The Chairman, Land Use Charge (LUC) in the State of Osun, Pastor Olumide Bolorunduro has sought the cooperation of all stakeholders involved in the collection of land use charge revenue in Osun, particularly Council Managers across the Local Governments and Local Council Development Areas for efficient and easy collection of
Land Use Charge revenue in the State.

 
Pastor Bolorunduro made this appeal during the Land Use Charge interactive Stakeholders meeting houses held at the Exco Chamber of the Osun, Governor’s Office in Osogbo.
He maintained that, revenue generation is a collective responsibility of all, while concerned stakeholders must play their part to achieve the desired target in the Internally Generated Revenue drive of the government in order to improve the welfare of the citizens and the development of the State.
Pastor Bolorunduro explained that, necessary valuation on property must have been carried out before the billing, he therefore urged the citizens to pay their Land Use charge as and when due.
He stressed that, perfect arrangements for the convenient payment of Land Use Charge bills across the nooks and crannies of the State have been put in place with the involvement of Financial Institutions (Commercial and Micro-Finance banks) and through the use of Point of Sales Machine (POS).
Earlier in her opening remarks, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Adebimpe Ogunlumade, who was represented by the Director, Finance and Administration, Mr. Akeem Bello, disclosed that, Internally Generated Revenue is the only alternative that can bail the Government out in meeting up with Its financial responsibilities on salary payment and infrastructural development.
Mrs Ogunlumade therefore called on the Council Managers and other stakeholders to see the need to tighten the loose ends and support the government in its revenue drive.

The Nigerian Army has been commended for its unrelenting efforts in the provision of security especially in crisis-prone areas of the North-Eastern part of the country and confronting the recent crisis between herdsmen and farmers which is spreading like bush fire across the length and breadth of the country.
 

 
 
Speaking on behalf of the Governor was the Acting Executive Secretary of the Office of Transportation, Engr. Wahab Ibrahim who paid a courtesy visit to the Commander Engineer Construction Command, Ede, Brigadier General E. Eruwa.
According to him, the Nigerian Army has demonstrated a high sense of responsibility by defeating the Boko Haram insurgents in the North-Eastern part of the country.
Engr. Wahab posited that, Osun as one of the crime free states in the Federation will continue to implement the six (6) Point Integral Action Plan which would always promote communal peace and progress.
The acting Executive Secretary used the opportunity to solicit the continual support of the Nigerian Army, Ede, for the Osun Traffic Marshal which is saddled with the responsibility of enforcing the State of Osun Road Traffic Laws 2008 which is aimed at bringing sanity to the roads in the state.
The Office of Transportation boss stressed that, one of the primary assignments of the agency is to curb the menace of theft of motorcycles and vehicles which hitherto was rampant in the state.
Responding, Brig. General, E. Eruwa, Commander, Engineer Construction Command, Ede, appreciated the efforts of the State Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, in the area of adequate security for members of the public while promising that, his command will join hands together with Osun Traffic Marshal in order to ensure a robust
and effective security.

Gov. Rauf Aregbesola of Osun has called on  Nigerian universities to focus more on   science and technology development  in the country.

 

 
Aregbesola made the call while delivering a speech at  the   10th year anniversary and 6th convocation ceremony of  Osun University on Thursday in Osogbo.
The governor said  technology would have changed the world dramatically in a few years.
According to him,  Nigerian universities need to start preparing the youths toward  a digital  future for the country to remain relevant in the new world order.
“We need to begin to prepare for a future where so many amazing things will be done technologically.
“In the next 10  years, technological knowledge would have changed the world dramatically to the extent that cars will begin to drive itself without a driver.
“In 10  years time, your mobile phone will be able to tell you a lot of things about your health and so on.
“We need to be prepared for this future as a country,’’ he said.
Aregbesola also urged Nigerian universities to engage in research that would impact positively on the  society.
In his opening remark, the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman  of the Governing Council of the university, Malam Yusuf Alli,  said 10  years of  the existence of the institution  was a period for  preparation, adding that  now was the time for consolidation.
Alli, who noted  that the university must be committed to science, technology and information technology, pointed out  that  the institution  would not be able to be a global participant if it relies on obsolete and outdated knowledge.
Earlier in her address, the Chancellor of the university, Dr  Folorunso Alakija, expressed delight over the transformation the university  was witnessing.
Alakija, who promised to build a state of the art  paediatric hospital for the university, called on  all stakeholders to support the institution in charting a new course with a view to attaining greater height.
The Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof.  Labode Popoola, said the institution  had made tremendous progress in the last 10 years of its existence.
Popoola  said the university had also graduated 6,493 students.

