AN OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR RAUF ADESOJI AREGBESOLA

Your Excellency

Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola

Executive Governor, Osun State.

NOW THAT YOU HAVE BEEN RE-ELECTED

I send my highest regards and courtesy to you, mandated by the respect that your office commands and the moral responsibility that the culture of our people places on my shoulder to show respect to whoever is higher than me in ranking. I want to believe that the business of governing Osun State has not been too tiring? Not that I will expect you to groan, even me will gladly accept such tiring duties since they come with a bumper financial package. I must confess, I really envy you.

I am going to pay specific attention to brevity and clarity in this letter, understanding that you do not have so much time within your daily schedule of activities to read an epistle, which of course would have been most ideal for the lengthy issues I intend to raise. Yet, I will attempt to save your time and mine, communicate directly, bluntly and with clear statements of facts. I am doing this so that it may be said of me that when I had the wherewithal, I spoke up in the defence of democracy, good governance, fairness and justice. If nothing else, that place in posterity satisfies me beyond any measure of reward.

While congratulating you on your victory at the August 9 polls, I must say that the people of Osun State has made their choice known for the next four years, if indeed the results announced was a true reflection of the voting might of the masses. To be honest with you Your Excellency, I contributed all in my young might to ensure that you did not return to the Bola Ige House because I believed that you lacked positive moral qualities to steer my state in the right direction and I found one person who could – Fatai Akinade Akinbade. Unfortunately, the masses felt otherwise and they chose you. I would so much want to believe in the saying that the voice of the people is the voice of God, but the current class of politicians in Nigeria today might have prompted God to step back a little from the political scene. Thus, I do not want to believe God inspired your re-election and in your case, vox populi might not really be vox Dei.

The manipulations that may have aided your re-election notwithstanding, one truth that even me cannot neglect, is the fact that if the judicial system does not say otherwise, you will be the Governor of my State for the next four years. This fact alone places much moral responsibility on me and every other well-meaning Osun indigene to give you sound advice and pray fervently that you steer our State in the right direction. Morality beckons on us all to criticize your policies in the past four years and make recommendations as to how you can better serve us in the State as you may not exactly have the clues owing to the nature in which you were imported from Lagos (pardon my choice of words sir). Yet we must advise you sir, especially at this time when there is so much hope in the hearts of our people.

Mr Governor sir, you cannot afford to pursue certain policies that you showed signs of wanting to pursue in your first tenure. This is owing to the fact that majority of your policies looking through those four years were anti-social and could lead to a rapid degeneration of the State not only economically but morally and administratively. I will discuss some of those policies in details below while I hope you take time to read completely and make amends.

When you started the school re-classification exercise sometimes last year, majority of the Osun illiterates were excited. Excited not because they understood the concept from your own point of view, but excited because you promised them certain goodies to go with the exercise. Such goodies include free school uniforms, free transportation for students and pupils etc. In the usual nature of majority of the Osun people, their attitude of always wanting something for free sold them out on that one, they should have seen beyond their noses. The free school uniforms you gave turned out to be sub-standard and most students used theirs for less than a year. I think it was then that your motive became clear to someone like me that you were pursuing that policy not for the welfare of the people, but for the money your government will realize from the sales of uniforms once the free ones you gave become tattered. This was clever, but unbecoming of a man who is supposed to look after the welfare of the people.

The policy at first, rubbishes the very essence of school uniforms in our schools. Just as a reminder Your Excellency, school uniforms are made as a means of identifying students in school such that teachers can easily spot students who belong to which and which school as well as effectively manage such students as may belong to a particular school. This unified uniform of your administration has spoilt that essence. Now, a student of Baptist High School in Ejigbo can easily sneak into Osogbo High School unnoticed and unchallenged. This is a direct invitation to truancy. You must as a matter of urgent public interest re-visit this policy with the aim of returning our education sector to the point where it is easy to deliver and administer qualitative education.

