For a Genuine
Working People’s Alternative Now
Governorship
election will come up in Osun State on 9th of August 2014. The ruling All
Progressive Congress (APC), which is seeking extension of tenure of the current
governor, Rauf Aregbesola will be contending with a similarly pro-rich,
reactionary party that is ruling at the federal level, the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP). PDP’s candidate is Iyiola Omisore. Some other contestants are Fatai Akinbade, a former PDP stalwart and former
secretary of the ousted Oyinlola government, who is contesting on the platform
of Labour Party and Mr. Segun Akinwusi, a former head of service contesting
under Social Democratic Party (SDP. One thing that is common to these parties
and contestants is their pro-rich, anti-poor policies and dispositions.
Aregbesola
government uninspiring
The incumbent governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola,
in an interview with Vanguard newspaper published on July 11, 2014, painted a
picture of a rosy Osun State under his administration. Nothing can be farther
from the truth. In reality, the policies of the Aregbesola government – a
government that rode to power on the back of huge support of the mass of people
– have mostly been elitist and anti-poor. Working and oppressed people are made
to suffer for various policies that are at best cosmetic, but in most cases
anti-poor.
For instance, while Mr. Aregbesola is
strutting around towns for his campaign, students of tertiary institutions in
the state are kept away from schools for over five months running, no thanks to
the failure of the government to meet the genuine demands of the striking
workers in the institutions. These demands include proper funding of
infrastructures in the institutions, and employment of more teaching staff, to
cover for chronic shortfall of teaching staff in the institutions. Meanwhile,
according to the propaganda machine of the government, the government has
improved education in Osun State to ‘global standard’.
Mega
Schools
While the government claimed to have
rebuilt about thirty schools, reportedly committing as much as N14 billion to
the projects, several hundreds of schools are still in deplorable state, with
hardly any functional teaching facility. In fact, just four, out of the over
thirty new schools the government claimed to have built have been completed. If
it took the government four years to build four schools, how many years, will
government need to rebuild most of the schools? In the name of rebuilding
schools, the government closed down and destroyed hundreds of schools, reducing
the number of primary and secondary schools in the state from over 2, 100 (two
thousands and one hundred), to 900 (nine hundred) schools. A terrible example
is the Fakunle High School, Osogbo, a school with enrolment of over 3, 000
students, which was demolished to pave way for a shopping mall! This has caused
untold hardship to parents and pupils. In many instances, pupils have to
transit by many kilometers to get to their ‘new’ schools. This policy of school
merger has disoriented the school system, leading to overcrowding of existing
schools and ineffective monitoring of students.
Worse still, the conditions of the schools
the pupils were transferred to, are as terrible as the ones they left. This has
made many reactionary pundits to demand that the schools that were originally owned
by missionary be returned to them. We in the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN)
reject this reactionary demand of return of schools to their previous
(missionary) owners who had been fully compensated when the schools were taken
over by the government in 1970’s. This demand if granted will deny poor parents
and their children access to education, as these schools will be priced out of
the reach of poor and working class parents. Worse still, it will lead to
dislocation of education system, as each school will introduce its own policy
without governmental control. It also has the tendency of leading to divisive
acrimony, especially along religious line. For instance, it will be difficult
for students of other faiths and religious beliefs to attend Christian/Muslim missionary
schools, where religious ethics will be enforced. This, at a period of deep
social and political crises, can generate dangerous religious crises. We, on
the contrary, demand free education at all levels, massive renovation and
rehabilitation of schools and democratic running of schools by elected
representatives of teachers students, parents, and the communities. Inasmuch as
we are opposed to the Aregbesola government’s merger policy, we consider return
of schools to missionary owners as a horrible alternative.
“Opon
Imo”
The Aregbesola government has also claimed
that it has distributed educational computer tablets, called “Opon Imo” to
students. While the SPN supports any effort to improve education, we consider
this policy, without basic improvement in school facilities, as painting a dilapidating
house. More than this, the Opon Imo tablet has become another drainpipe for the
state. According to government sources, each tablet costs over N50, 000, which
is almost a double of the market value. Besides, the tablets, as against the
lies of the government, have no textbooks, but mere teaching notes written by
some teachers. Besides, it was not every
student that got the tablets as against the propaganda of the government when
the project was launched.
