THE Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrasheed Adewale Akanbi, has said that with the present economic and financial realities in Osun State, the state is sick, saying the government should redouble its efforts in increasing the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to improve its fortunes.
He contended that major attention must be focussed on the general overhaul of the state civil service by upgrading it, with a view to enhancing its collective productivity.
Speaking on the sideline of Engineer Ademola Adedapo’s annual secondary schools quiz competition held in Iwo, Oba Akanbi said: “Osun may find it difficult to pay wage bill. The government should overhaul the civil service. Osun will never rise if there are two vehicles to 30 drivers. The civil servants should upgrade themselves so that they can be more productive.”
According to him, “We have a problem in Osun and we have to shout and tell the world that we are sick in Osun. We need a medicine and we have to find the medicine for Governor Oyetola to be successful. He is a politician and it may be hard for him to even say what I am saying now. I can say it because I am a traditional ruler, who believes in the truth.”
Oba Akanbi continued: “It is just the truth I am telling you. We need to upgrade and update our civil service to be ICT compliant and we have to create a way to find other jobs for them in the civil service With what is going on in Osun, we don’t have the money. I am in this government and it doesn’t matter because I am a traditional ruler. I have to be concerned on how government can succeed.
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“We have so many workers for some jobs. I am not telling them to retrench, but government should find some ways out of this situation. How much is the allocation of Osun State in a month? Can it pay the wage bill or salary? Civil servant themselves should be more creative. Civil service is the largest employer of labour in this state and the IGR is nothing. We need to create more IGR. The traditional rulers should be involved in this.”
“All our natural resources and all these festivals that we celebrate should be sources of revenue to the state. There should be general overhaul in the civil service. Osun is dying. The state is paying so much money and not making money. People have to pay tax and there should more ways of ensuring the payment of informal taxes. There are many income being generated through informal sector and is not coming to the government”, the monarch remarked.
In his address, the Osun State governor, Mr Gboyega Oyetola, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Mr Festus Olajide noted that “Oluwo and the chairman Aenon Foundation have raised issues about governance and they have not minced words in telling the truth. This quiz has brought out test and measurement in terms of performance of students in public schools.”
Meanwhile, four secondary schools participated in the quiz competition, namely St David High School, Ode-Omu, Adventist High School, Ede, Baptist High School 4, Iwo and Baptist High School 1, Ejigbo, just as Agbola Francis of St David High School, Ode-Omu emerged the winner of the quiz.
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