Aregbesola’s Social Spell (SUN NEWSONLINE) - A Great Read...Enjoy “The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. Young people, full of vigour and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you…The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you.”—Mao Zedong We’d left Lagos at the wink of dawn in order to catch up with the avant garde Governor of the State of Osun – note, not Osun State – Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, but by the time we got to the gate of State House, Oshogbo, the governor’s convoy was driving out. He was heading to Ila, about 90 minutes drive from Oshogbo, where he was to host one of his innovative concepts, Gbangba Dekun, a Yoruba for an interactive session between the governor and the people. We were asked by the government officials to head to Ila town to join the session or in the alternative, watch it live at the state’s Presidential Lodge where we eventually passed the night. We opted for the line of least resistance. As you know, this column seeks to be the eyes of the readers, periscoping events that I encounter from my perspective. What did I see, as we entered Osun, the state that vaunts itself as the cradle of Yoruba civilisation, or Oshogbo, a city of many billboards emblazoned with new fangled slogans, OMOLUABI, OPON IMO, etc? Driving through the rustic and ancient city, Osogbo remains a modest town, with modern houses, blending with old fashioned houses, coming from the colonial era. Evidence of industrial activities seems sparse, if not rare, but the roads are well laid out, with the major entry to the state capital and many other city roads dualised. As an irregular visitor on a whistle stop, I am in no position to separate, which of these roads are the works of Aregbesola or his predecessors but given the fact that many of the roads wear evidence of fresh tars, it is clear that this former Commissioner for Works in Lagos State, who was behind road works during the Tinubu administration, has indeed been very active in massive rehabilitation of roads not only in Oshogbo but also in the nearby Ilesha where I had recently passed through. “What is Gbangba Dekun?” I had asked Mike Awoyinfa, a distinguished media son of the State. “Can’t you people speak straight in this state?” But Mike was none the wiser, so for the two of us, it was a journey of discovery. Gbangba Dekun turned out to be a carnival-like session of interactive talks, songs, dance and inevitably, political stumping. The repertoire of party songs reeled by Aregbesola were simply as amazing as the voluptuous hips swinging to the rhythmic beats of talking drums and other local instruments. Key stakeholders, traditional rulers and thousands of ordinary people and party supporters gather to hail the governor’s achievements and like Oliver Twist, ask for more and more things they want the governor to do for them. The official language of interaction is Yoruba, a fact which gave limited access to the substance of the discussion to this reporter who only has an unforgivably smattering understanding of Yoruba even after three and half decades in a highly cosmopolitan Lagos. Requests for more roads and rehabilitation of schools and other infrastructures feature prominently. At the Ila interactive session, the governor ultimately made two major policy statements. The first, in response to a woman who wanted the government’s involvement in nursery education. Aregbesola was frank. The government, he declared would do no such thing. Mothers should take pride in nurturing and bonding with their children in the early years, not shunt them off to nursery schools at such a tender age. What are parents for, if they could not take care of their infant children until they are up to proper school age, at which time, the state would take over with a total free education up to secondary school level? The other policy had to do with the need for providing quality educational, health and other services to people at the rural areas. The government announced that serving at the rural areas for between a year and three years was now compulsory for public sector workers and those who had no such record of service cannot be promoted above level 12. But those who are in the rural areas would enjoy 25 per cent boost in their salaries! Every fortnight, Aregbesola hosts Gbangba Dekun in different towns of the state. The session is a creative recognition that the government is there to serve the people who are like the customers. In the corporate world, nobody keeps churning out products without taking cognizance of whether the people—the real customers—want it or not. Companies that dare flood the people with products without asking if they are what the people want risk market catastrophe. Yet, in the public sector, governments do just that with brazen impunity. Some politicians sit somewhere to make decisions for the people, presuming they know better, without seeking out the pulse of the governed. While they seem to get away with such impunity, the society reaps catastrophic harvest of arrested development or white elephant projects that litter our states. Aregbesola, being a shrewd politician as much as he is a visionary and a radical man of ideas, seems to exploit the interactive session not only as a feedback mechanism but also as a powerful mobilization and bonding tool. From the vibes of the people and Aregbesola’s deep connection with them, you get the impression that those who seek to dislodge him in the next election surely have a herculean task in their hands. Okey Such task is probably made worse by Ogbeni’s determined effort to change the state of things in the state, to turn things around, and his radical mindset with unbounded capacity to think out of the box. In Aregbesola, you have an activist man of ideas pushing for a radical change in his state, using the tools of education and empowerment and human capacity development. But like all deep thinkers who are not satisfied with the status quo, Ogbeni’s concepts have the capacity for good and disaster. Disaster if the ideas turn out bad and unrealistic; but a great leap forward for the people if the ideas are fruitfully actualized. One of those ideas that deeply fascinated me is the state’s controversial tablet of knowledge. Controversial because the opposition are picking holes on the cost and other finicky details. But then, here is the idea. Education is free in the State of Osun, as it is in many other states in the country, but what is the quality and content of this education? And at what cost to the state? In terms of federal allocation, Osun State is one of the poorest in the country. Pre-Aregbesola, internally generated revenue in the state was below N300 million, meaning that the state depends mainly on federal allocation. Under Aregbesola though, the internally generated revenue is now over a billion naira monthly. But then, there are 150,000 secondary school students in Osun who are to enjoy free education. Aregbesola reckoned that if the state was to procure only three textbooks for each student at a cost N1,000 per book, the state would need a budget of N4.5 billion on text books alone. Yet, without text books, education is hollow. Even though the state is budgeting a huge sum of N30 billion on education alone, Aregbesola said that he also saw “the practical impossibility of spending N4.5 billion on text books alone for just higher school students.” The state turned to technology for a way out. Their brainstorming led to a digital solution which the state calls, Opo Imo, or tablet of knowledge. The tablet of knowledge is digital device developed from the e-reader that is fed with 60 text books encompassing all the 17 subjects taught in secondary schools curriculum. Made up of three zones, the second zone contains digital version of ten years of JAMB and WAEC questions papers while the third zone is virtual learning where at the press of a button, one of the best teachers on a subject explains the subject through voice coaching to the student. Each of the 150,000 State of Osun students are given this electronic device called Opo Imo free. From a potential N4.5 billion for merely three books, at the sum of N200 million which the state government paid to the publishing company, Evans Publishing, to acquire the right to their text books, the digital device crashed the price of a copy of the book to merely N23 per copy, down from a N1,000 for hard copy. “It is a world beater!” Aregbosola coed. “What this means is that a child can be in perpetual classroom for as long as they want…Wherever you are, it is your choice to learn or not to learn.” What about all the zany nomenclatures that Aregbesola is putting up on many things in the state, including things like Omoluabi philosophy? It turns out to be Aregbesola’s version of velvet cultural revolution, to distinguish it from the more violent Chinese cultural revolution. “Can anybody develop without the consciousness of self?” he quizzed. “It is the realization of who you are that will in the first instance propel or stimulate you on other directions, particularly development. ..So culture is the bedrock of all developments. ..Humanism is my inspiration. Omoluabi philosophy simply means we are a people with a high sense of humanity.” Aregbesola is a man to watch, whichever way. He is a man I hope to engage more with in future discussions, seeing that what I have captured here is still a tip of the ice-berg of this dynamic man of deep Islamic zeal.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 09:41:01 +0000
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