Aregbesola’s Rice Creates Bad Blood In State Secretariat

There is bad blood presently streaming through the Osun State Secretariat. It is a bad blood unwittingly generated by Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola's Campaign Team. It is a bad blood that the APC operatives in the state did not bargain for and could not have made any plans to forestall. It is a bad blood that is simmering to have opposite electoral effects that Aregbesola and his team are anticipating. And the instrument of causality is the rice, vegetable oil and financial gifts being given to induce the female civil servants to support the second term bid of the APC governor.


In the aftermath of the defeat of Dr. Kayode Fayemi as the APC governorship candidate in Ekiti State on June 21, this year, it suddenly became clear that Rauf Aregbesola and his team are scared and afraid. Their confidence that bothered on arrogance suddenly dissipated. Aregbesola and his team have been running helter-skelter to salvage their battered image and putting in every effort to cultivate the support of the civil servants who have been told to 'go to hell' because as Aregbesola's Chief of Staff once posited, 'the civil servants have no electoral value.'


How time changes! Now that a fellow APC governor in Ekiti has bitten the dust, the Aregbesola's team is now doing everything to 'buy back' the civil servants. The APC campaign in Osun State has been distributing rice, vegetable oil and monetary gifts to the civil servants who are females. It seems they believe that women have more power and influence over their families than men. Though, some observers felt that this decision was informed by the calculation that there are more women in the employ of the Osun State government than men. But unfortunately for Aregbesola and his team, this decision to focus on women is not just backfiring but it is failing to attain the expected objective.


The male civil servants are now up in arms against Aregbesola and his APC. They are now saying that this was one of the reasons they were and are still trying to get rid of his administration because it is 'misguided and confused.' Apart from what they perceive as 'divide and rule tactics' on the part of Aregbesola, they posit that their women would not do anything different from what the men want. The civil servants are beating their chest that they could guarantee that Aregbesola would fail in his plan to divide the Civil Service and that the most important issues have been left unattended.


They pointed to the issues of promotion, transfer, emoluments, retirement benefits among other things that Aregbesola has kicked to the curb. They argue that Aregbesola's distribution of rice and vegetable oil is an 'insult to the intelligence of the Osun Civil Servants' which some of them described as 'one of the most educated' in the country. 'How can he believe that a miserable bag of rice and a small tin of vegetable oil can replace my retirement benefit, my promotion and other emoluments? He must think we are all morons.'


They noted that their backlog of salaries was paid swiftly after the election in Ekiti and argued that his efforts came 'a little too late.' One of them asked 'So, if Kayode Fayemi did not lose his election in Ekiti State, we will still be going hungry with our wives and children in Osun State? And he is doing this so that we can vote for him on August 9? Does he think we are that dumb?' He noted that the ignominy that the civil servants have suffered under Aregbesola since he got to power has been too much for what rice and vegetable oil can mitigate.


'Our advice never meant anything. Our suggestions are always discarded. Some of the state employees were posted to rural areas where their expertise would not be of use. And they were done maliciously to allow the so called consultants do our job and fleece the state resources. Most of these Consultants are from Lagos who know nothing about our economy and what we are all about here. They have no regard for the Civil Service Rules as contained in the General Order and they think rice and vegetable oil will do the trick? Nothing can be more pathetic than this.'


One of the civil servants noted that they have all heard the stories that the monies used to pay the civil servants and teachers' salaries came from outside the state. 'If that is true, then the State is in trouble. How do we hope to continue to run a state like this? Are we going to run to outsiders all of the time our salaries are not paid? Are we going to depend on the good nature of friendly states that have their own challenges? How can this kind of crazy methodology be sustained? Is this what our Osun State has become?'


The differentiation between men and women in the civil service according to the state employees 'is bad enough' to start with. But as far as they are concerned, it is symptomatic of a failed government that is confused and in quandary. It is a sign of a government that that has succeeded to fake its true intentions for our people. The distribution of rice is seen by them as a 'foolish attempt to ameliorate fundamental damages already done to the institution of Civil Service and the psyche of the civil servants' in the state.


The civil servants believe that the coming elections will be a 'very important one.' It will confirm whether 'we are really stupid to be bought by Aregbesola's rice and vegetable oil and forgo those things that are important to us that he is trying to take away from us.' The election of August 9 will definitely speak to whether real human beings can continue to suffer indignity and denigration in the names of infrastructural development. 'When you are told that you have no value, then you have an obligation to prove to whoever makes such suggestion that he is wrong, very wrong. We may be civil servants, we are human beings too. We have families too. And we can vote too.'


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