Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State says it is an insult to the people to reduce governance to the distribution of kerosene and rice. He speaks, in this interview, in reference to the Ekiti  State election in which ‘politics of stomach infrastructure’ was said to have played a role in determining the winner.
Amosun also sheds light  on the alleged feud between him and a top leader of his party – All Progressive Congress (APC) – in Ogun, Chief Olusegun Osoba, saying he won’t fight the APC leader. According to him, his predecessor, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, set booby traps for his government.

Why is it difficult to resolve the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) crisis before you ordered the closure of the school?
In a more decent environment, my predecessor(Gbenga Daniel) would not be in a state to be walking around freely, grandstanding and spreading false information to cover up the obvious lack of planning manifest  in the administration he headed. In one fell swoop, he created four tertiary institutions and raised the number of tertiary institutions owned by Ogun State government to 10. Even Lagos with all the money has just five. He then funded them for two months and stopped and then accumulated debts of unpaid salary and subventions.

We came in and inherited all manners of debt. In Olabisi Onabanjo University alone, he left a debt of N1.8bn. For eight years, the OOU couldn’t hold any convocation because they couldn’t process results of students. We have to clear all the backlog of unpaid salary and allowances. We held convocation for over 40,000 graduates in one fell swoop.   Every government around us has three, four or five but Ogun state must fund all its 10 institutions. He himself funded the schools for just two months and stopped and allowed debts to pile up.

The students of OOU are being used and can sometimes be very mischievous. I know what I said during my campaigns in 2011 because I have all my campaigns tape recorded. When I was campaigning, I promised to reduce the tuition fee by sixty percent. The following day after I publicly made the promise, he reduced the tuition fee by fifty percent to take the wind off our sail. I then promised to reduce the tuition fee by 10 percent and I did that immediately I assumed office.

We give over N600m  to each of the schools every month, multiply that by 12 that is N7.2billion. That is what we spend yearly on tertiary institutions alone. What is the subvention payable by Lagos every month?

He really caused havoc in this state. He set up booby-trap all over the state. For instance, he increased the pension of the retired Permanent Secretaries in the state civil service from N40,000 to N400,000 after his party lost the election and refused to pay the retired Permanent Secretaries. I got to office and that was what I was paying. I have to be paying the N400,000. He was paying N40,000 and increased it to N400,000 and I have been paying that.

He stopped paying gratuities to retired workers since 2007. Recently I realised that we still have some people who haven’t collected gratuity despite the N26bn we have spent on that sector. So, we investigated the situation. We discovered that he stopped paying in December 2007. We were made to clear 2008,2009,2010,2011 and 2012 arrears. It means that if he hadn’t owed those years, Ogun State Government won’t be owing any gratuity to its retires.

It’s unfair that some people will work and not be paid their entitlement when they retire. We still have some N7bn to be up to date in gratuity payment but that is where we found ourselves. He left debt everywhere and  I have been clearing debts all these years.
To return to the OOU issue, the government reduced tuition fees in all its tertiary institutions, even up to 61 percent in some cases, depending on which school they are studying.

Students from nine institutions came and thanked me, but their colleagues in OOU said they want further reductions and that the new school fees regime must commence immediately. Against all advice from the security agents, I went to address them. I saw some of them in hood like those SSS operatives used during the recent Osun State election.

I wonder why a student will be in hood. When it became obvious that all our explanations and efforts to make the students see reason fell on deaf ears and that they are bent on fomenting crisis like they did on August 15 when they destroyed property and attacked innocent people in Abeokuta, we ordered the closure of the university to maintain peace and order.

READ FULL INTERVIEW ON SUNDAY VANGUARD