For over ten years running, virtually all the communities of Ondo South Senatorial District, which is made of six local government areas of Ilaje, Ese Odo, Okitipupa, Irele, Odigbo and Ile Oluji-Oke Igbo, have been under a blanket blackout.
Many petitions and appeals by the people of the District to the authorities, particularly the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), which distributes electricity to Ondo State, Ondo State Government and the Federal Government have met no positive response, thus worsening the people’s justified feeling of despondency and neglect of the District by successive governments at both the state and federal levels.
Also the roads leading to major towns and communities in the District together with the ones within the towns and other communities are deplorable and frustrating. Thus, movement of persons, goods, properties and farm products is embarrassingly slow, thereby frustrating economic activities already laid prostrate by the over one decade blackout. Economic activities in the district are already crippled with the unending blackout and deplorable road network.
Worse still, portable water supply is a luxury that is non-existent in the District, thus forcing the people to rely on wells, streams, rivers, rainwater and the salty, brackish and black sea water already polluted and contaminated with human and industrial wastes, dead animals and other life threatening impurities. Thus water-borne diseases among other serious ailments that are already past tenses in many other districts of the state and nation are prevalent in Ondo South Senatorial District, ravaging majority of the helpless people, who look eagerly to government and their leaders full of hope.
Worse hit are the people in Ilaje and Ese Odo Local Government areas, which are the major riverine areas of the District, who defecate inside the Atlantic Ocean, dump their wastes in it, bathe with it, drink its water, cook with it and depend on it for other domestic uses. Hence the millions of people inhabiting the vast and extensive coastal areas of the sate are vulnerable to many water borne diseases. And Ondo State has the longest coastline in West Africa.
The people of Okitipupa and Irele Local Government areas, which share boundaries with Ilaje and Ese Odo, also share in this plight. Thus the people, who inhabit the fringes of these endangered riverine local government areas, are also at risk of frequently contacting water-borne diseases and other preventable ailments afflicting their Ilaje and Ese Odo neighbours. Thus the people in Ilaje, Ese Odo, Okitipupa and Irele Local Government Areas, numbering several millions, are all vulnerable to water-borne diseases, frequent breakdowns due to ill health, and untimely death which is becoming too frequent.
Notably the problems existing in the District were inherited by the present State Government led by Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, who needs to put in efforts to redress them timely.
Although his administration has been trying to redress this deplorable situation, which he inherited, he needs to do more and timely too. Besides, there is need to join hands with the Ondo State Government in ensuring that the existing health facilities including maternities, health centres and hospitals across the District are well equipped, adequately staffed with qualified medial doctors, nurses and other relevant health personnel, well stocked with drugs and other necessary consumables with adequate infrastructures and other needs.
Unfortunately, the people generally patronise quacks, charlatans, dupes, fake and dubious babalawos, traditional or local medicine men, marabouts, pastors, alfas, seers, prophets and substandard medicine stores where they are offered fake and adulterated drugs which rather than alleviate, compound and aggravate their health problems. This is a major cause of untimely death being recorded too frequently in Ondo South Senatorial District of Ondo State.
Largely, the people of the District are farmers, petty traders and artisans, whose businesses and means of livelihood depend substantially, as in other districts within or outside Ondo State, on regular power supply, good roads, portable water supply and other basic amenities.
The only visible large scale industrial establishments in the entire Ondo South Senatorial District are Ile Oluji Cocoa Industry, Oluwa Glass in Okitipupa, and Okitipupa Oil Mill. Regrettably, the last two of the industries, which were established by the exemplary administration of the late revered Chief Michael Adekunle Ajasin, are moribund.
Today, the most notable visible sign of government presence in the entire Ondo South Senatorial District is Olusegun Agagu University, Okitipupa, (OAUSTECH), which is owned and funded by the Ondo State Government.
Here, Governor Akeredolu deserves special commendation for boldly stepping in and rescuing the institution from being consigned to the dustbin of history.
Until 2017 when the Governor came in, the institution had been abandoned for eight years, while the uncompleted and abandoned facilities and structures numbering about 30, in the institution were rotting away. Entrance to the university was bushy, marshy, unattractive and unmotorable. There was even an attempt to scrap the institution by the State Government before Akeredolu came in. The university’s bank accounts were frozen and all the monies in them were transferred to the State Government accounts based on order from Government.
Indeed, the operating licence of the university had been withdrawn by the National Universities Commission, NUC. Depressed by these developments, the pioneer Vice Chancellor and Chairman, Governing Council of the institution, formerly known as Ondo State University of Science and Technology, OSUSTECH, Prof Akinbo Adesomoju, had resigned in frustration. The existence of the university had hanged in the balance until reasons prevailed shortly before Akeredolu, described by the Vice Chancellor, Prof Sunday Roberts Ogunduyile, as the architect of OAUSTECH, came in to rescue the university from extinction.
