing their jobs.”

Equally startling was the antics of the absentee teachers. Oshiomhole found that teachers did not only absent themselves from their duty posts but connived with some of their colleagues to mark their names as regularly present on the attendance register.

Beyond the dereliction of duty by the teachers, the comrade governor’s unscheduled visit also unearthed another issue. On assumption of office, he made it imperative that regularly, teachers must be posted to different duty posts after having spent a specified number of years in one particular school. However, the policy has been flagrantly abused over the years.

This is sometimes done with active connivance with officials of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), and State Primary Education Board (SPEB). For instance, some teachers are said to be in one location for well over 12 years while some that have been posted out of one school found their way back within three months.

Investigations also indicate that there are more reasons why the Oshiomhole administration must beam more search light on the sector. As part of efforts to recoup losses incurred from the no-fee policy of the state government, school teachers, backed by principals and other officials, have since devised other means.

One of them is to source potential students and particularly candidates for both SSCE and NECO. While regular students so sourced are meant to pay for as much as N7,500 to cover sundry requirements including school uniforms, every graduating pupil or student is made to pay between N2,500 and N5,000 to collect testimonials, certificates and other relevant documents.

Often times, most classes in the affected schools are crowded, making genuine teaching and learning processes virtually impossible. These monies are shared among those who sourced the students and other relevant school officials. The students are later enrolled for either SSCE, NECO or both and made to cough out fees ranging from N2,500 to N10,000.

Indeed, putting an end to the development is necessary if the Oshiomhole administration is determined, as it has shown, to put a new lease of life to the education sector. In other words, there is need to deal decisively with erring officials in order to ensure that state policies, including those affecting the education sector, are implemented to the letter.

In particular, it seems obvious that a number of teachers and other school officials under the employment of the state government are yet to appreciate the responsibility they owe both their employer state and children whose lives are virtually in their hands to mould.

The situation is made more pathetic as the teachers appear not to understand the need for them to show a commensurate appreciation of the better remunerations which they now enjoy over regular civil servants in the state.

If they do, they ought to appreciate such gesture by increasing their productivity in order that the state government can make real progress in its avowed determination to focus more on human capital development.

Above all, there is the need for the administration to constantly remind them that they are under oath to live by the spirit of every policy of the state government, their employer, in order to at least justify the salaries they receive at the end of every month. This will serve as a reminder to everyone that much is expected of whom much is given.

Certainly, they cannot be committed to the past where the education sector deteriorated so badly that even the poor removed their children and wards from public schools.

They are poles apart and must never mix. Therefore, those teachers and other state officials who appeared to be consigned to that past should be shown the way out of service now. The need for the state government to be very firm in this regard cannot be over-emphasised.

Over the years, observers have been unanimous on the need to urgently rejuvenate the nation’s education sector. Their position is not unconnected with the decadence the sector has suffered over the last decades which resulted in the rejection of products of the nation’s public schools on the strength that holders of their certificates and degrees cannot, practically speaking, defend the certificates and degrees in their possession.

Unarguably, the malaise has robbed off with great consequences on the sector at state levels where both primary and secondary schools are always the subject of constant ridicule. In Edo State, the situation was particularly so serious that on his assumption of office, Oshiomhole took time off to study the situation with a view to prescribing relevant solution.

At the moment, appreciable intervention has been made in infrastructure by his administration in public schools in the state, so much so that both public primary and secondary schools which used to be the last resort of the poor are now enjoying a new lease of life as more and more parents and guardians are bringing back their children and wards.

However, it is sad that while Oshiomhole is receiving accolades for a job well done, certain elements appear bent on drawing back the hands of the clock.

Becoming governor was not, for Ibrahim Damkwambo, the fulfilment of an ambition. It was, for him, the beginning of a mission: a mission to transform. As Accountant General of the Federation, Dankwambo took a cursory look at Gombe State from the outside, and realised that without security, not much would be achieved by whoever assumed office as governor after Danjuma Goje.

Prior to his assumption of office, Gombe was synonymous with a group of ill-tempered youths called Kalare Boys. This group held the state in thrall. It made life brutish and short. It scared investors and made positive development difficult.

As governor, Dankwambo brought his learning to bear on the state. He knew from the onset that his administration will remain unsung if the Kalare Boys still hold sway. But instead of merely reading the riot act and unleashing security apparati at his disposal on the boys, he embarked on positive re-engineering of their minds. He expressed his belief that rather than expand the prison population, those youthful energies wasted in brigandage and hooliganism, could become transformational energies for the good of the state. Within his short stay in office thus far, Damkwambo has been able to eliminate the Kalare Boys phenomenon and ploughed back their energies into gainful purposes.