In December 2016, when the state government of Osun paid out the sum of N13,645,546,673.04 to clear salaries, leave bonuses and pension arrears of four (4) months, many did wonder how the Paris Club refund received a month earlier was allocated.
 

 
However, the Accountant General of the state of Osun, Mr. Akintayo Kolawole, has revealed, how the state government expended the sum of N11,744,237,793.56 received from the federal government in November 2016 as first tranche of the Paris Club Refund.
Speaking with Journalists at his office in Osogbo, Mr. Kolawole revealed that the Osun Revenue Apportionment Committee headed by Comrade Hassan Sunmonu agreed for the total Paris Club Refund to be spent on clearing workers salary arrears.
“The revenue apportionment committee agreed that the Paris refund be used in paying salaries and that the sum of N1.9bn be added by the state government to augment salary payment to local government workers,” Mr. Kolawole noted.
Speaking on how a total of N13.6bn was used in paying salary
arrears, Mr Kolawole stated that, “the sum of N8,519,437.233.43 was paid out as salaries for September, October, November and December. Similarly, the sum of N924,676,305.24 was paid out as leave bonuses for the four months, while the sum of N2,496,605,100.64 was paid in pensions for the same period.”
Explaining how the state spent above the N11.74bn received as Paris Club Refund, the accountant general noted that the sum of N1,704,828,033.73 was transferred to the ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs for the payment of salaries at that level.
When contacted, State Chairman of the Triangular Pensioners Association, Prince Rotimi Adelugba confirmed all pensioners in the state received four months of pension arrears as agreed with the state government in December 2016.
Other workers in the state commended the government for making workers’ welfare its priority.

The Governor of the State of Osun has charged graduating students from the university to rise above carrying ‘bland certificates’ and put their competencies to work in creating solutions to global problems.
 

 
This, the Governor said can only be possible when every member of the university community begins to ask relevant questions and conduct research that solve problems.
The governor said this as part of his inspiring speech at the 10th year anniversary and 6th convocation of the institution.
Ogbeni Aregbesola acknowledged the strides the school had made in a decade, and appreciated all stakeholders including the past Governor Oyinlola, the chancellor, Mrs Folorunso Alakija and the vice chancellor, Prof. Labode Popoola; but he stressed the need for the school to punctuate the deserved merry-making with deep reflections.
He drew a comparison with the first university in Nigeria, then University College, Ibadan, which after its 10th year had produced two students the likes of Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Prize winner, Chinua Achebe, a Nobel Prize multiple nominee and other titans like Augustus Adebayo, Michael Omolayole, Chief Bola Ige and others who took the academia, politics, and the business world by storm.

Lamenting the vices that have plagued tertiary institutions in the nation, Aregbesola called on the school community to be relevant to the world outside its walls.
“I am therefore tempted to wonder and ask if, for instance, the university’s College of Education has any direct relationship or impact on any of the elementary, middle or high schools anywhere in the state or around its campus. What is the impact of the College of Agriculture on farming and food security in Osun? Is this university engaged in researches on the extant existential challenges faced by humanity, beginning from this state? Beyond graduating students, is there a way the immediate community of the university has benefitted from its researches?…
” The university should provide leadership in innovation and productivity. Earth-shaking changes are on the verge of breaking loose on our world and this should not catch us unawares. In the next 10 years, knowledge would have transformed the world beyond recognition. Self-driving cars, running on battery, using zero fuel, and programmed with all the addresses will be in the market in commercial quantity.

“The mobile phone will act as medical scanner that will, more than the doctor, accurately diagnose illnesses and diseases and prescribe medication, reducing the need for hospital visits.
Robots are being developed to take over works in the farms, eliminating the need for manual labour and fuel guzzling heavy machinery. These robots will do all the physical works and more: weeding, planting, watering, carrying our security surveillance on farm and crops, deterring pests and thieves, carrying out soil test, adding soil additives, harvesting, processing, storing and transporting. The farmer just programmes and supervises.
Robots will also take over the manual labour in the construction industry.
With hydroponic technology, fruits and vegetables planted on artificial soil in trays that grow and mature in days have been developed for astronauts and are now being made available for the larger farming community. It means, every home can provide its own fruits and vegetables, and in matter of days.