Notably, once he came in, the Governor injected funds to construct the road leading to the university and three main buildings housing the Administration, Senate and the Auditorium, paid greater attention to providing the institution its running grants and funding its academic and research activities. He has gone further to pledge commitment to the development of the university which has great potentials to turn around the economy of Ondo State, with its extensive coastline, under which is buried fabulous mineral resources. It is as if the revival and building of the university is one of the purposes the Akeredolu was permitted the opportunity of being the Governor of Ondo State.
However, despite his intervention, the university still bears the scars of the unfortunate eight-years neglect as exemplified for instance among others, in the numerous abandoned uncompleted buildings dotting the landscape of the institution, non-existence of hostel accommodation facilities for the students, who are forced to source accommodation in the neighbouring communities where they are subjects of attacks by criminals, and their concentration on their studies largely threatened.
The neglected facilities were built by the administration of the cerebral late Governor Olusegun Kokumo Agagu, whose administration founded the university. He was an eminent scholar, exemplary leader, a politician of tremendous goodwill across the District, the major rallying point for politicians of note in Ondo State, and an illustrious son of Iju Odo in Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo South Senatorial District.
Commendably still, Governor Akeredolu has pledged to give adequate attention to OAUSTECH by providing necessary funds, infrastructures and support for its research and academic activities.
All the problems enumerated above and others not listed, need to be addressed and redressed urgently to reassure the people of the Ondo South Senatorial District that their leaders and governments both at the state and federal levels actually care for their welfare and development.
In view of the abject neglect over the years of the District by successive federal and state administrations, the people need to be reassured that their leaders and governments see them as human beings with basic needs to meet.
And to make powerful, passionate, unrelenting, convincing, impactful and mature representation of the people at the highest level of leadership in the District to ensure that government at both the state and federal levels shift their focus now to reverse and redeem the prevailing neglect, requires that the people of Ondo South Senatorial District elect their most credible, passionate and selfless leader as their Senator in the upper chamber of the National Assembly, the Senate in the next election.
This issue of electing the Senator as the foremost and most visible political leader of the District empowered with the necessary resources, connections and political weight to make a meaningful impact in transforming the living conditions of his people, is not a matter for a greenhorn or political Lilliput. Like the Yoruba use to say: “Atari ajanaku ki ise eru omode” (The elephant’s head is too heavy for a mere child to carry).
The people need now as their Leader at this highest level of lawmaking in the country a man of an elephantine political weight, of timber and Calibre with the right and fruitful connections to exploit largely to their benefit, experiences, passion, selflessness, integrity, honesty of purpose, vision and dedication to fighting genuinely and maturely for the welfare of the people of Ondo South Senatorial District.
This is where an enlightened, objective, genuine and unselfish assessment by the people of the personalities who are aspiring to occupy the seat of the District in the upper chamber of the National Assembly, the Senate, is essential. The people need to elect someone who has the widest connections among all the aspirants into this exalted seat demanding a large heart, an utmost seriousness, responsibility, unselfishness, and reliance among the aspirants. This office needs an eminent personality who has the most intimate relationship with those in authorities not only in Ondo State, but more importantly also at the national and international levels.
It needs a person who has held meritoriously and responsibly various political and administrative offices, who knows the game of getting the legitimate entitlements of the people he leads from whatever quarters at the state, national and even international levels; one who knows the legitimate buttons to press and the relevant authorities and holders of offices at the state, national and international levels to contact productively in fighting maturely successfully for the legitimate rights and entitlements of the people he leads; one who has worked intimately with most of these office holders who are sitting at the helm of affairs calling the shots today in high places of our country’s political, administrative and corporate governance, most of who he knows and relates with on first name basis with whom he wines and dines as friends.
The exalted office needs a man with varied political and administrative experiences, high connections cutting across Ondo State, all other states of the Federation, federal agencies, the Federal Government, the political and decision making circles across the country, and who stands on top as the helper the people of Ondo South Senatorial District need now to connect them to the abundance flowing in our Country Nigeria through the state and federal governments.
Aspiring to political leadership positions is a very sensitive issue that the people and all those connected with bringing leaders to office need to take more seriously.
The people need to elect the most eminently qualified of all the senatorial aspirants in Ondo South Senatorial District, whose contributions in the Senate and the necessary legitimate buttons he will be pressing both inside and outside the National Assembly, which will be to the tremendous benefit of the people, a man whose presence and working in the National Assembly will be a blessing to the entire people of Ondo South Senatorial District and the entire Ondo State.
They need to elect a team player of note, who will work harmoniously with his colleague Senators and House of Representatives members in the National Assembly in the interest of the whole people but not a section of the District, to attract tremendous development to Ondo South, Ondo State and the entire South West Region.