N780 Million for Gani Fawehinmi's name ?

The Ondo state government are out to spend close to N1B on some project to immortalise Nigeria's most celebrated Lawyer - Gani Fawenhinmi, who passed away sometime this year as reported here in the Daily Independent here by building some sort of a medical diagnostic centre.


That sum of money to be expended translates into nearly 6 Million US Dollars.

You wonder how much money is needed in other climes to build a fully functional hospital.

Hear this:

"The centre, according to him, shall contain  CT scan station, sonography station/colour doppler, MRI station, digital X-ray station, MRI system room, mammography station, pathology station, video conferencing auditorium, telemedicine and a VIP lounge.

You wonder do these people recognise these equipment - and that is not to question how laudable or needed they are - work, and only work on Electricity ?

Hello!!! And that bad supply of electricity  will damage them ?

Is the state government driven by the need to do something in the supposed honour of the Greatest, of the Great Gani, so much it won't think ?

Whatever happened to risk / cost benefit analysis ?

These all looks wrong already but you wish you are wrong. And you are prepared to give Mimiko and Alagbaka the benefit of the doubt.

But given, the profligacy, rather wanton ease with which mind-boggling sums are being approved, for this, and for that, you can only but question the integrity of the thought-process, that goes into decision-making at the highest places in Ondo state.

The art of governance, as evidenced everwhere else where there is a semblance of governance does not begin and stop with the approval of contracts.

At nearly N1B, the government of Mimiko could have introduced a radical plan to build a new and proper specialist hospital in the state rather than a mere diagnostic center. What stops that ?

What about helping to immediately reduce the rate and spate of accidents ?

- Introducing rescue services and ambulance services to the pre-existing hospitals?  No ?
- Increasing the operational equipment and facilities in the existing hospitals?


If there was anythinig that defined Gani, in life and now in death, it was the genuineness of his heart, of his principles and of everything he stood for.

One Hopes Mimiko and his lot are sincere with their multi-million Naira show in Gani's name.

You do not want to contemplate the reverse...


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In-Mimiko-Sanity!

There are many ways to be insane. And you do not need a medical degree to recognise insanity in all its other exhibitions as we have all over Nigeria – in the highest places.

But in Ondo state, The Punch newspaper report(http://bit.ly/an6HCS) of governor Olusegun Mimiko’s recent approval of a mind boggling N866M to former political office holders that served in the 18 local government councils(the 1999-2007 set) simply announces a new category of madness: In-Mimiko-sanity!

If you let it affect you for a second, you stand the risk of losing your very head. And the decision was ratified in the state executive council meeting. It makes your blood boil. Who are these people? The commissioners, these pretenders, of leaders, who cannot see the uttermost of evil in rewarding themselves with such sums of money, in a state where 22 persons recently burnt to death in a hapless road accident (http://bit.ly/aQFUkJ) or wait, this (http://bit.ly/9hMcGJ) where at least 22 young children lost their lives on what should be routine cross-country trip – an excursion!

Has it not occurred to the folks in, and around Alagbaka that these accidents are preventable, if we had functional roads? You have to wonder who is prioritising projects and expenditure in the Ondo state government who proposed that such a cut of the state budget should go into the pockets of the 1999-2007 set of so-called politicians who cannot point to a single specific impact they made in their local communities let alone in the broader lives of the citizens they pretended to have led. It is pathetic! That is In-Mimiko-Sanity for you.

The symptoms of this particular In-Mimiko-sanity begins to hurt you even more when you imagine what wonders N866M could achieve in an Ondo state so endowed with brightly and scholarly people, and history.

Think for a second what a fully furnished 24-hour Internet Information centre hosted right at the heart of the Ondo state library can do to empower the youthful masses of Ondo state, were governor Mimiko’s government focused enough to spend that money in a solar operated free-for-all-citizen cyber-centre ? You would need a fraction of N866M to pull it off but not when you suffer from In-mimiko-sanity.

Take the OSRC – and they have a penchant for changing that name but I refer to the Ondo state broadcasting outfit; It takes only a walk around their Oba-Ile studios to observe the derelict that has become of what was once one of the best broadcast channels you could listen to, or watch. 

Time was, when OSRC covered events real-time with Outside-broadcast vehicles, in super-clean television colours. Today, it is self evident no serious person bothers with OSRC anymore. The quality of the programming, the quality of the broadcasters, and the quality of the equipment at their disposal is benchmarked at the 80’s level that the glorious Pa. Ajasin administration left-over. Think of what a serious government – of brave, honest and determined, and of course, free from in-mimiko-sanity people – can do to such an institution with almost One Billion Naira? Dreams!

