PERSPECTIVE: Leadership Unusual
- By Kolawole Wasiu Omotunde-Young
A few weeks after he was sworn in as Governor in November 2010, Rauf Aregbesola observed a noticeable number of people with psychosis, in various degrees of carefreeness to the world around them – dirty, clad in rags or sometimes just naked, unkempt, sitting or roaming around – as he went around Osogbo and the streets of Osun.
He called attention to this, expressing the view that a society that simply ignored its vulnerable people in such mental state, was unlikely to develop.
Contact was made with the Ministry of Youths and Sports (which was said to have responsibility for such) and the officer in charge gave a budget with which to clear the streets of the people with psychosis and attend to them.
And the people with psychosis disappeared within a week. Or so it seemed; because within less than two weeks after this, a new set in different states of carefreeness to the world, appeared, almost in vengeance.
When enquiries were made from the officer in charge, he explained that usually the ones removed from the streets were profiled with the aim of identifying their towns and States of origin in Nigeria and were then subsequently returned to those States and that the new ones may have also been returned to Osun by some other States.
When asked to clarify how those cleared from the streets in Osun were handed over in their supposed States of origin, he said they simply dropped them on the streets in the middle of the night!
Ogbeni – meaning “ simply Mr” as Aregbesola likes to be called – could not imagine and couldn’t reconcile himself with what he heard. After deliberating with his close aides and agreeing on how best to attend to this, he immediately approved funding and support, to restore a run down rehabilitation centre in the State and gave instructions for the people with psychosis to be removed from the streets, treated at government’s expense at the Psychiatric unit of the then Lautech Teaching Hospital Osogbo and reunited with their families.
That was how the journey that ensured that all a person with psychosis needed to be treated and rehabilitated, was to find his/ her way to Osun, to be found on (and cleared from) the streets by Aregbe’s “Commissioner for were (Yoruba for psychosis)” – as some of his colleagues jokingly called the Special Adviser (later Commissioner) for Youths, Sports and Special needs – whose portfolio included ensuring these vulnerable citizens were taken care of humanely. And there were no questions asked about State of Origin of the vulnerable patient.
In fact, this writer encountered one such psychotic person, rescued from the streets (with her son who was about one year plus old), who said she just came from a distant State because she heard Aregbe took care of people exhibiting such symptoms as hers!!
When in 2018, INEC declared the election for Governorship inconclusive and rescheduled a rerun in some wards, this lady rescued from the streets with her son, called from her location (outside Osun) and remarked that if only because of beneficiaries like her, God would not but win the election for Aregbe’s candidate!!!
Among such people picked from the streets, treated and reunited with their families is someone who later became a lecturer at a higher institution of learning and is said to be happily married and raising a family and several others who were reunited with their spouses and children and are gainfully engaged.
All through his time as Governor, Ogbeni ensured that these class of vulnerable Nigerians – and many other vulnerable people – were supported under the Social Protection Programmes.
When the Social Protection scheme for the vulnerable elderly in Osun – named Agba Osun – in which a monthly stipend was paid to each identified vulnerable old citizen was being planned, a partnership was deliberately established with experts from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences of Obafemi Awolowo University to prepare the template and help establish a fair and just identification and documentation of beneficiaries to prevent favouritism and abuse.
O-Meals, the school feeding programme, was developed to ensure pupils in the first four years of elementary school have the right nutritional intake to support development of their brains and bodies. Studies by UNICEF and top scholars in the world have shown that the state of health at early years of the child’s life, permanently affect, the development of the brain.
The State partnered with Obafemi Awolowo University to design diet and menu that provided high nutrition at minimal cost using agricultural products sourced from the State. To many of the pupils, the meals served in school, was the most nutritionally beneficial meal they ate every day.
Aregbesola instigated the redesign of the programme beyond Education to include Agriculture, Economy, Employment, Productivity and Enterprise. Farmers, Caterers and suppliers in the State were organised, empowered, supported and patronised.
The government led by Aregbesola was sworn in, during the last days of the last week of November 2010 which was in the harmattan season. He organised within a short time before the next rainy season, to clear and desilt drainages, canals, streams and rivers, to put an end to the perennial flood that had plagued Osogbo and several towns in Osun virtually every year during the raining season, damaging properties and causing losses of lives.
Residents of Osogbo were pleasantly surprised from 2011 that the “god of flooding”, which some officials of a previous government, were reported to have said needed to be worshipped to prevent annual flooding, had been appeased simply by applying knowledge and technology under a new leadership.
Farmer – Herder relationship was one in which Aregbesola succeeded exceptionally . To ensure peaceful coexistence, a committee led by a senior aide and having members nominated by the Fulani community, the Bororo community and Yoruba indigenes, was established and tasked with managing herder – farmer relationship through education, interrelationship and dispute resolution. This committee provided a commendable success story in the management of security and farmer – herder relationship under Ogbeni. It is something the Federal Government should have understudied.
Osun Youth Employment Scheme(OYES) which engaged 20,000 youths within Aregbe’s first 100 days in office, turned out to be the most impacting, most successful youth employment scheme delivered at once, ever in Africa.
OYES impacted the Economy, Security, Environment, Agriculture, Skills sets and Productivity in the State exponentially.
As reported by the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) within two years of running OYES, unemployment figure crashed from 12.4% (2008 – 2010) to 3% (2013) in Osun, giving Osun the lowest unemployment rate in the country; a figure which has not been matched anywhere in the country since. Osun became the State with the second lowest figure on the poverty index. Osun was also rated the most secured State in the country.
Aregbesola promoted the linkage of poverty, hunger, lack of access to quality education, to insurgencies like Boko Haram, banditry etc. scourging the nation, and how programmes like O-Meal, OYES, O- School, etc if sustained nationwide could help diminish and eliminate these security challenges.
The opinions expressed in this publication are solely those of the author. It does not represent the editorial position or opinion of OSUN DEFENDER.
