The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Looking back

  • Re: Osun: Looking back, looking forward

    I read your piece of the above title with interest – and concern.  I feel I owe not just myself but also you and historians and generations unborn the duty of reacting to your attempts at reconstructing the truth on our state, especially the bit about my years in power there. Public commentary with its biases should never be served readers as history. I ordinarily would not have felt concerned if you had declared your status and interest at the onset. I know politicians play politics with history (and facts) – and that precisely was what I saw in that your piece on Osun State. But, my brother, you have not told your readers that you are in politics or that you work for persons in politics.

    You started by condemning what you called “the old Osun bile-driven electioneering” the goal of which you said was “to whip up base instincts.” You also wrote about my predecessor being “heckled out of office” in 2003. Then you wrote about me “his replacement.” You wrote about my years as governor of Osun State as the “almost eight years of near-total paralysis under Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola.” You then, exposed what I see as your partisan disposition with a pretense at condemning “excitable partisans” who “claim Oyinlola did nothing.” Then you joined the “excitable partisans” in the following two paragraphs. You spewed partisan bile in what you described as “the Oyinlola-era ruins.”

    A journalist is supposed to be a personification of fairness. His trade is glorious when it functions as “the sun beam of truth.” My brother, you were neither truthful nor fair to me in that your piece of Tuesday August 7. Not at all. And I hope you will allow me to tell your readers, through you, that I did not leave Osun State in ruins. Rather, I met a comatose Osun State, wracked by months of strike, of unpaid salaries and pensions, of hopelessness; of communal wars; a state of anomie. But in less than eight years, I not only stabilized the state but I also placed it on the sure road of sustainable, peaceful growth.

    More importantly, I hope you agree that security and welfare of the citizenry are the primary essence and duty of every government. That understanding framed every policy and programme of our government. You remember the century old Ife-Modakeke war? My government settled the deadly rift forever. We built roads; we built schools; we equipped hospitals- and while doing these, we did not forget to build human beings. We created opportunities for thousands of our youths to be gainfully employed. We did not sack anyone in our almost eight years in charge of Osun State. We enhanced the self-worth of every Osun State person whatever his/ her status.

    Abimbola, I said you were not fair to me. You wrote about my predecessor building the Osun State Government Secretariat and Governor’s Office but you refused to write that I built the Osun State Government House with a presidential lodge and five guest chalets. You have probably slept in one or more of the chalets after my exit from government. If you have, you should have sought knowledge on how those structures got there. At least you know that in 2003 when my predecessor left office, those structures were not there and my successor did not build them.  I also built the Osun House in Abuja and a seven-storey Osun State Liaison building, Abuja, initiated by my government, was at the roofing stage when I left office in November, 2010.

    I maintain that I left Osun State better than I met it. He who feels it knows it. I never allowed the sweat of our workers to dry before paying them their wages. I assisted traders and artisans to grow their trades and businesses with soft loans. The workers dismissed by my predecessor were recalled by me. These ones are my witnesses. One of them is the current Head of Service, Dr Olowogboyega Oyebade. Another is his immediate predecessor. I met them dismissed but I recalled them with thousands others similarly unfairly treated, and I gave them the opportunity to rise to the top of their careers. You can call them for confirmation- you should have their numbers. They will tell you their stories of restoration by God, through me, after the years of the locusts.

    The Osun State University has six campuses equitably sited across the state’s six zones. I hope you know that I established the school. The structures you see today in the six campuses were built by my government on virgin lands. All of them. And my government fully paid the contractors – to the glory of God. I also hope you know that working in that institution today are no fewer than 825 academic and non-academic staff. They earn their living and grow their career there and I know that they pray for me every day. They must have laughed at you if they read your ruinous assessment of me and my government. It is also my joy every time I see the university admitting and graduating thousands of students. These products of the school, their parents and relations are my joy. Their success and progress in life tell me that through our efforts, lives are being continuously developed and potentials realized on yearly basis.

