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From Clement Adeyi, Osogbo
As Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State prepares to leave the stage, his Media Adviser, Mr Sola Faure, in this interview sheds light on the focus of his administration so far, his succession plans and other sundry issues.
Payment of workers’ salaries, pensions and gratuities have remained nagging issues in the state. There have been arguments that the governor is insensitive to the people’s welfare. What is your take on this?
There are three or four issues on salaries and pensions that need to be analysed for proper understanding. The first is the fiscal policy of the government. This can be broken down into two major perspectives – the income and the expenditure- which must be balanced at any time. Your income must be commensurate with your expenditure, else you run into some financial troubles.
The second perspective is that, people were used to getting salaries, pensions and gratuities promptly when the economy was good. But it never occurred to them that the money must come from somewhere. We have been practicing what we call feeding bottle federalism over the years, whereby state governments go to Abuja with caps in hands every month to collect allocations to run the government. A state must be able to generate its own resources and be financially autonomous instead of depending absolutely on the federal government’s purse. This has been a big challenge in the country.
When the money was flowing, there was no problem running the states. But now that the entire country is facing a financial challenge, leading to poor federal allocations, the states too, have been facing the music. So, the current financial malaise is not peculiar to Osun State.
The third perspective is that expenditure is a function of your income. What Osun government has done is to create a balance between its income and the expenditure in its efforts to pay workers’ salaries and pensions and to still embark on infrastructure development despite paucity of funds.
Following its people-oriented inclination, government entered into an agreement with the workers through their organised labour unions to be paying modulated salaries. With the arrangement, 28 percent of the workers from levels 8-12 are placed on 75 percent of their salaries. The fat cats on levels 13 and above get 50 percent of their salaries, while the rest 72 per cent of the workers from levels 1-7 get full salaries. The modulated salary regime started in July 2015. Since then, the workers are not owed a kobo. They have even got their November, 2017, salary (as at December 25 when the interview was conducted.) The rationale behind the modulated salary is to ensure that nobody is sent packing from his or her job and nobody goes home empty-handed. It is to ensure that there is food on everybody’s table.
The pensioners, too, are not owed a dime. They have been paid up to November, 2017, just like the workers. It is only the gratuities of those that retired in 2011/2012 that have not been paid but they have been paid their pensions. Though it is painful that modulated salary has to be put in place, very soon, we shall get out of it and everybody will begin to get full salaries, including the arrears. But what is not going to work in this situation is blackmail and force because government can only pay what it has.
If government is cash-strapped and cannot pay full salaries, pensions and gratuities, where has it got money to embark on massive road construction and school projects from?
The money being used for infrastructure cannot be diverted for salaries and pensions. For instance, one of the monies being used to build mega schools is known as school bond. Government also took another bond from the capital market. You must state the purpose for which you took the loan. Once you do that, there are supervisory agencies that monitor how you use the money. They make sure that you use it for the purpose. So, you cannot divert it to pay salaries and pensions. Some of these things are development assistance for which you pay your equity which is counterpart fund. In some cases, you are required to pay 50 percent of it. For instance, if the cost of building a school is N20m then the state has to pay N10m, the Universal Basic Education (UBE) would pay the remaining 50 percent. So, there is no way you can take UBE money meant to build school to pay salary and pension. That would be considered as indiscipline and misappropriation of funds.
Development everywhere is at a price and sacrifice. There is no way you can set legacies for future generations without embarking on infrastructure.
A price must be paid by a generation to achieve this for the present and the future generations. That is what government is trying to do. Any where you see a good road, it inspires development.
To what extent has the governor developed the education sector and what is the philosophy behind the mega schools he is building across the state despite the financial challenges bedevilling the state?
He is passionate about education reforms. The passion behind the education development is to groom a new man; a well educated man; a man for the society, not a man for himself. A man of culture, who is knowledgeable and the intellect is cultivated; a man of character; a man for the future that can build better future without oil. A man that can build a future that is driven by science and technology. A man with total education meant for the public good. That is the philosophy of education that the governor is putting in place. That is why he is building world-class schools across the state.
