An imitation that does not fly

I joined people from the community and elderly people from my part of Igbomina country last Friday in Alabe for the funeral of Mama Rachael Oyindasola Abogunrin, the respected wife of the famous Surgeon General Dr Steven Abogunrin. Mama Abogunrin, Née Alada, exuded grace. She was kind and accommodating. People spoke so highly of her.

It was past 1 p.m. and I hurriedly left the place of the funeral to pay homage to the Afetu of Alabe, my grandmother, and (as I usually do at each visit) to offer some prayers for the dead on the graves of my grandparents and great-grandparents, then observe the Jum'ah prayer. Then my eyes caught an Osuwa (We are tired) cap completely grimy on the floor. I smiled.

The cap wearing Osuwa (and in Alabe) caused in me a feeling of pity at the ignorance of those who had invented the word and the naivety of those who dream of rising to power on the back of a certain slogan cause more anger than sympathy.

A slogan, according to political communication experts, should tell a story that people can immediately relate to. Like propaganda, it cannot fly in a vacuum. The Otoge they seek to imitate did not simply fly in a vacuum; it was riding on the back of popular anger, watered by verifiable evidence of deprivation: no prompt payment of wages to workers, water was not flowing, the basic health system had collapsed, basic education public had fallen into the abyss and the people (mainly the classes) were actually tired of being called miserable serfs in their own country. Otoge well expressed these hydra-headed grievances of the people in simple jargon. Osuwa is a fish out of water, a thoughtless imitation that fails to fly.

Let's see how Osuwa works in Alabe, a remote community in the heart of the Ile Ire district of Ifelodun or the entire district as a whole. Between 1987 when I arrived in Alabe and 2019, a period of 32 years, Alabe did not just stagnate; it has actually regressed in terms of basic amenities. Like everything else, community efforts have kept LGEA Primary School and the Comprehensive Basic Health Center open. In 1995, when I left LGEA school, we had ten teachers. The health facility had nurses and was functioning. Our mothers gave birth there and there were provisions for some advanced care. In 2019, the school had barely two teachers. One last thing: not a single new structure had been erected in the school 32 years later, while a few of the ones we left had collapsed. Those who were still standing had yielded several times, each time rescued by the community. Between 2019 and now, the school has added two new classrooms and brought in new teachers. There is hardly any service in Kwara without this experience.

Long cut off from city centers, the district is now linked to its borders with Isin by a road and bridges by the new administration. Pray, how does Osuwa sync up with our people, except for the few blind followers who are driven only by their own selfish desires and are known for such a trait themselves? It's comic relief.

How does Osuwa work in Obbo-Aiyegunle whose dreams of two generations have only just been realized by this administration? Or in Gwanara or Baruten. How does Osuwa cope with over 23,000 SUBEB teachers who, until 2019, never knew what time their salaries would arrive each month or how much they would receive? They lived with such uncertainties. Poverty was forced upon them by a multitude of policies born of official sordidness and a desire to hold on to a dynasty.

Public infrastructure in the areas of health, education and water, among others, had all collapsed. For example, General Hospital, Ilorin had become a shadow of its former self. It barely had six hours of electricity per day in 2019. Today, the hospital has a minimum of 18 hours of electricity per day. Its infrastructure has turned positively 180 degrees. Go to his eye care facility today and compare it to pre-2019 embarrassment, same for his dental facility. Let me emphasize: Not all of General Hospital had a single high-end survival gadget to save a patient in desperate need. The oxygen plant had collapsed - revived only recently by this administration.

Kwara's investments in the provision of basic health care have never been better than they are under AbdulRazaq. Today, only Kwara and four other states in Nigeria are on target for maternal mortality, according to the DHIS2 database. The most recent MICS data from UNICEF indicates that neonatal mortality has fallen to 18.0 in Kwara from 27.0 under the Osuwa team in 2016. At 57.6%, the state is on the target for exclusive breastfeeding of children under six. It was not in 2016 when it stood at 35.7%, according to UNICEF. The agency adds that under-five mortality is 42 deaths per 1,000, well below the national average of 64 per 1,000 deaths. Antenatal coverage in Kwara reached 77.7%, up from 66.6% in 2016, while 45.0% of one-year-olds were vaccinated in the state in 2021, up from 33.9% in 2016. Some 79% of pregnant women were cared for by qualified bi...