    Go round the state, Abimbola. Ask pensioners, ask market men and women, ask farmers, ask traditional rulers, ask any sane person you see anywhere in Osun State. They will tell you that the Oyinlola years remain the benchmark on how to govern well with human face. It is Osun State’s golden era.

    So, my brother, I hope you could see that you were not truthful in your judgement on how I met and how I left Osun State. I pray that God Almighty will help you grow your career and make you see that truth has no colour and should be no captive of partisanship.

     

    • Oyinlola was governor of Osun State from May 29, 2003 to November 26, 2010.

  • Osun: Looking back, looking forward

    Guess how the Osun governorship electioneering would go?

    Davido belts out sexy and seductive music.  Uncle, and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Ademola Nurudeen Adeleke aka Jackson (though, no Michael) turns instant amoeba, with neither shape nor form, in a fit of free-wheeling caper.

    The dancing senator, in his true elements, earns boisterous and thunderous roar, as the merry campaign partisans catch the fire!

    Reminds you — doesn’t it? — of the Biblical King David, doing his vigorous twist-and-turn, before the Ark of Covenant; a wild gyration that drew an instant rebuke from Queen Michal, Saul’s daughter, who felt it was scandalously un-kingly?

    But that itself drew David’s counter-rebuke: Michal’s womb would never bulge with babies; or her legs ever leap with joy, while cuddling infants — a dire decree with Jehovah’s final seal!

    Still, this Jackson caper can’t be to high Jehovah?  No.  But to the low voter, baited to use his heart, not his head.

    From the Iyiola Omisore end, if the impasse over the Social Democratic Party (SDP) ticket gets resolved in his favour?  Perhaps bewitching claims bordering on flagrant untruths; and threats, rude and crude, bordering on the sinister.

    And from the Osun traditional politicians, progressive, conservative or reactionary?  Hot bile over “Tekobo” (returned Lagos emigre) versus the home-bred — sterile controversies that add nothing to wise voting.

    Then, blatant lies; vicious and virulent personality attacks, laced with wicked rumours, that turn the voter into an unthinking, self-destruct mob.

    It’s the old Osun bile-driven electioneering, to whip up base instincts.

    But it has always proved the Biblical wide and merry way, that leads nowhere but perdition and eventual gnashing of teeth, by that same mob, when the emotions ebb.

    Flashback 2003.  Governor Bisi Akande — not the best of glib politicians, being blunt to a fault — was heckled out of office.

    Baba Akande got pummelled, as the hated apostle of enduring present pains for future comfort.  It was a classic mob verdict, all passion, no reason.

    But his replacement?  Almost eight years of near-total paralysis, under Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola.  Of course, you can’t claim Oyinlola did “nothing”, as excitable partisans are wont to argue and ripple.

    But whatever he did, almost everything about Osun headed south, until the Rauf Aregbesola restoration years, starting 2010, after a three-year judicial battle to reclaim the stolen mandate of 2007.

    Even then, the Osun Government Secretariat at Abere, complete with the Bola Ige House, the Governor’s Office Complex, was the grand vision Akande left behind to mock the Oyinlola-era ruins — and the voters’ grand folly.

    So, what should the Osun voter do, in the midst of the unimaginable din of electioneering?  Look back, before looking forward.

    That way, (s)he can make an informed decision on the ballot.  How was Osun seven years ago?  How would (s)he want it to be four years from now?

    Security?  Kwara was created, first as West-Central State; shortly later, Kwara State, in 1967.  It was one of the original 12 states, created from the four 1st Republic regions, of North, East, West and Midwest, by Gen. Yakubu Gowon.  Osun was created in 1991.

    Yet, the Offa robbery of 2018, probably the worst in that state’s history, caught Kwara napping.  For Osun, however, it was a glorious “so near, yet so far away”, for Offa is virtually Osun’s next door.

    Crime could happen anywhere.  But it was no accident such a hideous robbery didn’t take place in neighbouring Okuku (in Osun) or even relatively far-away Lagos.

