Against the backdrop of the recent significant reduction in the school fees payable by students of tertiary institutions in Ogun State, Special Assistant
on Media to Ogun State Governor, SOYOMBO OPEYEMI, fielded questions from reporters in Abeokuta.
WHAT informed the decision of the Ogun State government to reduce school fees in the stateowned tertiary institutions?
I think it is important to settle one fact in our minds. Senator Ibikunle Amosun, by nature, is a welfarist. Long before he became the governor of the state, he invested a lot of personal fortune in scholarships for children of the poor. He instituted many welfare schemes for people at the grassroots. So, it was not surprising that once he became the governor of this state, by the grace of The Almighty, he picked education from the bottom rung of the ladder of public policy that the previous government left it and placed it on the top rung. He has consistently devoted more than 20% of the annual budget to education. I’m yet to know of any government doing that in Nigeria. The last time children of the state enjoyed free education was during the era of Chief Olabisi Onabanjo in the Second Republic. Amosun re-introduced functional free education at the pre-primary, primary and secondary levels from the 2011/12 academic session. That included free writing materials and quality textbooks. He abolished all manner of fees being paid by school children under the previous government. Of course, he fulfilled his promise to review downward by 50% the tuition fees in our higher institutions of learning, which were increased by 100% by the departing government. Indeed, he achieved a 60% reduction. You’ll recall that a few months after the launch of our free education scheme, the governor promised to further reduce school fees in the stateowned higher institutions of learning once the finances of the state improved. What Senator Amosun did recently was simply to fulfill his pledge. And I think this is the hallmark of good leadership.
How will you react to the charge of the opposition that the reduction was done in order to win votes?
We often forget that this administration is not yet up to three and a half years. Yet, it has a mandate of four years. Shall we say because election is coming in 2015, the governor must not fulfill his pledge to the students? We forget often too that it is the same brothers and sisters of these tertiary students that have been enjoying free education from the nursery level to secondary school since the inauguration of the Amosun government in 2011. So, Amosun has already won the hearts of the overwhelming majority of parents and youths in Ogun State by his welfarist policies. Our people are satisfied with the continuous grassroots-oriented programmes and policies of the governor.
Will it be right to suggest that your government aims at free education at all levels?
As a matter of fact, we are only a few years away from attaining that; 60% reduction is no joke. In Naira and Kobo, it means if you were paying N100,000 before as school fees, you will now pay N40,000. If you pay N40,000 through the welfarist policy of the Amosun government and your colleague in a private institution pays as much as N500,000 or N600,000, then the relief to our parents in the grassroots is better appreciated. Of course, depending on the course, school and level of the student, the percentage reduction varies. The highest is 61%. But it will interest you to note that with this reduction, some students will pay as low as N29,700 from the 2014/15 academic session. Clearly, if the finances of the state improve, as expected, anything is possible in the next few years.
Your model school initiative has come under heavy criticisms from the former governor, Otunba Gbenga Daniel. He says it’s a waste of money.
Well, it is said in law that you cannot simultaneously approbate and reprobate. You cannot in the same breath call for more access to be provided for our children and condemn the very steps taken to achieve that just because the person doing it belongs to a rival political party. I think we should separate politics from development. We are returning mission schools to the owners, who will charge school fees, where will we put the thousands of children from poor homes if we don’t expand the current facilities in the existing schools and build new ones? And lest we forget, it was Amosun that saved about 23,000 children from roaming the streets due to the policy faux pas of the former governor. And you can’t put children in those dilapidated classrooms, which the Amosun government inherited. Indeed, many of such buildings are to be pulled down. Sometimes, the children have to make do with make-shift classrooms till new ones are built because we don’t want to endanger their lives. Besides, some of the current schools are already choked by development; they need to be relocated. Population has also increased. If you check some of our schools, you will see new buildings. And let me sound a note of caution here. When you see inscriptions such as “SUBEB 2008/2009” in these structures, it does not mean they were built under the Daniel administration. Indeed, they were built under the Amosun government because he was the one that offset the counterpart fund for 2008 and 2009, indeed up to 2011, which made the construction of such classrooms possible.
Yes, we must play politics but let’s weigh the options before we attack our political adversaries. Indeed, there’s no government anywhere in the world that will achieve 100% in all the sectors. But when you choose to attack your opponent in his or her strongest area, you end up burning your fingers. There was a government in Ogun State when the price of oil kissed the rooftops, hovering around $150 per barrel and the state literally basked in money. That government did not declare free education even at the primary school level. Today, we all know the situation in our country. Even the pittance Ogun is entitled to in the Federation Account is no longer guaranteed. Yet, Amosun’s government has not wavered or even for a second reconsidered the implementation of its free education policy from the nursery level to secondary school.
Today, through the free education policy of the Amosun government, enrolment figure at JSS level has shot up from 174,820 in 2011 to 214,837. The figure has increased from 146,737 to 162,536 at SSS level. Due to improvement in our technical education, some children now move from JSS to such schools while the majority proceed to SSS, which is a big plus for our drive in vocational/technical education. Between 2007 and 2011, for example, the Daniel government did not provide a single chair or table for pupils and teachers at the pre-primary school. But within two years of the Amosun government, our children in the nursery schools have been provided with 3,200 chairs, 800 tables, 17,043 two-seater desks and 10,900 two-seater desks with shutters; 7,148 tables and 14,296 chairs have also been provided for their teachers.