Ondo state has one of the most fertile landscapes in the whole namespace called Nigeria. With a careful attention to maximising production output, and injection of radical new ideas into production-methods, just think of what these sums of money can do to a plantation of yam? Or a massive village thought out, and supported to produce poultry – chicken and eggs – somewhere in the middle of Igbatoro village or somewhere in the heartland of Oke-Igbo.

No! Governor Mimiko, and his now certified collection of clowns-co, better for the EXCO as they like to parade themselves, will rather make you satisfy yourself with their endless ‘plans’ to build this; or ‘plans’ to do that.

And it is all truly disgraceful when you remind yourself this is an administration that rode on the back of popular confidence, and support – as the very patient people of Ondo state did their utmost to exorcise the wholesome wastefulness and grade A thoughtfulness of the penultimate governor Olusegun Agagu era.

Still, all forms of Insanity do lend itself to cure. 

The people of Ondo state have consistently shown over the years, that while they may not have, yet, the sophistication to demand on-the-spot rationalisation for the trust and confidence they place on their government and how it is abused, they do not have a diminished sense of auditing.

The people of Ondo state have an acute sense of justice and a deeply rooted notion of moral probity. Thus, you can best your last kobo that with more and more bizarre authority-stealing-approval of monies like this, from Olusegun Mimiko’s government, the people of Ondo state are already counting down, that a day will come when this In-mimiko-sanity will be over.

Governor Mimiko will do well to wonder for himself: when and where did I catch this madness? Or is it just a question of being surrounded by parasites from his previous PDP who are vectors of this disease?

Notwithstanding, the people of Ondo state voted for Dr. Olusegun Mimiko when it was crunch election time. They must have thought he had the insight to diagnose insanity. No one is sure, Mimiko knows about In-mimiko-sanity yet but it is never too late to consult with his most trust medical, or rather philosophical sources…

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Ondo state Speaker, Sacked!

Full reports here.

The most distressing thing about the whole business, as reported here, was the lack of a clear, specific reason the speaker had to be deposed for.

These people - do they really recognise the importance and avowed responsibilities of their offices ?

From afar, It all has the trappings of dog-eat-dog.

sad!.

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Ondo state Students v. Mimiko 2010 : Round 1

Ondo students fight government over bursary. from 234Next.

There goes the headline.

Hear governor Mimiko.

“Despite the fact that the staffers of the state scholarship board carried out verification exercise in some universities, some students still manipulated the exercise,” Mr. Mimiko said. “We discovered a large scale racketeering at the State Scholarship Board, hence we stopped the disbursement and we had instituted a serious investigation into the activities of the those in charge of the fund.”

You couldn't not but feel sorry for the poor choice of words. 

If all you wanted to do, is investigate, then you actually do not need to STOP disbursement. You might suspend disbursement, postpone it but you do not stop it. 

Again a sorry reflection of the  depth of government folks around Alagbaka...

But on a broader level, this comment, on the 234Next's article quite sums up the notion of student bursaries:

I studied hydrology as an undergrad. During the 5/6 years I was in school, we developed models for spillways, calculated runoff and discharge from streams and rivers... ALL THEORY! NOT ONE SINGLE LAB, NOT ONE! Nigerian students are just as misguided as the leaders. They do not need bursaries, rather, they need quality education, more funding for their universities and such. How much does the government give each student on an annual basis anyway? Ten, Fifteen, Twenty thousand naira? Will that take care of their needs for two months? Some would argue that increased funding may transfer costs to the students. True, but funding also includes provision of loans for these students to complete their education. Such measures are more far reaching than the stupid bursaries. That is why they should relocate to the government office, not some pittance termed bursaries!

Go Figure.

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Adekunle Ajasin University...The price of sins foretold...

Adekunle Ajasin University, is known to many people on the streets as a glorified secondary school.

In this analysis, McNezer Fasheun takes you on the road to why:

By the time Pa Adefarati became the elected governor of the new Ondo State, he did not blink an eye before he sited the state-owned University in his relatively rural home town, Akungba Akoko. Up till today, Akungba has not developed to the standard of being a University town as lecturers and students live in places like Akure, Ikare and Oka-Akoko, from where they shuttle daily to come to school. Just as a ritual to ward off a curse, the university was named Adekunle Ajasin, a superficial arrangement that has nothing but cosmetic benefits to its administration. Successive vice-chancellors, has never spent 24 hours at Akungba Akoko at any point in time. This invariably has affected the quality of its faculty by way of lecturers the place would attract.