    The difference is clearly the rigour Osun put into its security architecture, these past eight years, contrasted to the relatively sloppy thinking across the border.  Yet, Osun is 26; Kwara, 50.

    Yeah, at a time, such robberies were common place in Lagos, Kwara’s 1967 contemporary.  But again, by sheer superior thinking, such became history in Lagos.

    Education.  Eight years ago, how many of those futuristic schools dotted the Osun skyline?  How many kids were being daily fed, at the lowest rung of the Osun school system?  Indeed, how many of these kids, from the poorest of the poor, were even in school?

    Yet, barely two years into the period of reference, the Nigerian economy collapsed, no thanks to the cumulative rot in the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, precipitating the nationwide salary crisis.

    But pray, how many states lugged that burden, yet didn’t allow its education and youth empowerment vision to be impaired?  Again, ode to superior, if punishing, thinking!

    Infrastructure.  For eons, the Gbongon junction, on the Ibadan-Ife Expressway, like the Mobalufon junction, Ijebu Ode, on the Sagamu-Benin Expressway, was the grave of many travellers, victims of avoidable road crashes.

    Now, that junction boasts the Bisi Akande trumpet bridge.  Sure, many may crow about its beauty, as a novel landscape.  But its most vital intervention, again thanks to smart thinking, is saving life.  Travellers, that Gbongan grave is sealed, forever!

    Still, that trumpet blares Osun’s great infrastructural strides, these past eight years.  Yet, it was a period of high adversity!  With high prosperity, what might it have been?

    The Oba Adesoji Aderemi ring road, Osogbo, serves as the bewitching beauty of that new thinking, which manifests, like dazzling pearls, in the Osogbo city centre!

    Yet, there is nothing like infrastructure for infrastructure’s sake.  Though still work-in-progress, history would laud these efforts as critical drivers to prise Osun off its economic puddle, as “civil service state”.

    A civil service state is a euphemism for economic stagnancy.  That had been the fate of Osun, since creation in 1991, till these past eight years.

    Despite this delicate upswing, if you peruse the Osun Media & Allies Forum, a WhatsApp Osun community news forum, you could sense some renaissance flaring, on the Osun plain of sports.

    Sundry posts, on that forum, include a community cricket test at Ilesa, the Ogunjobi Gold Cup, a yearly youth football championship for U-20 and below, some Osun youths winning continental titles in weightlifting and canoeing, and some inter-collegiate basketball championships, using as hubs, the courts in the new government high schools.

    Again, these are just no accidents.  They are natural responses to certain policy stimuli, which is the way to go — just as the raft of hotels and event centres, that now dot the Osogbo city centre and other Osun major towns, are the logic of business following better infrastructure.

    As electioneering hots up, a lot of passion would burn around “afsa” (the Osun cynical street lingo for “half salary”).

    The “debt burden” would be amplified and especially vilified, with sloppy thinkers and blabby talkers waxing poetic but empty.

    Opposing partisans would howl, scream and bawl about scandals, real or imagined, in a sweeping condemnation of the present order — hardly undemocratic!

    Still, all things considered, even after addressing the valid queries, is Osun better now than it was eight years ago?

    Osun’s future is best secured by a higher notch of the current policies.  Anything less, the state risks a tragic drop into Oyinlola-era ruins.

  • Looking back, looking forward

    Looking back, looking forward

    The year 2015, which ends today, has been full of highs and lows for education.  KOFOWOROLA BELO-OSAGIE highlights the events and their implications for what may occur in 2016.

    This year is ending without a strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU), Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU) and the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT).

    But, there were crises at institutional levels.  Lagos State University (LASU), University of Jos (UNIJOS), Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Benue State University and Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, among others had some issues that resulted in strike.  Some of these institutions are still shut.

    Where there were no strikes, there were protests by the unions to agitate mostly for unpaid allowances.