Farcically, the teachers were neither
trained in the use of the tablet nor given personal copies. This has meant that
the students are disconnected from their teachers. It is simply impossible for
any meaningful knowledge to be impacted on students with “opon imo” in such
situation. It is incredulous that the Aregbesola government has turned computer
tablets, which should serve as mere learning aids, as substitute to practical
teaching and education. Laboratories, libraries, etc are hardly available. There
is chronic shortage of teaching staff in schools. Yet, government claims to
have improved education. It is thus not accidental that public education has
nosedived with students becoming disoriented, teachers demoralized by these
anarchical education policies.
Expensive
Contract System
While we in DSM will welcome any
improvement in social infrastructures, no matter how little, we are quick to
point out the futility of piecemeal approach and capitalist manner of such
policies. For instance, with Public Works Ministry properly equipped and
developed, N14 billion reportedly handed over to big time contractors for the
rebuilding of 30 schools could have been used to reconstruct hundreds of
schools, to standard. More than this, it will lead to decent and secure
employment for thousands of young people, as against handful of part time and
casual jobs the contractors offered in order to maximize profit. This also
applies to road construction, where several billions of naira has been expended
on limited stretches of road. The over N10 billion reportedly used to construct
some hundred kilometers of inner township roads, could have been used to
construct several hundreds of kilometers of roads, if the contracting system
had not been entrenched. Today, the Ministry of Works, and its professional
staffs have been rendered idle, as their jobs have been contracted out. Thus,
it will not be surprising when the government starts using the excuse of
redundancy to retrench workers.
School
Feeding Program and School Uniforms
The governor in the Vanguard newspaper
interview mentioned the school feeding programme as one of the success stories
of the government. Of course, one will readily welcome and support any
initiative that tends to reduce the burden on poor parents and improve the
lives of poor kids. However, this programme, which was started by Oyinlola
government, is not all that a rosy story. The so-called jobs being provided for
the cooks working for the school feeding programme hardly provide them with
living wage, yet big time contractors, who supply materials for the programme,
continue to amass wealth.The cooks are only expected to gain marginal profits
from materials provided for the school feeding programme. This can lead to
cutting of cost at the expense of quality of foods. One would have expected the
government to employ cooks and place them on living wage. More than this, we
will expect the government to state how it will resolve pervasive poverty that
has made parents unable to feed and clothe themselves and their kids.
While the APC government is committing
public resources to lining the pockets of the rich and politicians, working
people are being squeezed under the guise of financial prudency. The Aregbesola
government gave almost one billion naira of public fund, under the guise of
giving free school uniforms to pupils, to a private business to set up a
garment factory in the state. However, some months after the so-called free
school uniform programme, poor parents are now being forced to procure the same
school uniforms from the private garment factory (which now has the monopoly of
producing public school uniforms) at more than double the price of former
school uniforms. This has caused an untold hardship to poor parents.
Pensioners
and OYES
While politicians are earning millions as
salaries and allowances, working people are made to go through hell to get
their basic incomes. A case in point is that of thousands of retirees who are
still owed several months of pension arrears; while no gratuity has been paid
since the current government emerged almost four years ago. Worse still, many
workers have been pushed into the exploitative Contributory Pension Scheme that
hands over workers’ pensions to private pension managers, who pay workers
peanuts but earn huge profits from them. To add insult to injury, the
government has refused to remit its contribution to this fraudulent pension
scheme, thus denying many retirees of their meagre entitlements.
The so-called employment scheme government
established under Osun Youth Employment Scheme (OYES), where twenty thousand
young people were purportedly employed, has been nothing but rip-off. The
volunteers, aside being paid peanuts of less than ten thousand naira as
salaries, are denied any democratic right including regularization of job,
accident allowances, retirement opportunity or right to unionization. Worse
still, those employed are to be disengaged within two years. Already, the first
batch of the volunteers have been disengaged, many of them returning to the
streets.Yet, there is a huge shortfall in the civil and teaching services due
to mass retirement of thousands of workers.