There is a master plan to build 100 elementary schools, 50 middle schools and 20 high schools. He has already built 21 elementary schools, 22 middle schools and 11 high schools across all the federal constituencies and senatorial districts. The schools are a legacy projects. The philosophy behind them is that the learning environment is as important as learning itself. Children from broken and run down homes that lack basic facilities and beauty of life, when they grow up, can never understand what beauty of life is all about. So, if they get to positions of authority, they find it difficult to impact development and beauty in their environments. But when you put them in a school that has basic facilities and beautiful environments, the sense of beauty would register in their consciousness. When they grow up, they can then impact beauty into the world and their environments. A school that does not have library, science laboratories, good furniture and conducive learning environments can only breed failure among the students and pupils. Teachers too, cannot give their best. Recreation, sports and physical exercise for social adjustment are parts of education development of the child. Government is determined to build mega schools rich with complete teaching/learning activities and those which environments are relatively conducive for learning. This motivates teachers and excites the pupils and students for learning and improved education standard.
The school feeding programme is a part of the education development in the state. It is a well packaged nutritious single meal per every school day for the elementary 1-4 pupils. It started in 2012. Though the federal government has since taken over the programme, with a specific contribution, but in a situation where it is not enough, our own government makes it up to make the programme effective as usual. This has encouraged pupils’ attendance in schools and active participation in learning. It has also generated business for farmers and employment for the cooks and attendants.
Since Aregbesola’s administration, students’ performances in WAEC, NECO, NABTE examinations have improved significantly. Before then, Osun used to be very backward. Five years before we came in, the average performance by the students that government sponsored for the WAEC used to be 14 percent. But when we took over, the average percentage increased to 46 percent within five years, which is a significant improvement. That is, of all the candidates we sponsor, 46 percent are doing well in at least five subjects, including Mathematics and English Language in both WAEC and NECO. For many years now, when you look at the total percentage of candidates who gain admission in other states, Osun is about 3rd. Osun candidates gain more admission to tertiary institutions more than their counterparts in other states and that is the basis of creditable performances in WAEC and NECO.
Recently, students of tertiary institutions in the state trooped to the streets of Osogbo to protest hike in fees by government. If the governor is passionate about education development, why did he increase tuition outrageously?
Government is not in the position to increase fees because it is not running the schools directly. The governor did not at any time instruct any school to increase tuition. It is the school management that is in charge. The governor is just a visitor to the schools. The intervention of government is to provide grant. Government cannot micromanage any higher institution. There was a time the governor even criticised UNIOSUN for a hike in school fees, wondering how many indigenes of the state could afford it. Consequently, the university management reduced it considerably.
The problem is that people are fixated on the school fees instead of the quality of education being offered in the schools. Government is facing the challenge of payment of salaries and pensions and has to run schools. Government subventions to schools are relatively caught in the web of the paucity of funds. For the schools to survive in this circumstance, government has no option than to encourage the management to be proactive or find other ways of running the school or becoming self sustainable without passing the burden on the students. However, a reasonable percentage of the cost of educating the student must also be borne by him or the parents and guardians. This could be through scholarship or a part time job by the students. Education is no longer cheap.
November 2018 is around the corner. Campaigns by prospective successors from different political parties have started gathering momentum. There are insinuations from some quarters that he has a candidate. What are his succession plans?
Succession is not a one man or governor’s affair. There are party leaders that he needs to consult. It is their decision that will see the light of the day.
The progressives have a tradition. They always settle for a consensus candidate. It is only when that plan hits the rock that rancour would set in. But when you don’t have such a scenario, then succession can not pose any problem. It is not true that the governor has his own candidate. If he had been harbouring any candidate in mind, it would have been obvious by now. At any point in time, we his lieutenants know the direction he is going. He tells us all his directions. If he had any candidate by now, he would have told us and we would have been working in that direction. In fact, we would have been working for that candidate by now. His major preoccupation now is how to finish well, how to deliver on his campaign promises and how to generate revenues to run the government. He has told his cabinet that it is not yet time for anybody to make move for succession but to concentrate on how to deliver all the promises made to the people. The moment he announces any successor, campaigns begin. For now, that will cause distraction for him.
It can even cause division and loss of focus among his cabinet.
The governor has tried to lay a solid foundation for the rapid development of the state. He is passionate about continuity.