Look at the statistics: 30,000 youths are being trained in various skills throughout the state. The pilot scheme involving the training of 300 youths in various vocational and skills acquisition trainings has been completed and those who graduated from the centres received loan grants of N200,000 each to become self-employed.

Further statistics from the state indicate that some 1,198 youths have also been trained under the Talba Youth Re-orientation and Rehabilitation scheme. Of the number, 500 received training to become environmental agents; another 500 became Ward Security Agents while another set of 198 graduated to become traffic agents. In the second phase of the training in vocational skills acquisition, another group of 500 youths are beneficiaries. They are currently undergoing training in 13 different skills which equipment alone cost Gombe State some N229 million.

To further enhance youth empowerment in the state, Dankwambo engaged 100 youths in training in renewable energy technology with another 300 in leadership and citizenship training while procuring 250 tricycles to be deployed in engaging youths and keeping them busy. Effectively, these actions put an end to the Kalare Boys phenomenon and opened the state to some level of peaceful development.

Dankwambo’s ability to turn the youth energy around made it possible for him to focus on other developmental needs like road development, education, erosion control, health, agriculture and water.

In education development, Dankwambo’s realisation that pupil/student population outnumbered teacher and class ratio was the beginning of a fresh battle. For instance, Gombe had an acute shortage of teachers such that the ratio of teacher per students in core subjects like English and Mathematics was one teacher to 727 students and one teacher to 2,590 students respectively. This was unacceptable to the governor. His response? He recreated the situation such that no classroom in the state now has more than 40 students.

Statistics obtained from the state indicate that the governor declared an emergency in education in Gombe and started a regime of infrastructure development for education. He declared that the number of students in a class must not be more than 45 and maximum of 1,500 students in any standard secondary school.  This led him to embark on the massive construction and renovation of classrooms, hostels, laboratories, staff quarters and external works throughout the state. For now, there are 582 classrooms and 51 laboratories under construction.

On teacher development, Dankwambo has ensured that 1,000 graduates are employed as teachers into the secondary school system while another 1,000 NCE holders were brought in to meet target in primary school system, just as he has awarded contract for the supply of 5,410 three-in-one school desks for secondary and primary schools in the state. This is in addition to other infrastructure and teaching aides.

Dankwambo has also put in a deep foot in the Gombe State health system. Realising that a healthy state is a wealthy state, the governor is  unrelenting in ensuring that general hospitals in the state are upgraded and equipped with necessary drugs and equipment to ensure that the health of the people are adequately attended to. Already, he has created the Gombe State Primary Health Centres Development Agencies; renovated and upgraded the Preventive Health Office in Gombe Metropolis; begun construction of 14 Model Primary Health Centres across the state; built a snake bite treatment centre at the General Hospital Kaltungo; upgraded the urban maternity Gombe into Special Hospital for women and children and also built an intensive care unit, extended the maternity ward at the State Specialist Hospital as well as built a new laundry and kitchen at the same hospital.

Not done with these, Dankwambo has also ensured provision of free drugs to children and women in all the state hospitals and also built a model School of Nursing and Midwifery for the training of nurses and midwifery personnel. These he has done in line with his vision of ensuring a healthy Gombe State.

Road construction and rehabilitation form planks of Dankwambo’s vision of integrating urban and rural areas of the state. To this end, he has opened up five urban-rural roads as a way of encouraging investments in agriculture and movement of farm produce. His road revolution has ensured massive road work on about 53 roads comprising urban-rural roads, township roads, intercity roads and inter-state roads. For this, Damkwambo is already investing about N33.73billion of Gombe’s money.

Dankwambo, though an accountant, knows that his state is agrarian. For this, he understands the demand on him to ensure the development of agriculture in Gombe. For this reason, he has not shown any signs of tiredness in ensuring that farm implements are readily available to farmers in the state. He has ensured steady flow of fertiliser and also bought new tractors as well as refurbished old ones to be deployed for farming. There is no doubt, Gombe residents will feed abundantly at the next harvest.

While stubbornly driving the development of Gombe State, Damkwambo has not lost sight of the need for him to remain accountable to the people. He knows that the lean resources of the state create no room for wastages, but for prudence and frugality. This has earned him the Mr. Due Process tag among civil servants in the state as he is seen to be a stickler for prudent management of available resources. His knack for due process is also unparalleled in the history of the state. This, many analysts say, is reason that despite receiving about N3bn monthly from the federation, Dankwambo is driving infrastructural development that challenges the ingenuity of fund managers.

As it is now, Damkwambo has given Gombe a new face and taken it a notch higher than he met it on May 29, 2011. He may be the new star from the savannah.

•Ogunsanya, an independent journalist, writes in from Abuja.