GOVERNMENT PROFLIGACY: A CASE STUDY OF OSUN STATE

In Yoruba, we have a saying that if lies travel for 20 years truth will overtake it one day. As we were all aware of allegation made by Aregbesola that Goodluck Jonathan was withholding Osun State allocation but the truth came to fore when GMB was sworn-in and confirmed to the public that FG is not owing any states their statutory allocation. It was on this note that Aregbesola made u-turn by publicly admitted that he is helpless on backlog of salaries owing civil servants. I believed this would shock his supporters and apologists that have been taking flight from reality to land of fantasy. 

In my opinion, it is either Aregbesola was stylishly tagging himself as a failed manager or an incompetent leader. I would not have  started with his state until he made some contradicted details of his state treasury at opening of 6th Assembly of the state. What really pricked my heart was his claim that Osun got N19.3billion as revenue allocation for year 2014 with wage bill of N22.5billion. According to a Chinese proverb, fool me once shame on you, fool me again, shame on me!  For benefit of my readers that might not be familiar with public finance terms, statutory/revenue allocation is monthly/annual fund allocated to tiers of government while wage bill is monthly/annual salary to workers.

Let us put it to Aregbesola if for these 7months his aides, political appointees, himself and lawmakers are not having their take home up to date, or is the acclaimed meagre allocation fissile into air? or staff headcount has bloated to China demography scale? I have put below this piece in a tabular form the true stand of received allocation from Nov 2010 to December 2014 culled from BudgIT, takenotenigerian.com, federal ministry of finance (FMF), OAGF(office of the account general of the federation) and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for all to verify.

Now to claim made that Osun has most populous staff strength which he dated back to Western region and old Oyo state was mere gain saying, Osun State has been existing since August 27, 1991 so this excuse died on its arrival. For as many that are not familiar with Osun State, it has 2 state owned polytechnics(Esa-Oke and Iree), 2 colleges of education(Ila and Ilesa), partly owned LAUTECH with Oyo State, and Uniosun as higher institution. It has 30 LGAs with 1 area office and they have been there before Aregbesola. According to Niccolo Machiavelli, ‘

Politics have no relation to morals’.To the second claim that his administration has developmental projects to show the world instead of just paying salary is fallacious and unfounded. How can we explain taking loans for mere aesthetics or why are those projects not culminating to revenues after 4years. He arrived with 20000 OYES  of N10000 monthly per head which equivalent to N2.4billion annually. Though in practical they are 13000 with monthly take home of N8900 after tax. Roads were constructed with outrageous invoice of about over N1billion per km while a standard road cost $1million per km in USA. Billions of naira were used to plant flowers round the state. Only God knows how much billions of naira he has expended on agriculture yet farm produce has not change from the past. Osun State only enter Guinness book of record by building the tallest drum in the world. He is building airport which is of no economic importance considering the possible patronage and also flying jet to pursue criminals.

Let me digress to education, O'Meal project fanning around as achievement was started by Oyinlola through UNESCO programme where Osun State happened to be one of the 12 states. It was designed to improve enrolment in Primary schools and to be financed by 3 tiers of government. Though Osun is the only state running this programme now but Oyinlola did it without noise. Demolition of classrooms built by Oyinlola to build modern schools was another wastage of resources. Could you believe that as popular as Fakunle Comprehensive High School, Osogbo is, it was demolished and relocated to build Shoprite. Don't ask me who has stakes in shoprite. 

Another propaganda was unified uniforms for primary and secondary schools where a pair was distributed free to each student. Meanwhile, subsequent ones go for N1500 and N2000 per pair which you can only purchase from government. The last straw that broke horseback was OPON IMO meaning tablet of knowledge. It was a TAB loaded with pass questions and textbooks for SSS1-3. For your information it was first launched in Lagos State by Aregbesola's deputy, Titi Laoye with many billboards dumped round Lagos State. Then, you might want to ask if Lagos and Osun share borders. This cost N9billion according to some quarters and that is about 3 months allocation of the state. Today, you can hardly found OPON IMO among these students as few schools were picked for the project with distribution to only SSS2  students.