No
Viable Alternative
As terrible and anti-poor as ruling Aregbesola/APC
government is the PDP and its candidate Iyiola Omisore constitutes a horrible
alternative. The PDP ruled the state for seven and half years, three and half
years of which was illegally gotten through a rigged election. The seven and
half years of PDP were years of the locusts, as every facet of social services
and public infrastructures plummeted. There were serial attacks on workers and
students’ rights. The state university established by the Oyinlola/PDP
government was made exclusively for the children of the rich with school fees
as high as N200, 000, even when the state government hardly implemented the then
public sector minimum wage of N11, 000. The party, PDP has been ruling the
country since its emergence in 1999, yet more people are living in penury than
ever. This is in spite the fact that the country has earned unprecedented
wealth reportedly running to over $600 billion.
The party’s candidate, Iyiola Omisore, who
has been in politics since 1999, is part of this rotten politics. He was a
former deputy governor between 1999 and 2003, and the first major event associated
with him was mismanagement of millions of naira meant for water treatment and
supply. He was fingered, but later acquitted of the murder of former Justice
Minister, Bola Ige. He is a two-time senator, whose elections were fraught with
violence. As the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation between 2007
and 2011, he oversaw enactment of budgets that denied young people of
education, destroyed social services and handed public wealth to the rich few.
Therefore, his candidature has nothing to do with improving the lots of the
working people, but to use growing disillusionment of poor people with the
current government to access power and implement worse anti-poor, pro-rich
policies. He has never been identified with any pro-working people policy. For
instance, in his recent interview in Guardian newspaper, his alternative to the
backward school merger of Aregbesola government is privatization of education
through return of schools to their former owners.
However, based on general disillusionment
with the Aregbesola government, some workers and oppressed people are already
looking in the direction of Omisore. This has been given boost by the recent
victory of Ayo Fayose/PDP in Ekiti State governorship elections. This is like
moving in a vicious cycle. The same mass of people implacably opposed the
almost eight years of PDP rule, and struggled, even at the cost of their lives,
to have Aregbesola elected as governor. Yet, less than four years, many
sections of the populace are disenchanted with the government. This clearly
underscores the urgent need to build a new mass working people’s party with
clearly socialist programmes. This is what the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN)
stands for. There is tendency for a mass disillusionment in all the contestants,
which may lead to voters’ apathy, thus allowing major bourgeois parties to rig,
where they have opportunity and strength.
The other capitalist candidates like the
Labour Party’s Fatai Akinbade and Social Democratic Party’s SegunAkinwusi
(immediate past Head of Service in the state) have no fundamentally different
résumé from APC and PDP candidates. They were part of the rottenness associated
with current and past administrations. Akinwusi was Head of Service for eight
years under Oyinlola and Aregbesola. He was the brain behind the fraudulent
Contributory Pension Scheme that has led to dislocation of careers and
worsening living conditions of many workers and retirees. Akinbade was
Secretary to Oyinlola government for eight years, superintending over several
anti-poor policies of the government. Indeed, the emergence of these yesterday
men, including Omisore, aside being a product of lack of viable working class
and socialist alternative, is a reflection of the failure of the Aregbesola
government, whose four years have not engendered any serious improvement in
people’s lives.
If Aregbesola wins the coming governorship
election, it will only mean consolidation of anti-poor regime and further
diversion of public funds to private contractors, political patrons and
political office holders. On the contrary, in the event that the opposition PDP
defeat Aregbesola, it will mean emergence of another, possibly worse, scoundrel
in power. Surely, the next four years will be years of mass struggle of working
and oppressed people against one government’s anti-poor policy or the other.
The need to rebuild working people’s mass organizations like trade unions,
student movement, community movements, etc. is more urgent now than ever.
Unfortunately, many labour union leaders, in search of filthy lucre, have
turned themselves into pawns of various politicians. Moreover, there is the
need to start the process of building a new working and poor people’s political
platform as an alternative to all anti-worker and anti-poor parties. This is
where the SPN stands.
Alfred Adegoke Kola
Ibrahim
State Chairperson State Secretary
