continued from last week . . .
AGRICULTURE
Ekiti State
remains one of the most blessed lands in the whole universe. This assertion is
because apart from other Western Nigerian states, Ekiti boasts of green
vegetation all through the year. As well, we benefit from the two rainy seasons
per year being enjoyed by some other parts of the country.
With this premise, Ekiti can boast of her agricultural
prowess to conveniently feed the entire nation. No other state, save other
Western states, qualifies to be given the acronym, “Food Basket of the Nation”
except Ekiti state. Unfortunately, this natural endowment has been painfully
neglected by this administration. I hope Mr. Governor and his boys will be able
to tell the whole world, with practical visual figures, the number of tons of
rice, maize and other grains as well as other food crops, harvested in the last
one or two years which are being presently stored for the people of Ekiti state
to feed from in year 2014.
It must be noted that Governors who came in after Fayemi
have harvested food for their people to feed on or to replant for the benefit
of their people. A good example of that is the Ogun state governor, who
harvested 20 hectares of rice in December, 2013. In September, 2013, when Ekiti
and some other like lazy states were finding it difficult to pay salaries,
Uduaghan, the Delta state governor, boasted on AIT that they were able to
surmount that obstacle via their investment in agriculture. Even the dry lands
of the North, for example, Gombe, had used their initiatives to co-opt the Bank
of Agric to benefit their people in agriculture.
In Ekiti, what we have is a promise that, come 2015, Ekiti
will feed the West. The question therefore is when is this administration
statutorily expected to lapse? Why playing on people’s intelligence by
promising them 2015 when you know that the mandate you were given ends in 2014?
Does that not amount to double-dealing and a dubious attempt to perpetrate
oneself in office beyond the stipulated time?
My Governor and his boys will like to tell us about YCAD!
Let them tell us the amount invested into YCAD for we read in “THE PUNCH” that
some hundreds of thousands of US dollars have been expended on agriculture in
Ekiti state. What has the state benefited from the inglorious agricultural
programme? How many youths are presently involved, and what is their level of
involvement? How many farms does the state have presently? How many tons of
maize, rice and other grains and livestock have been produced and harvested for
the people’s consumption in the last three years of this administration?
Timely answers to these questions will in no small measure
help Ekiti people, home and abroad, in taking their decisions in the
forthcoming election in choosing who steers the ship of the state for another
four years starting from October 16th, 2014.
SOCIAL
SECURITIES
I consider it rather intellectually insulting, the practice
of some of our politicians, who import programmes to Nigeria from Europe,
America and other parts of the world, without a corresponding intellectual
input from the so-called importers.
The Dr. Fayemi-led administration has prided itself over the
last three years as the first to introduce social security funds into
governance in Nigeria. Whether this argument is true is not the issue now; the
issues are: how are the social securities carried out? Can the state’s economy support
it? Is it a priority as far as the state is concerned? Are the beneficiaries
getting the tokens as at when due? Couldn’t the meager resources being wantonly
wasted on these be put into a rather productive use from which a larger number
of these hapless people could benefit now, and for a longer period of time?
A paltry sum of five thousand naira (#5,000) is being
haphazardly given to the aged. As at press time, the poor old people being
hoodwinked by this shylock generousity are still being owned three months arrears
which are likely to become a continued carry-over till the end of this
administration’s life span. Our university graduates are being reduced to the
level of boarding-house students who are being given the one-time popular pocket-money
for sustenance. An insulting ten thousand naira (#10,000) a month is being
dashed-out to our enterprising egg-heads after their many years’ training in
higher schools of learning where they had been taught how to contribute
immensely to the growth and development of our dear state in every ramification.
I make bold to say that these graduates are being paid for
doing nothing when they could have been productively engaged. Little wonder
then that many of them could not and can not account for what they used and are
using the money they are being given for. The most appalling part of this
frittering of our meager resources is that by October 16th, 2014,
this ignoble government would have squandered three billion, nine hundred and
fifty million naira (#3,950,000,000) on this celebrated inglorious absurdity.
Painfully, the above amount could possibly have established
at least two of the Aregbesola’s kind of garment industry, and nothing less
than three thousand (3,000) people could have been gainfully employed.
Alternatively, this father-Christmas administration could have used this wasted
sum to revive the old Textile Industry discussed above, which painfully, has
been converted to lock-up shops.
The beauty of these social securities is that Fayemi and his
men have successfully turned Ekiti indigenes into beggars whilst encouraging
and financing laziness amongst the youth populace.