Without mincing  words, Aregbesola has mortgaged his state. The bad news is that all these projects are being financed by loans which was my reservations when people were praising him. In 2010, the budget prepared by Oyinlola for 2011 fiscal year was N88billion but jerked up by Aregbesola to N102.9 billion for reasons know to him. The state annual budget in 2012 was N146.7billion, N234billion in 2013, N234billion in 2014 and N201billion in 2015. Less I forget to tell you that Aregbesola said IGR has been moved from N300m to N1.6b monthly that is 3rd in Southwest and 11th in Nigeria but last year IGR was N8.5b in sum. If you consider revenue table below you will not doubt that this state has been swimming in unjustified loans. The big question here is what bloated these budgets?.

Truly, the debt temperature is high without doubt, aside unpaid salaries, what about deductions without remittance to RSA of workers managing by Pension Fund Administrator and this will be running to another billions, pensioners case is there and debts incurred on white elephant projects will be a story for another day.  According to Aregbesola, he took N12b loan to pay salary for the last 3 months before Nov 2014 and bank cannot borrow him anymore, what a misfortune. Beside this, if you check revenue allocation table, Osun is 2nd to last when comes to values, this is not far fetch than standing orders for debt servicing that must be deducted before its been handed over to the state. This is a pointer to allegation made by his opposition that Osun debt is hoofing around N480b with analysis of N10b by each local government which tantamount to N300b. I also pick a little fact from this, he constructed 10km each for the 30LGAs which equivalent to N300b at rate of over N1b per km.

Therefore, Osun state did not suddenly arrive at this unbecoming situation overnight it has been accumulation of financial rascality and recklessness as a result of overwhelming propagandas. May be the governor is reflecting his name, "moving with others to shine".

Osun is different from Lagos, in 2014 Lagos had N279b as IGR while Osun had N8.5b. So using Lagos template in Osun can only do more harm than good, as Yoruba usually says that the length of mouse's arms determines extent of scratching it can do on its face. The world has moved from cut your coat according to your size, it is now cut your coat according to your cloth.

Let's move to bail out, why outsiders were trying to assist the state from being in perpetual status of refugee camp, responses from state government have been discouraging. As at the time of writing this piece, Aregbesola is only lamenting on how painful it is to him to owe workers with no cogent action, his allowances such as security vote is still intact, numbers of convoys yet to be trimmed, political appointees are still with fat pay cheques, MDAs are not merging,  Jet maintenance is still there and pilgrimage bill is still in the budget. Why can't the lawmakers from the state at state and federal levels follow Ben Bruce acts to reduce workers pains? To make it worse, 19 agencies under office of the governor will gulp N18b in this year 2015 budget, what a misappropriation. 

Surprisingly, many stakeholders like Wole Soyinka, Femi Falana and co that are in Aregbesola’s camp have not uttered a word about this economy terrorism against masses. If you understudy the table below you will discover that Osun State revenue allocations from 2011-2013 was 24% of total budget for that period which implies that the state economy has been sitting on gun powder of loans all through these days Oyo state has 33 LGA, her budget for 2015 is N143billion compare to Osun state with 30 LGAs.

Let me close on this note, I am in support of bail out but the root of these nemesis should be considered. Firstly, feeding bottle federalism according to Ike Ekweremadu should be addressed. Secondly, benchmark for loan should be in place for states and lastly impunity clause should be totally eradicated.

Our eagle eyes will be viewing another state next week, for everyone to differentiate propaganda from policies.

 

Thank you all

Courtesy: Good Governance Group

noted

hmmm

Reading

This is a very very impressive write up.

Interesting but i noted some flaws...(typing)

This can only impress dummies.
This spreadsheet does not show mismanagement.
In fact, it does not show anything .
Simply a sum of figures across 2 administration.
until a comparative analysis is done ,with emphasis on
1 projects executed
2 living indices ( health, employment,education etc)
3 service delivery
4rise in minimum
5 numbers of institutions of governance.
6 Population
And so on .

From a more educated and informed angle , the foolishness of Aregbesola lies in trusting the judgement and economic management of Jonathan and iweala .
Even the 3 blind mice know that they were sailing the ship into an iceberg with the way the country was bleeding cash through theft ,fraud , rampant importation of rubbish and squandering of all the benefits from high commodity prices.
Instead of reducing spending by cutting back on non essential spending and developing other sources to mitigate against what is well known since like 4 years ago.
The Wall Street bubble in commodities prices was always going to burst .