Under the Daniel administration, pupils were paying for all manner of things such as file jacket, ID card, school prospectus, students dossier, examination fee, school inter-house sports, etc., but the Amosun government abolished them. We can go on and on. I just hope the former governor was not being misquoted in the press.
Recently, some staff of the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH) went on strike. Is there industrial restiveness in your state?
We should not see a storm in a teacup here. Without sounding immodest, I think Ogun State can stand stall in the comity of states in Nigeria in terms of industrial peace. And this again has to do with the welfarist nature of the current administration. Workers in some states have been on strike for about a year now on account of non-payment of the minimum wage, yet in spite of the meagre amount we get from the Federation Account, the Amosun government has paid above the minimum wage, and implemented it across board, thus making it the only government to achieve such a milestone in Nigeria. Not only that, it offset the inherited bonuses and allowances of workers from 2008 to 2011. It paid union dues, cooperative deductions and bank loans of workers, which the previous government deducted but failed to remit. It cleared the promotion arrears of thousands of Ogun workers, including teachers due since 2008. The governor is also paying the pension and gratuity arrears of workers that had served the state meritoriously, which he inherited from the previous administration and has announced housing and car loans for workers.
The truth is that the few times workers have gone on strike in Ogun, it was always on account of the salaries and allowances owed them by the Daniel administration. I must confess that the Daniel administration created a lot of mess for the Amosun government. It owed salaries of workers up to 13 months, pension and gratuity in excess of 29 months. It owed teachers; it owed civil servants. It owed everybody. In Tai Solarin College of Education (TASCE), for instance, it owed salaries for nine months! In OOU, it owed more than N2.5 billion in salaries and allowances. The OOUTH you referred to was owed some salaries and allowances of about N300 million. Why did the former governor do this? The Bible says you should not allow the sweat of a labourer to dry before you pay him his wages. It is the same in the Koran. These workers have families; how do they feed them?
The Amosun government, as a matter of deliberate policy, does not owe these workers a dime. But because of the belief that government is a continuum, we have to clear the Augean stable; and we are doing this. The Amosun government has been clearing the backlog of pension and gratuity from 2007; yes, from 2007. Imagine if we had such billions of naira now used to offset inherited debts for development. The billions could have built up to 10 flyovers. Imagine how many school buildings we could have erected with the money; the number of additional hospitals that could have been built. How about the finances of Ogun State? The former governor also alleged a huge debt profile. To the glory of God, the Amosun administration has raised the IGR from the N730 million per month inherited from the Daniel administration to N5 billion a month. This is a milestone. But how did we achieve this? Essentially, I repeat, essentially by blocking the loopholes inherent in the old system and entrenching a culture of e-payment in the system. You’ll recall that the state lost about N30 billion in revenue in the lands department alone under the former administration.
Things have changed dramatically today. I don’t really like reacting to the disinformation about the debt profile of the state. The aim of the opposition is to deceive the public and detract the government so that rather than focus on the ground-breaking achievements of the Amosun administration, the public space will be invaded with sterile debates on imaginary debts. Are you suggesting that the former governor is unaware that no bank is permitted to lend more than N25 billion to any government or loan more than 10% of its total portfolio to the public sector? We deal, in the main, with two banks in Ogun, how then can anyone suggest bank debts to the tune of N100 billion, N200 billion, N300 billion or even N50 billion? From the IGR, the paltry amount coming from the Federation Account, the cut in the administrative cost of governance through drastic reduction in salaries of political office holders, the Amosun administration is repaying loans, including those inherited from the previous government and meeting its obligations to the contractors.
It is this rare feat that is confounding the opposition, and rather than seek counsel from the Amosun School of Financial Management – free of charge – they recourse to mendacity. And let me place this on record, there is no government that pays as low an interest rate on bank loan as the Amosun government. I stand to be corrected on this; none in Nigeria! You may say that’s not surprising because he’s a top-notch accountant, an FCA but when you compare what interest rates of 12% or 13% and 18 or 20% amount to, then you know what humongous amount Amosun is saving for the good people of Ogun State.
There is no “bond of bondage” under the watch of Amosun. If the former government that had less than seven months to complete its maximum of eight years in office suddenly requested for a bond of N100 billion to build God-knows-what, if that is not a “bond of bondage”, what then is it? If you had such a gargantuan dream, why did you not start from your first term or even the beginning of your second term so that people could see how you would spend the bond and how much you would have paid back? Imagine what Amosun has accomplished in just three years with the finances of the people of Ogun State. It is more than what Daniel accomplished in eight years, yet there is no N100 billion “bond of bondage” anywhere in this government.
Not even N1 billion “bond of bondage” because Amosun is paying back every dime it collected from banks, and all eyes can see what he has done with the funds. It is Amosun’s prudent financial husbandry and exceptional expertise in financial matters that have made it possible for us to declare free education up to the secondary school level. Now, we are inching towards free education at all levels, fulfilling the dreams of our founding fathers like Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Olabisi Onabanjo. We are indeed very much touched by the overwhelming support that the Amosun government is getting from our people in towns and cities, villages and hamlets.