EDUCATION
Shortly after inception, our dear governor and his
incongruous team, in their wisdom, decided to distribute laptops to secondary school
students and their teachers. In this project, the government distributed a
total of forty-eight thousand (48,000) laptops at a cost not less than one
hundred thousand (#100,000) naira per system. Simple primary school arithmetic
brought the amount gratuitously blown away to four billion, eight hundred
million naira (#4.8billion).
The project designed to pull the wool over the people’s eyes
showed its thorough farcical nature as the computer illiterate students started
using the systems for immoral purposes such as watching adult movies. Some of
the students became experts in computer games while some others began to use
the systems to learn and or perfect their internet fraud (yahoo-yahoo) skills. Beside
these groups, some other sharp guys turned emergency DJs at social gatherings.
The result of all these was that these students’ studies began to suffer. It
took the intervention of some well-meaning parents to call the attention of Mr.
Governor and his think-tank to these, after which they began to withdraw the
laptops from the students. The students who refused to return theirs or whose
had got spoilt were not and have not been given their WAEC and NECO results by
their respective schools, even as this page is being typed.
It gladdens my heart to know that my governor is
wide-travelled. I wouldn’t know whether the painting of school buildings is
what is called educational development in all the overseas countries where he
had travelled to. A school building, either newly built or just renovated and or
painted, but without the necessary learning aids and facilities is like a brand
new car that has no accelerator. We heard that there was an improvement in the
students’ result last year, but we all know what happened in all the
examination centers. I told people that the “excellent” result is not to be
celebrated because there is no corresponding improvement on the students’
spoken English and performances in other areas. A visit to any Ekiti oriented
group on facebook will testify to my words.
Likewise, we were told that we are running free education,
but there is no single school in Ekiti state where fees are not being collected
by using one logic or the other. The kind of free education we grew up to know
is the kind where everything, I mean, everything, was free; not even PTA fee
was paid. However, there is a modernization of free education today in Ekiti
state; a senior friend, whose son attends one of the government-owned Government
Colleges (names withheld), paid a total of Sixteen thousand naira (#16,000) at
the beginning of this present session. What a way to give education free!
My dissident brothers may argue the free textbooks given to
students, but I shall be quick to say that that is not a departure from what
had been since the days of Awolowo and Ajasin (both of blessed memories) in the
old Ondo State. What we clamour for in Ekiti state is a true change that will
not only be, but engender a clear and total departure from the moribund pasts
we have always had; not an intrusive repeat of them.
WORKERS’
WELFARE
I want to commend Mr. Governor and his team on this
all-important area of Ekiti people’s lives, not because they have done anything
commendable, but because they have not prided themselves as having done well in
this area.
Fayemi’s administration has reduced the ever ebullient
Nigerian workers, Ekiti state chapter, to a kind of servitude. The local government workers are the hardest
hit. It is only in this administration that I have come to see and know that if
a worker came late (not absent for the whole day) to work on a single day, such
worker will loose a whole month’s salary. I challenged some of Mr. Governor’s
boys sometimes ago, on facebook, to tell me where such an erratically obnoxious
provision is written in the Nigerian Labour Law. Unfortunately, none was able
to say anything.
The e-payment system introduced by this government did not
help situation either. This is a system that is programmed in such a way that
if the name of a worker is wittingly or unwittingly omitted for one month, such
a worker will definitely loose his/her salary for three months before such an
error would be corrected; ditto for a worker who is either underpaid or
overpaid.
The untold maltreatment meted out to the workers, especially
at the local government level, by Mr. Governor’s Monitoring Teams popularly
known as “Boko Haram”, is better not imagined. History has it that a pregnant
woman who took to her heels to be able to get seen by these “Boko Harams” in
order to save her salary fell on the way, and before she could be rushed to a
nearby hospital, she gave up the ghost.
Many workers who have been due for promotion since 2010 when
Fayemi came to power have never been promoted. Until now that he wants their
votes for a second-term, Fayemi never thought it wise to work on the workers’
promotion. By so doing, the workers’ rights are being turned, not only to a
privilege, but bait for them to vote Mr. Governor in for a second-term. The
foolery of this administration shows more now in that virtually all the workers
in the state are jostling for promotion now, all at the same time. What a
government to behold!
The plight of Pensioners in the state is even worst!
Presently, there are Pensioners in the state who still earn an insulting One
thousand, five hundred naira (#1,500) as pension. When Mr. Governor was
contacted on the gory welfare of the Pensioners and the fact that the Federal
Government has reviewed Pensioners’ pays, the Governor replied that he was not
aware of such developments. These developments and some others were the reasons
the Pensioners in Ekiti state were the only set of Pensioners, the world over,
who did not celebrate Pensioners’ Day on the 23rd of November, 2013.