    In 2016, there are likely to be agitations for the implementation of the agreements the unions signed with the Federal Government.  For instance, ASUU’s agreement with the Federal Government for N500 billion funding for universities for five years.  The implementation started in 2013.  ASUU leadership is complaining that the funds have not been released according to the time table.

    ASUP National President, Usman Dutse, says the peace enjoyed this year was not because all is well with the sector but because the union listened to the agitations of parents, students and clerics to allow for a stable academic calendar, and also to give the Buhari administration time to settle down.

    The union may not be so patient in 2016 if the government fails to address the issues that caused a 10-month strike between 2013 and 2014.

    “In the polytechnic sector, we have major issues the government needs to address.  The first is the implementation of the Needs Assessment report conducted for polytechnics in 2012.  Infrastructure of many polytechnics are bad and need to be revamped; there is also need for an urgent review of the Polytechnic Act.  The present one was done more than 20 years;  The issues of HND/BSC dichotomy is still there; while we are asking for the implementation and payment of arrears of Consolidated Tertiary Institution Salary Structure (CONTISS) 15; and the improvement of conditions of state polytechnics.  Many were established by state governments without proper funding; and conditions of service there need to be harmonised,” he said.

    CBT UTME and Re-posting of candidates by JAMB

    This year, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) made good its plans to go completely online.  The 2015 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) was taken by over one million candidates in 156 centres nationwide within a period of two weeks in March.

    Many of the Computer Based Test (CBT) centres were located in tertiary institutions or JAMB offices of various states, while others were operated by private firms.

    The examination was successfully conducted online.  However, equipment failure and inability to keep up with scheduled time for the examination were two issues that marred the exercise.

    At many centres, the examination could not start the first session, which was 6am, on time.  As a result, the second and third sessions, 10am and 1.30 pm, were delayed.

    Many candidates could not meet up with the first session and lost out on taking the examination.  Some, who braved the odds to meet up, were disappointed when they did not start on time.  Candidates were unanimous in urging the board to scrap the 6am session.

    Advising the board in this regard, Mrs. Chidinma Ndukwe, Director of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) who coordinated the Abia State Polytechnic centre said two sessions would be better.

    “The three sessions per day are very stressful. Two sessions per day is okay if we are actually to consider the stress.  Last year, we had only two sessions; we didn’t stay here beyond 6pm. We stay here up till 8pm (for three sessions),” she said.

    Equipment failure also contributed to the delays experienced and even robbed some candidates of writing their examination in many centres.  In many parts of the country, centres experienced problems of server/network failure, computer breakdown, and power failure.  Some candidates could not write their examination days after their scheduled period because of this problem.

    One of them was Sultan Mohammed, an 18-year-old, who travelled all the way from Gamboru-Ngala Local Government Area of Borno State to write the exam at the MS World Technology Limited centre in Kano.  He spent three days without writing the examination because of what he called “weak server”.

    Many stakeholders have advised JAMB to do a better scrutiny of centres before accrediting them for the examination next year.

    In July, when results of the UTME were released and institutions began processing admissions, JAMB created another controversy by re-posting candidates who chose certain institutions that were oversubscribed to others that they did not choose.

    However, candidates, their parents, and various groups rose to challenge the board’s decision and it was reversed.  If it had succeeded, many candidates would have had to travel far distances to the institutions they were assigned to.   But JAMB explained then that the policy was intended to redistribute candidates to institutions that did not get enough students and also to increase the candidates’ chances of gaining admission.

    Upgrade and Downgrade of colleges of education

    Perhaps the greatest disappointment of the year was experienced by the four colleges of education which were upgraded to universities of education at the twilight of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration in May.

    The colleges, Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo, Federal College of Education, Zaria; Federal College of Education, Kano, and Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri, were renamed Adeyemi University of Education, Ondo, Federal University of Education, Zaria, Federal University of Education, Kano, and Alvan Ikoku University of Education, Owerri.

    The institutions were upgraded because they were adjudged to have the requisite resources and manpower, and had been awarding degrees in affiliation with universities for over three decades.

