Agriculture: Commissioner Speaks from yesterday...

The Ondo state commissioner for Agriculture, is speaking about Agriculture. Full report here, and that is a good thing.

But, what he says in 2010, a year after his government has been been in Alagbaka is tantamount to hearing a voice from yesterday.

His ministry is planning a confab  - code for Jamboree, in Nigeria - in the convoluted intention to 'brainstorm" how to take Cocoa to the next level.

"the government was organising a three-day cocoa international conference in the state capital, Akure, next week, where stakeholders within and outside Nigeria would gather to brainstorm on "how to take the magic crop to the next level."

If after more than a year in a government, in a place so agriculturally endowed as Ondo state, the lead government officer, in charge of Agriculture is only able to come up with a confab-for-discussion, in search of stakeholders then quite frankly, that is the hallmark of Incompetence.

Or, less harshly, lack of foresight.

It is also a reflection of Jankara administration that most probably is going on in Alagbaka. after one year...

There are a lot of simple things that could have been put foward by the  Ministry of Agriculture to enhance the production, distribution and exportation of Cocoa In / from Ondo state.

Most of them are so obvious - to any logical and serious minded thinker - they mostly do not deserve one-by-one enumeration. 

They most certainly do not need to be discussed at a confab - and heaven knows our confabs in Nigeria gulps more money than they produce results. 

Here are ones that comes to mind on the blinkers:

- Does the Ondo state government have necessary realtime data on the volume of Cocoa Beans produced in the state yearly ?

- What are the direct impediments to increasing such production ?

- What solutions has the government proposed to boost production by directly removing these impediments ?

- What about auditing the structure of tax that affects Cocoa businesses in the state ? Is there need to redesign the processes ? 

- How is the government encouraging the down-stream processing of Cocoa through careful and organised promotion of private initiatives ?

The commissioner said:

"For us in Ondo State and particularly for this new administration of Governor Olusegun Mimiko, it is time to wake up our people once again to the reality magic cocoa had been for our fathers and the development of the state during their time. At a time when little or nothing was known about oil money, they used agriculture, particularly cocoa to revolutionise development, and what accrued, they used to sustain the then central government. Now is the time to return to that, our people and our government in partnership are determined to return to that era."

You just have ask yourself, do these people  realise they are not contesting an election anytime soon ?

If this is the mindset of most of governor Mimiko's commissioners, you have to wonder when they would all realise four years is not so long anymore...

The people of Ondo state does not need their government, nor governor, nor commissioner directly responsible and voted for acting, to wake up after months on the stage, and give them reminders. mere reminders.

They need them to "act up" that the people might remind themselves.

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Pius Adesanmi On Ondo state government...

Pius Adesanmi, 234Next's columnist has words for Ondo state government officials. It is here.

"What about the governor of Ondo State? What was his role in all of this? The entire House of Assembly couldn’t possibly have planned a two-week trip to the United States without the governor’s knowledge. What did he think of the proposal?"

I wonder what governor Mimiko thought about the scam, from so-called legislators from his house of assembly. I wonder if he tried to stop them from showcasing intense idiocy, of this magnitude to the world.

I wonder what Information Commissioner - Ranti Akerele, has to explain to the people of Ondo state, on this misguided show of senselessness, a la Ondo state legislators. 

And to think:

"The Ondo lawmakers are still talking...One of them, Hon. Otito Atikase, representing Ilaje Constituency II, described the action of the US Embassy as a “slap on Nigeria as a nation”. The Ondo lawmakers have even resolved to write the National Assembly over the matter.

Well, Pius Adesanmi concludes well: 

"Junior thieves in Akure planning to write senior thieves in Abuja. Shior."

So darn! right.

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Quote of the day: Olusegun Agagu on Trust...

"I have learnt more about how wicked and shameless man even in high places can be. I have learnt about how people's morals and trust can sink in the quest for power. I have learnt more about how fertile man's mind can be in fabricating lies against fellow man. I have learnt how little the word trust means to some people."

There goes ex-governor, Olusegun Agagu as reported here


One is hard pressed to simply say:

"so long governor, how did you manage for so long".

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Gbenga Akinmoyo On the Ondo state new Traffic sheme.

The ondo state government recently launched a Traffic control scheme.

Full report can be obtained here

"...I think the approach is wrong. Recruiting more personnel to the existing agencies, better shift systems, improved training facilities etc. would have been a better option."

---- Gbenga Akinmoyo, a commentator here

That is it really. 

