By Kayode Akinmade
‘Count your blessings and name them one by one’ was that memorable quote by John Oatman Jr. (1897). Blessings have great significance, even unto God. It is recorded in the Bible that there were so many people blessed by God. But the archetypal example of God’s blessings is Abraham, whom God told: ‘I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’.
Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State turned 57 on Monday October 3, 2011. The governor has certain things in common with Abraham. God has made him great. A governor is great by all standards. He is blessed in his professional calling – medicine – and politics. He is also a blessing to Ondo State. Like Abraham, those who bless him are sure to be blessed. For those who curse him (the opposition), may Father forgive them; ‘for they know not what they do’.
When you count your blessings, you are bound to appreciate God. It is apt to count Mimiko’s blessings at 57 and thank God for what He is doing through him. If not for God who had brought him to power, the ‘CARING HEART’ that is rapidly transforming Ondo State perhaps would not have been. To name the blessings the governor has been is to see him through the fulcrum of human and infrastructural development that today makes the state a toast of all to the envy of its peers.
The governor himself testified to the goodness of God in what is happening in the state at a recent public outing. Said he: ‘Ondo State today exemplifies the synergy between people, power, good governance and democracy. In Ondo State (and this is with all sense of modesty), the Labour Party government has adopted novel approaches to masses-oriented, bottom-up development programmes to emplace wealth creation, employment generation, and strengthen the bond between the people and government’.
He continued, ‘Since we came into office in February 2009, we have not deluded ourselves that good governance is a given. We have not been complacent, thinking that the solutions will work themselves out. From designing a broad-based programme called ‘A CARING HEART’ which captures areas of our focus towards the delivery of good governance to their actualisation, we have remained conscious of the circumstances of our emergence’.
In the area of rural development, the Mimiko government has through the ‘3Is Initiative’, a rural integrated community development exercise, opened new opportunities for the people to identify their development needs, prioritise them and participate in the implementation. It is also a strategy of development to empower clusters of communities with common and shared infrastructural facilities to support industries and commercial agriculture.
This approach has been applied in all the local government areas of the state with 230 communities’ projects identified, prioritised and implemented in the two and a half years that the caring heart government has come on board. The effect of government’s initiation of the process of identifying and funding the desires of rural communities for rapid development has aroused a frenzy of different community self-help efforts and brought about higher commitments to the projects being executed.
This initiative has also engendered a sense of proprietorship. This has been a practical demonstration of what some economists have referred to as a ‘trickle up’ development paradigm. The Abiye, Safe Motherhood programme, launched on October 28, 2009 with the objective of bringing qualitative, accessible, and effective healthcare to women and children; to reduce maternal and infant mortality; and to increase the utilisation of healthcare facilities is yet another home grown intervention effort of the government.
It was conceived to ensure that ‘pregnancy may no longer be a death sentence in Ondo State’ through the provision of free and adequate healthcare to pregnant women and children 0-5 years of age. Designed to tackle four major factors predisposing pregnant women to death, that is: delays in seeking care when complications arise, in reaching care when decisions are made, in accessing care on arrival at healthcare facilities, and in referring care from where it is initiated to where it can be completed, the Abiye Programme has been piloted to global acclaim such that it has been signposted as the model for tackling infant and maternal mortality in the developing world.
In fact, the World Bank has officially listed the Ondo State Abiye programme on its website as one of the success stories coming out of Africa! At the Mother and Child Hospital, another home-grown intervention and the referral apex of the Abiye programme, 31,000 patients have been treated and 9,879 babies have been safely delivered, 1,224 by Caesarian section in one and a half years of operation, surpassing the records of much older facilities!
Indeed there are other initiatives that are good governance compliant in Ondo State. In education, the Mimiko administration has a Quality Assurance Agency that has turned around the old order of inspecting schools for quality of teaching, facilities and compliant with standards. Not only has this been acclaimed as the way to go by relevant stakeholders in the sector, it may have started to manifest in improved performance, as students from the state have posted remarkable performances in several national academic competitions.
Students from the State came first in the June 2011 NTA/ETV competition; 1st and 3rd in two different categories in the 2011 Digifest Competition; 1st in the National Quiz Competition organised by the Science Teachers’ Association and 1st in the NNPC National Quiz Competition in the South West Zone, among others. The state government embarked on training and re-training of teachers, the most recent being the training of teachers to man the new Mega Schools now at various stages of completion across the State.
It is apt to say they are modern, well-equipped 21st century compliant centres of learning conceived to expose the children of the less privileged to quality education and enhance their capacities to compete under fair and equal conditions with their counterparts in the private schools. The Mega Schools are also to serve as models below which future public and private schools cannot function.
In agriculture, the Mimiko-led government has completed the first of three major Agricultural Villages in Ore and is way into the completion of two others. Each is designed to have at least 1000 unemployed graduates who after exposure to training are involved as participant-owners of their various farms. This intervention is also a means of mopping up a number of productive hands from the unemployment market.
Is one surprised that the governor has done so much in the little time that he has been in power? Not at all. A man of vision, Mimiko came into office prepared to elevate his people from abject poverty to the modernity that the 21st century represents but which successive administrations in Ondo have denied them. And to a large extent, he has succeeded.
His cognate experience of having been a commissioner, secretary to the state government and minister at different times must have adequately equipped him to serve the cause of humanity on a broader scale as we have seen him doing close to three years as governor. Before then, he was a Student Union leader at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University)
He cut his teeth in politics as publicity secretary of the Ondo Council Chapter of the Unity Party of Nigeria in the Second Republic and in the Third Republic, an ex-officio member of the Social Democratic Party in the council. Mimiko’s wife, Kemi, is part of his success story because without her having been an able better half, he would not have gone this far
At 57, the story of Mimiko is a story of a man of courage, a man determined to serve humanity, a man redefining true governance amid leadership rot, a man of the people. No wonder he is likened to Iroko, the most valued tree!
- Akinmade is Ondo State Commissioner for Information and Strategy