And It ends with a timely advise to the current occupiers of Alagbaka:

To correct the anomaly, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, the incumbent Governor, must borrow a leaf from older and newer universities which run multi-campus universities. At present, the Osun State University has distributed its campuses in such a manner that no section of the state could feel short - changed. Ifetedo, which, in old Western Region, had shared a community secondary school, with Okeigbo now hosts the faculty of law campus while the humanities are based in Osogbo.

The Adekunle Ajasin University could well leave the faculty of Arts and Management Sciences at Akungba, its present site and central unit. The faculty of law could move to Akure, the state capital with equitable distance to the Benin Judicial Division. Ondo town, and its State Hospital, would better serve as the location of the university's College of Medicine and Teaching Hospital respectively, since Ondo is equally equidistant between the Northern and Southern Senatorial districts of the state. The lately established Ondo State University of Science and Technology could then become the faculty of Engineering, while a school of Marine and Oceanographic with Petroleum institute could be sited at the Igbokoda and Ilaje Ese Odo Local Governments. Each of the campuses would have its administrative structure with a provost as head.

You can only hope they are listening...

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Mimikonomics - Of Governor Olusegun Mimiko's administration...Summations and Posers from Wole Ademefun

You do not get to read articulate analysis, if detailed one, on Ondo state affairs too often.

But, here Wole Ademefun in Mimikonomics - A Policy of Impulse And Waste? does  one that might best be considered summations and posers for the Olusegun Mimiko government.

Hear him.

"Since February 24, 2009 when Mimiko came on board, every project undertaken by government has been on impulse or by donation. Right on the podium on inauguration day, he assured that he would meet the people in their homes and institute the production of data capturing all purpose I.D. cards within his first 100 days without counting the cost.

The I.D card project was to be quickly followed by well-publicised public housing projects to be located in the state capital...

and 

"Also, 300 stalls are being erected at a cost of N150 million or N500,000 per stall.

It is even more ridiculous that the reason for locating the market at Eru Oba within the precincts of the Deji's palace, a location that will generate further traffic into both Arakale and Oba Adesida roads will negate the government's intention to ease traffic on both roads!

If there are any pointers to how ludicrously thought-less or insincere the entire apparatus of Alagbaka government is, it can be seen in the catalogue of flip-flop and impuse decisions, which the article points out even with vague attempts tuck them in comparison to the government-stealing era of Agagu.

What appears most tragic in the ongoing show of surface-dressing that Mimiko's government represents, is the indictment of the character and quality of the governor's people.

To say, Ondo state citizenry expected a lot more would be an understatement...

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Ondo Budget 2010: Live on the Internet ?

"The N124.3 billion budget, out of which N43.4 billion was set aside as recurrent expenditure and the lion share of N80.9 billion as capital votes, was passed into law by the Assembly last Thursday in a record period of less than a month of scrutiny by the Budget and Appropriation Committee."

That's how much Ondo state is expected to spend over the next 365 days as in the Guardian report here.

But its the bit here:

"THE Ondo State Appropriation Law 2010, the legal instrument for the current fiscal plan of the state government, has been posted on the Internet..."

that got my attention.

They made it appear as though the mere posting ( to use their choice of word ) such information to the Internet, is some kind of an achievement...Only in the land where Ideas are truly scarce.

But wait, more disaster. The budget cannot be found.

Nowhere!.

Having surfed http://www.ondostate.gov.ng/ for up to ten minutes, a direct link to the budget Cannot be seen.

Yet, ONe sees this:

and 

this.

Why is the Governor's cake-cutting-jamboree getting home-page presence, when a basic piece of information, so critical to the the very soul of governance, heck! the people, is un-seeable?

Or at best, buried away somewhere ?

:

The managers of this government, and its website authors need to step up their games. 

It is not election time, and they can learn a lot from visiting other government website such as:

this, South Africa,

- http://www.gov.za/

or this, 

http://www.ghana.gov.gh/ Ghana,

or, if feeling very ambitious indeed, 

this:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/index.htm UK. 

A government's website should be about the Ideas of governmenance and policies, and one should find all the links to the right departments and latest Information on the home page.

If one wanted to see the governor's wive at cake-cutting, their wedding ceremony would probably be a better version to watch...

So much, for posting the budget onto the Internet...

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