    However, they lasted only three months as universities before they were downgraded to colleges by the Muhammadu Buhari administration in August – this was after the institutions had be assigned vice chancellors, who had resumed, and had embarked on the capital intensive efforts to change their names.

    This is not the first time that the institutions’ upgrade has encountered problems.  The plan has been in the pipeline for about two decades now during which the Federal Government set up various committees to look into the upgrade.  All the reports recommended that they should be converted into universities.  However, there has been a problem with implementation, which resurfaced again this year.

    Condemning the reversal, a member of staff of the Adeyemi College of Education (names withheld), told The Nation that it was a retrogressive decision.

    “The downgrade would not stand as the aspiration of workers is for the university status to remain.  We know that the government was misled.   The step is inimical to the educational development of Nigeria,” the source said.

    Budget

    The year ended on a positive note for education with President Buhari’s announcement last week that the Federal Government will spend N369.6 billion of the N1.8 trillion 2016 budget on Education.  He said part of the money would be used to recruit about 500,000 teachers for schools across the country.

    The news has excited many stakeholders, who hope that it would change the fortunes of the education sector in the New Year.

    NUT Deputy Chairman, Lagos State, Comrade Adedoyin Adesina, said it is commendable but can be better.

    “The budgetary allocation is just a mark of improvement, but they have not reached the appropriate benchmark.  If we can do this, we would have very good results. The budgetary allocation should look into training and retraining of teachers.  Implementers of education policies must be involved in its formation, rather than other people that know little about the sector, so that jointly, we can fashion a way to move education forward,” he said, while advising the Federal Government to also invest in technological advancement and skill acquisition in schools.

    On his part, Director-General, National Institute of Science Laboratory Technology (NISLT), Dr Ighodalo Ijagbone suggests that laboratory technologists should be an ample number of those to be recruited in schools in a bid to improve science and technology education at the grassroots.

    “We are looking forward to it.  We made a proposal to the National Council for Science and Technology and they agreed that every secondary school should employ at least three laboratory scientists to take care of science laboratories – physics, chemistry and biology.  We believe that if they employ them, they would take many graduates of laboratory technology off the streets.  We believe that employing them is a way for science and technology culture to take root in our secondary schools because they would take care of the laboratories and encourage students to carry out practical experiments,” he said.

    For ASUP President, the proposed budget would be well spent if there is equitable distribution of the funds across sectors.

    “We are asking for prudence and judicious utilisation of funds; and fairness and equity in the allocation of the budget.  The distribution should not be lopsided like in the past, where it favoured universities,” he said.

  • Looking back…and moving forward

    Looking back…and moving forward

    Whereas when a child stumbles he or she looks forward in the direction of his or her journey, an adult in a similar situation looks backward. While the child is in a hurry to get to his or her destination, the adult takes time to see the obstacle that causes him or her to stumble. Taking note of the obstacle enables the adult to avoid it should it be encountered again in the course of the journey. The child in a hurry lacks the capacity to avoid the future occurrence of a fall and thus may not achieve the objective of reaching his or her destination. The wisdom in the observation belongs to the elders.

     The ongoing confab is an occasion for looking back in search of the cause of an embarrassing national stumble. Where did the rain start beating us? And as rational beings, we are expected to remove the stumbling blocks that have tragically littered our path to nationhood. For if we fail to look back and identify those obstacles, and we continue on the same path, we are most probably not going to reach that destination of national greatness.

     Not a few would affirm that the stumbling block had been there right from the beginning of the journey of this creature of circumstance. The initiative wasn’t from within. Folks didn’t get together to declare an interest in common citizenship. The idea was someone else’s but we have read into it a divine blessing. As J. S. Coleman, the preeminent biographer of Nigerian nationalism, sums it up, the British are the sole creators of the political entity known as Nigeria.

