Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State has given reasons his administration has been able to register remarkable achievements, especially in the area of project delivery even though most of the government’s earnings are spent on wages.
Speaking in Akure, the state capital, Mimiko said people of the state were able to key into his vision for them hence; it was easy for his administration to record the tremendous success that has made the state a benchmark for Africa.
Mimiko informed that the synergy between the government and the governed in the state has made the success recorded in the various sectors where tremendous success has been recorded possible.
As a result of the synergy, Mimiko said: “We have intervened to address the issue of fallen standard of education, accessibility and democratisation of quality education, especially for the downtrodden,” remarking that these are everyday concerns which the government has addressed through its Quality Education Assurance agency.
“We have recreated the old time-honoured Inspectorate Division, and the inspection and education measurement tools,” the governor mentioned, adding: “We have started creating new-generation infrastructure we call Mega Schools. We have put together an incentivisation package for the teaching staff. Apart from the relativity allowance which we have paid, we have also paid a 27.5 per cent increment to teachers.
“We are perhaps the only state paying relativity and 27.5 per cent. We are incentivising them; we are training and re-training them. We have exposed some of them to external (offshore) training. And for all of these, we have started having some empirical result, for example, in the Jets Competition, international competitions, and Science education competitions. We've come out tops in many of these competitions. The icing on the cake is the last West African School Certificate Examinations. An Ondo State student came first in the whole of Nigeria and West Africa.”
In the health sector, Mimiko said his administration has proved that it is possible to democratise access to free, qualitative healthcare, especially to the most vulnerable group in the society - pregnant women and infants.
“We have targetted this segment, and the result has been such that has been recognised even beyond the shores of Nigeria as a template. We are creating an emergency medical system that would be like no other on the continent of Africa” stressing further that government is about choices, the choices one make about what priority, he said, is what is called governance.
Giving more insight into the reason his government has remained a reference point, the medical doctor said one thing that has done well for his government is the way it has crafted its capital projects.
“Because I have had some experience in governance here, and I have seen through many budgets, there is what we call miscellaneous capital or intangibles - buying cabinets, air-conditioners among others, at times in some budgets, it's as high as 40 per cent.
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