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The deputy governor of Ondo state - Ali Olanusi explains:

"...the scheme was born of the desire by the government to maintain free movement in the hitherto congested towns."

There goes another repeated duplication of efforts, and duplication of resource-consumpution-endpoints, and the folly of 'more' is always right.

It is not contested that the new effort will provide employment to a few select citizens. Goodluck to them.

What will be interesting is how the new scheme will / or will  not overlay with the duties of other state departments that are already, left undone.

It has to be said though,  most of these other parastatatals are under the control of the currently moribund Abuja federal government, 

In that sense, this might be a good idea.

Again. we defer to time...

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Ondo state Legislators v. U.S. embassy: Questions for the Speaker and other thoughts.

The members of the Ondo state House of assembly is in the papers, and all over the Internet.  For all the wrong reasons.

It is no use rehashing the reports but one of them can be found in full here.

In short, the members of the ondo state house of assembly 'agreed' to attend 'seminars' in three countries - the USA, Canada and the UK, but 22 out of the applying 26 got denied.

The rationale of those embassies for denying visas is irrelevant but listen to one of Ondo legislators:-

" the US government‘s action against them was unpleasant, callous and a slap on Nigeria as a nation."

Really Mr. Honourable ?

It is the prerogative of each country to let you into their country. And if they choose not, well it might be unpleasant to you but it does not make them callous. 

And it is not a slap on Nigeria as a nation. never. 

In fact, what would seem a bigger slap to the integrity of Ondo state and her people, let alone Nigeria, is that all 26 of you, would wake up someday and feel the necessity to attend some undisclosed seminar in countries that are more than six thousand miles away from you, all funded from the public purse:

/ Countries where there are functional roads, functional hospitals, functional educational infrastructure, and healthy progressive people /

And most disgraceful of all, countries where their own leadership do not ever think of attending your own's organised seminar. 

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Mr. Speaker Abdulsalam Taofik would further explain that one of his house member was spreading rumours and that visa-application-processing apparently has become one of the duties of the leadership of the  Ondo state House of assembly.

Hear him:-

"“Why should Atikase be spreading unfounded rumours? He did not apply for the US; he applied for the Canadian visa and we are already processing that for him,”

Pathetic. 

This is sad, in the dimension that it exposes to you  the small mindset with which the affairs of a supposed independent state are being conducted and frightens you, how we got here, and just how much road we have to travel...

The totality of their situation beggars the questions:-

• - What are/were the course content of these agreed seminars ? 

• - How precisely is the seminar to benefit the people of Ondo state ?

• - Who is picking up the bills, especially now that the application has been denied ? (The very minimum fee of applying for a UK visa is more than N17,000.00 per application)

• - Do these officers actually recognise their various duties, to their constituencies ? 

and the biggest, simplest question  of all:

Do these legislators  not have access to satellite television, let alone the Internet in their respective homes or chambers ? 

They could have saved themselves these embarrassment, with merely a free TV subscription to BBC Parliament.

Or, an organised Internet seminar-sessions visiting here

That would, of course, be if it was not about the money, the estacode charge-backs.

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Upcoming salary Increase. Upcoming Charges Increase. Upcoming Fee Increase. Endless Vicious Cyle.

"Our administration is ready to implement the new wage increase once the federal government has approved it...”

There goes Governor Mimiko at the weekend. Full report here

Good Idea on the face value.

Except that, ground-level economics -I mean the sort we learn in secondary school, and the lesson of history dictates what follows that idea, viz:-

/ Our vulcanisers will be ready to implement new charges for fixing everyone's vehicle tyres, once the government approves that /

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/ Our market-women will be itching to charge more for tomato, rice and Maggi, once the news spreads that government workers has a new wage /

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/ Taxi drivers, Landlords, and possibly fuel-merchants, will implement a double-up on their charges /

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You get the idea.

Or to revert to Albert Einstein:

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

Now, Its fine ambition and sounds pretty good for a responsible government, to seek salary increases for its immediate constituency - its workers.

Where it is wrong, possible un-clever,  however, is in its rationalisation as merely to "[ make] workers smile and comfortable.”

It is wrong because, its a strategy that has been proven, time and time again, to only fix the symptoms of an entrenched disease. 

Sort of, continued usage of paracetamol in the misplaced hope that Malaria will go away.

Even a non-medical doctor knows that simply delays, or suspends, the presence of pain. 