    Coleman goes on to support his “elementary truth” with quotable quotes by two of the leading political icons of the new political entity, Obafemi Awolowo and Tafawa Balewa in 1947 and 1948 respectively. While Awolowo’s reference to Nigeria as a mere geographical entity is the more popular and better analysed of the two, Balewa’s is no less frank and incisive. According to Balewa, “Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any sign of willingness to unite.” And he goes on to declare that “Nigerian unity is only a British intention for the country.”

    The British wanted a united Nigeria; they knew that it would take a long time for this to be achieved (some of them suggested a century at least); but then they did little to move the idea forward from 1914 to 1960 when they left a country completely divided along the original fissures of language and religion. If a united Nigeria was the objective of Britain, why did she pursue a policy of regional development and cultural autonomy?

    It turns out that Britain was not being deceptive or malicious, and the unity that His Majesty’s Government (at the time) wanted for Nigeria was based on the English conception of nationalism which accommodates a hierarchy of loyalties, “each supreme in its own sphere and all perfectly “natural,” because all are “traditional.” This is the Burkean concept of nationalism, according to Coleman, citing Carlton Hayes. It then makes sense that Britain did not see any contradiction in the goal of promoting national unity and encouraging cultural and linguistic autonomy. Here is Hayes on Burke: “Man is and should be loyal to his family and to his locality or “region”; “regionalism” is traditional and hence natural, and the nation should respect and foster it as a necessary preliminary to love of an extensive country or nationality.”

    In his remark on his approval of the proposals of the Nigerian General Conference on the Constitution of 1950, James Griffiths, then Secretary of State for the Colonies stressed “how much importance I attach to the principle of regional autonomy. One of the great advantages of encouraging the regions to develop each along its own characteristic lines will be that by that very process the unity of Nigeria will be strengthened.” Of note is that in his judgment, such an approach does not threaten the unity of the country; it in fact enhances it.

    The question, then, is this: where and why did we veer off the path of regional autonomy?

    It should be noted that from the onset, not all nationalists were in favor of such an approach. While the North stood out in favor of regionalism and was supported by the colonial masters, the South was initially suspicious of the intent. This was especially because many southern nationalists believed that the British policy was intent on protecting the North and promoting its isolation from the rest of the country.

    Despite these initial reservations, however, regionalism prevailed and devolution of power to the regions was the highlight of the constitutions from Richards and Macpherson to the Independence Constitution.

    We stumbled at the point where we pronounced the wrong verdict on regionalism and indicted it of culpable responsibility for national disunity. We sacrificed cultural autonomy in the elusive search for unity even when we sloganise about unity in diversity.

    The choice before the delegates to the National Conference is not just then about revenue allocation or political representation. It is less about state creation or rotational presidency. It is about reemphasising the importance of unity in diversity and empowering every culture and language to blossom.

    In the decades before and up until 1960 the nation made a giant stride in educational and cultural development. Our schools taught English alongside indigenous languages and other subjects. Students developed good skills in oral and written English as well as in indigenous languages. That era produced our only Nobel Laureate in English Literature.

    Since the end of the civil war, however, subsequent governments have moved farther and farther away from regional and cultural autonomy to a more uniformitarian idea of the polity. And we have been the worse for it in every respect. Education is in the tank. Economy is in shambles. Culture is in decline. Crime is in ascendancy. And religious conflict is the norm. How is it so difficult then to see where and why we stumbled?

    That our conferees still bicker over insignificant issues is regrettable. While it is true that there are many challenges that the country faces, it is also true that an overriding one is our departure from the path of a true federal system, in which as Chief Awolowo, its chief proponent, puts it, “each group, however small, is entitled to the same treatment as any other group, however large” and “opportunity must be afforded to each to evolve its own peculiar political institution.”

    It is time to restore the regions, enable small linguistic groups to form regional units, allow regional constitutions alongside the national constitution, encourage healthy competition among regions and, yes, promote national security by promoting regional and local security with the decentralisation of security operations and involving regions and communities in the security of their peoples.