Again Your Excellency, you must urgently review your “Opon Imo” policies to avoid an opposite result from what you claimed your intentions were. The gross inadequacies of the Tablets includes weak content which cannot compare with textbooks being used to set examination questions for WAEC, UTME and the likes. The glitter it also added to the students who were given these tablets earlier on is such that majority of them now have their hearts set on vanities and the pursuit of material possessions at tender ages. Most of these students now gallivant around because you have not succeeded in boosting their mental capacity, you have only added to their ego. All these coupled with the fact that the Tablets did not even reach 40% of the total student population in Osun State makes it urgent for you to retract the tablets and return the schools to the pen and paper era which instilled discipline and academic excellence.

Sir, you may also need to review the school re-classification programme as Osun is currently running an education system that is completely alien to the National policy on Education and our state seem to have been disconnected from the National approach. To save our children the confusion of trying to correlate their schooling experience with that of their colleagues outside Osun State, you need to immediately reverse the process and re-align Osun State with the National education policy.

Talking finances Your Excellency, it is pitiable that the style that most APC-controlled States are practising in terms of revenue collection is the same script you have been acting in Osun State. Why in ten heavens Your Excellency will a State Government hire ‘consultants’to help it collect taxes from the people? Will it not be fair if we call these ‘consultants’agents of money laundering? Why should there be some middle men between Government and the people if it is not to the ends of perpetrating evil? I sincerely and humbly ask that you discontinue this trend and allow the IGR section of the Accountant General’s Office and the Local Governments do their jobs. Except you feel they are incapable, which will be grossly insulting.

Mr Governor, you must immediately order the contractors handling construction projects in Osun State to work diligently and stop fooling the people. The contractor to whom you awarded the Ejigbo-Ede road and Ejigbo-Oguro road as a typical example, has been playing games with the minds of our people. You see them work for five days and stay away for ten more. Every road shoulder they re-compacted has been washed away by rain while the Ejigbo-Oguro road has been rendered useless as run-off has washed away one of the culverts which the contractor exposed for ‘repairs’earlier this year. It is the same tale of contractor indiscipling and inconsistency with the contractors handling the Akoda-Gbongan trumpet interchange which your government made so much media noise about. Sources close to these contractors claim they have been given empty promises by your government while you have refused to pay them contract fees as and when due. Whoever is at fault here, all I plead for is that you call these contractors to order once and for all and let us put a stop to confusion.

I wonder Ogbeni, why you chose to disconnect the people of Osun State from the National approach to doing things. I want to make it clear to you sir, that no matter how much you hate the PDP and the government at the centre, it does not change the fact that you are just one governor of one of the 36 federating units, not the head of the central government. The National policies if I may enlighten you, were jointly formulated by these States as a code for co-existence and uniformity which will in turn result in improved governance at the centre. That is why it baffles me that of all the 36 State Governors in Nigeria, only you decided to start addressing the State you manage as ‘State of Osun’instead of Ósun State’. I ask myself all the time, what exactly motivated you into taking such a decision? What governance sense did the action make? Did you just do it for the sake of bragging about your hatred for the government at the centre? Are you running a rebellious government? Please reverse this trend before our people become trapped in the small corner that Osun State occupies in the country.

Lastly, you must urgently return Osun State to standard management systems which was in use before you came. It is pathetic that in most of your dealings, you often gave Special Advisers the frontline at the expense of the Commissioners who are custodians of the Ministry. The Sas are supposed to be your backroom staff not Government spokespersons. It is high time you curtail Bola Ilori and his likes and allow the Commissioners do their jobs. If it is a case of you doubting the capabilities of your cabinet members, I believe you can shake down the cabinet and place round pegs in round holes.

I will beg to stop here for this moment while I plead that you urgently address the issues I raised to avoid a pitiful future for our dear State from which you have the opportunity to flee since you were never really resident here.

Accept the assurances of my highest considerations and regards sir.

Yours Faithfully

ODERINU ADEDAYO T.

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