You can smile all you want for six hours or thereabout, but the discomfort is here to stay, so long as that plasmodium infection - the real malaria - flows in the blood stream.

Why is it hard to see, that the promise of smiles and comfort, for the people of Ondo state, lies in the waiting vision of someone to radically approach things differently, by being brave enough to confront the un-asked questions, and honest enough to forgo tested, but failed approaches ?

Here are a few of the glaring propositions:

• - there is a massive belt of fertile land around. Everywhere.

  Formulate a policy, and translate that into a government supervised food production axis. On a massive, sustainable, and efficient scale.

• - there is a disconnect between the production of food and its distribution, due to government's (and admittedly other influential people) neglect of infrastructure and just how much it can do, to food pricing, just by ensuring a constant stream from the farms, to the kitchen.

  Ensure all roads leading in and out of major farming regions are properly fixed. Organise private sector, or the Ministry of Agriculture, to syncronise the two endpoints (production, distribution ) in an efficient and serious manner.

• Keep a tab on statistics (of production, of need and capacity) and begin a visionary system of price control at the economic level. 

• Ensure the critical mass of the working staff and ministries are keyed on in every facet of governance.




Ultimately, Its a function of seeing the bigger picture. And having the bravery of mind and commitment to approach problem solving from this standpoint.




Alagbaka - and that is inclusive of the totality of the government team  - is either being incompetent at solving the problems of Ondo state, or still trapped in the hopeless abyss of electioneering populism.




It may well be another vicious cyle, but four years - the people of Ondo state has proven, is not really that long.

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www.OndoNet.org: Mediocrity Imported & exemplified, but at what cost ?

This post was initially billed to be a review of the newly launched, Ondo state official website, sitting pretty at http://www.ondostate.gov.ng/

Because that is what it is, pretty! And no more.  

Then I ran into really un-pretty stuff during research.

Hosted at http://www.ondonet.org is a mediocre piece of web-engineering,  pretending, or is it purporting to provide some 'interesting' information about the government of Ondo state. 

And the more I surfed the site, the more confused I was...

Someone please tell me this website - http://www.ondonet.org is a piece of freeware, that is, no one is paying for that ? 

It has to be one huge joke and if this is unofficial, the government of Ondo state should be asking whoever is behind this website to stop the embarrassment. With a wo-sere o! postcard to send him away. 

On this page, there is a youtube video of one Robert Szlizs - the 'architect' behind the project.  

The video is as grainy as ones recorded in the 70s shortly after Ondo state was created. Except would still be of better quality. 

You wonder how hard it can be to record PR! with a cheap Nokia camera...let alone how much it costs to hire a VHS camcorder.

But that does not do much justice to the shabby presentation of information on the whole site, which is a frightening basic installation of Joomla - a free downloadable piece of content-management-system

Which beggars the questions:

• Is  Mr. Robert being paid for this website ? If then, how much ? 

And in that case, whoever is monitoring this project is a complete mediocre and should be quite simply be tossed out, or off all Internet web-platform deployment projects. 

A quick google search reveals that the Robert's parent company FixPoint Attractions is a one-man "show charging  40 Euros / hour from Slovakia ?

Oh Lord! 

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When the Governor throws Money...

The story is here.

Make of it what you will.

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=N25M= Training. Divide by 32 equals Bizzare thinking.

"...the governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, had approved N25m for the training of 320 senior citizens of the state on rural projects."

The more you think about that line, and the subsequent justifications proffered in the rest of the report here.

the further you are thinking : Bizarre.

Or government Bazaar. At large.

How do you train citizens on rural projects ? 

You are either :

One,  planning to roll out rural projects 

or

two, you are training people, on how to make / fix / produce /  or develop rural projects. 

Further, how is senior citizen defined ? Does it include the most performing government staff?  Would my grandfather qualify? 

If the way we used to do things is anything to go by, that is recipe for some "man-know-man" chronic lobbying.

The shallowness of the government commissioner speaking on behalf of the state government in this instance 

could  no further be exposed than his rationale for seeking another ministry.

Hear him:

"He [the commissioner - Mr. Clement Faboyede ] - therefore called on the Federal Government to urgently create the ministry for community development in order to alleviate the sufferings of the rural dwellers."

The more you evaluate the whole report, the more inclined you are to think, this is a strategic Bazaar from Alagbaka. you hope you are wrong.

Still, you have to wonder how effective this government might be in the long run, if this is the quality of mind that surrounds him. scary stuff.

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