I would have found Senator Iyiola Omisore’s attack on the administration of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, Osun State governor, distasteful, if not that it is hilarious. The wily politician has a way of titillating his fantasy by making wild and outrageous claims on Osun’s debt profile. I have read the report several times and cannot find anything of substance in it. The report represents no value, other than mischief.
The issue of Osun’s debt profile is very well in the public domain. It is one of the issues on which the administration has been very transparent. The Office of the Governor, Ministry of Finance and the State Accountant General has released detailed information to the public on the matter. The state’s indebtedness stands as at today at N170.6 billion made up of N141.1 billion domestic and N29.5 billion multilateral debts, and is going down every month since the state never defaults on repayment.
The good news here is that by 2019, the N30 billion vanilla bond obtained in 2012 would have been fully repaid. Also, the N11.4 billion Sukuk bond would be fully repaid in 2020. This will free up a lot of the resources of the state and the projects procured with the loans would have been a huge gain.
Nevertheless, the debt, as at the time they came were, not meant to be hard on the state’s finances. Then, oil was selling above $100 and Osun was netting above N4 billion from the federation account every month. From this amount, the state was able to set something aside for the raining day in form of Omoluabi Conservation Fund.
Problem came when oil price fell to as low as $22. This affected not only Osun but all the states of the federation, including the federal government. Indeed, this hit the federal government so bad that the then Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, cried that the administration had to borrow N476 billion from commercial banks to be able to pay salaries in the last four months of his administration. This explains the low allocation to Osun.
Debt has a long history in Osun. Some of the debts were inherited from the Western Region as part of what Chief Obafemi Awolowo used to develop the region. Others were inherited from the old Oyo State. Also, the immediate past Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration took a short term debilitating loan of N18.3 billion to construct stadia, requiring the state to take N1 billion bank overdraft to service and supplement salary payment every month. One of the first tasks of the Aregbesola administration was to restructure this loan into a long term easy loan.
But the loans taken were most judiciously used for infrastructure development in the state. The N11.4 billion sukuk bond was used for the construction of 11 state-of-the-art mega high schools. Each school is a three-in-one with capacity for 3,000 pupils. Every year, the schools will graduate a combined 11,000 top of the grade students.
The spending on education has brought the desired fruits, contrary to the claim of Senator Omisore. Before Governor Aregbesola came to office in 2010, the best performance under the PDP administration in the state was 15 per cent pass in WAEC Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination. As at 2018, it has however risen under the Aregbesola administration to 54 per cent. That is still not satisfactory by our standard but it is a whopping 360 per cent increase.
Opon Imo, e-learning tablet, is an innovation of the Aregbesola administration that exists in no other place. It is a school on its own that contains all the recommended textbooks in electronic format, all past questions of WAEC and JAMB and audio tutorials. It has been used by five sets of final year students of the state and has contributed significantly to the success of Osun’s candidates in external examinations.
The state’s home-grown school feeding programme is a huge success. Under it, more than 428 million hot mid-day meals have been served to our children in public elementary schools since 2012 to date. More than 1.5 million pupils have benefited from the scheme since 2012 while school enrolment increased from 155,318 pupils at inception to 252,739, representing a 62 per cent increase.
From the N30 billion vanilla bond, the N18.3 billion debilitating loan obtained by the PDP administration was restructured. The rest and funds from other sources were used to construct and rehabilitate 230 roads, stretching over 368 kilometres.
The MKO Abiola International Airport in Ido Osun was started by the PDP administration. The site of the airport was the old aerodrome used by the West African Frontier Force to airlift soldiers during World War II. It was the place a plane first landed and picked passengers in Nigeria in 1934 and hence of historical significance. The state government has done an extensive work on it, including evacuating and refilling 3.5 kilometre-long and 12.3 metre-deep laterite soil for the preparation of about the longest runway in Nigeria.
The total amount spent by the state government on this project is still less than N2 billion, contrary to the bogus and fictitious figure of N5 billion bandied in the non-report.
However, in 2017, the state government got a concessionaire who promised to complete the project at no cost to the government and run it for 30 years. Regrettably, the concessionaire could not access the funds he banked upon from the Turkish EXIM Bank and therefore could not deliver on the project, thus the termination of the concession.
Senator Omisore has found his voice again, now that election is around the corner, being the candidate of an unknown party, having been crowded out of PDP. He now wants to falsely project himself as the main man in the midst of crippled opposition candidates. But he is a wounded and spent political soldier.
Unlike four years ago when he was the opposition front runner, Omisore is miles away from the candidate of the APC, Gboyega Oyetola, and he knows it. He really has no unique selling point, being an old stock in the market. He has therefore rehashed his concocted debt figure of Osun, as his favourite attack line.
But this is a bogey because the loans taken are performing and the people can see the evidence in all the nooks and crannies of the state. In every local government where 10 kilometres of roads have been constructed, every commuter feels the impact of the loans; every family of the 262,000 pupils that partakes of the O’meals every school day will not easily forget how impactful the loan has been. Each of the 40,000 OYES cadets that went through the programme and had been given soft landing will salute the financial engineering capability of the Aregbesola administration.
Osun has been able to put up the most aggressive social protection programme. For instance, Osun put 1,602 most vulnerable senior citizens on welfare, giving them a monthly stipend and taking care of their health needs. Under this same programme, 175 lunatics have been rescued from the streets, treated, rehabilitated and happily reunited with their family in sound health.
Osun’s investment in security is second to none. The state government procured 120 patrol vehicles for the law enforcement agencies and bought 25 armoured personnel carriers. No state, not even Lagos, can boast of this. We must not forget the 24/7 emergency ambulance service with over 30 well-fitted ambulances all over the state.
The Aregbesola administration also sponsored 85 medical students of UNIOSUN to Ukraine to complete their medical studies. They have since returned home after passing out with flying colours. Also, 40 young farmers were sponsored to Saxon Anhalt in Germany for training in modern agriculture while 31 outstanding engineering graduates were sent to Germany to master modern automobile works and retrofitting. A world class mechatronics institute located at the College Of Technology, Esa-Oke, is the outcome of this investment, where these whiz kids impact their knowledge and expertise on local technicians, artisans and tradesmen.
With the loans and other resources of the state, it is beyond dispute that Aregbesola has transformed the fortunes of Osun. It will take more than a concocted and contrived debt crisis to beat the candidate of the APC on September 22 governorship election in the state.
- Fasure writes from Osogbo.