“Solar technology will become simplified and cheaper. This will make electricity abundantly available, also eliminating the use of generators and internal combustion engines. More worrisome from this is that oil will attract little or no value by then.
The overall consequence of all these is that low skill and menial jobs will be eliminated, meaning only highly skilled individuals would be relevant in this brave new world. This is the future that any student today should be prepared for, not just having a bland certificate but clueless about life, survival and competitiveness in a digital and ICT driven world. Any society without this vision is going to be backward and dependent when this future arrives. It now behoves on our universities to tailor their researches and prepare their students for this new world.”, he said.

The late Nathaniel Abimbola has been described as a humble and seasoned journalist who took his job with all seriousness.
 

 
This is contained in a press statement issued and signed by the Chairman, Special Committee on Fire Safety Matters, Hon. Oguntola Mudashiru Toogun.
The statement stated that, though death is inevitable and a must for everybody. The demise of Nathaniel Abimbola occurred at a time when he was still useful to the State, the State Council of NUJ, OSBC and most importantly his immediate family.
The statement therefore prayed that God Almighty to give the State Council of NUJ, OSBC conglomerate, and the immediate family the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss.

The government of the state of Osun as denied that any fresh crisis started in Ile Ife on Friday.
Several news outlets had Friday evening claimed 9 people were injured in a skirmish that broke out in ancient town of Ile-Ife.
 

 
Speaking to newsmen yesterday evening in Osogbo, Mr. Tope Adejumo, Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s Senior Special Assistant on Security, stated that there is no fresh crisis in Ile Ife as everyone is going about their normal businesses.
He warmed those publishing false news in the hope of wiping up ethnic sentiment to desist forthwith.
Mr. Adejumo however noted that some youth in the Asipa and Ipetumodu area of Ife North Local Government had earlier Friday afternoon engaged each other in a free fall over some boundary dispute. He noted that it was not an inter-ethnic clash and neither was it crisis, the Security aide describe it as a case of ‘breach of public peace’ and the dispute is being.

He noted that normalcy has since returned to both towns and law enforcement agencies deployed to the area to maintain peace and other.

The five-man panel of inquiry set up by State Government of Osun to look into the crisis that ensued between Hausas and Yorubas on March 8, 2017 in Ile-Ife, visited the scene of the event and promised to be neutral.
 

 
The Chairman of the Commission, Justice Moshood Adeigbe, assured that all parties would be given fair-hearing.
He said the commission was out to ensure that, the real perpetrators of the dastardly act were brought to book to ensure that all warring factions were appeased.
The commission thereafter visited Sabo, the scene of the crisis, for an on-the-spot assessment of the buildings destroyed during the crisis.
He urged the Hausas to come forward with affidavit from victims and eye-witnesses.
The Ooni of Ife, His Imperial Majesty, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, pledged his support and that of his Chiefs to the success of the investigation admonished them to be unbiased in their enquiry.

Rather than have rundown schools with decrepit facilities and unkempt pupils that may be predisposed towards hooliganism, indiscipline, truancy, among others, the Osun State Government seeks to have its high schools upgraded with state-of-art facilities occupied by well-behaved students, as exemplified during the commencement of academic activities at its new high schools. Funmi Ogundare reports
 

 
Moved by the need to create centres of excellence with best practices in high school education, designed to attract the best brains from their catchment areas, draw intakes from public middle schools, where excellence will be the watchword, the Rauf Aregbesola administration in Osun State decided to take the bull by the horn with an ambitious project of 100 elementary, 50 middle and 20 high schools.
Out of the 20 high schools, four of them: Wole Soyinka Government High School, Ejigbo; Osogbo Government High School; and Adventist Government High School, Ede were inaugurated between November 23, 2015 and November 28, 2016, while Ataoja Government High School, Osogbo was inaugurated last week.

It was funfair of some sorts at the opening ceremony and commencement of learning at the schools as Aregbesola remarked that, “these four schools are part of the 20 brand new state-of-the-art high schools our administration has undertaken to build. Out of these, 11 have been completed while the four we are celebrating today have been totally completed and are now being made available for the use of the public. We give God the glory!
In a paper, ‘We have seen the Future’, Aregbesola said the ideas of the schools were muted not just as another nondescript learning centres, but as centres of excellence, adding that the state is celebrating active learning, while describing the celebration as a day of victory.
“The children we are producing are being prepared to be highly skilled individuals that would be relevant in this brave new world and better future of tomorrow, hope of the people. It is the future we are celebrating now.
“The overall consequence of what is happening in the society now is that low skills and menial jobs will be eliminated, meaning that only highly skilled individuals will be relevant in this brave new world. This is the future we are preparing our children for.
Any society without this vision is going to be backward and dependent when this future arrives. We are celebrating today because we can see the future and we are confident we are on the right path.”
Aregbesola expressed hope that by next year, 11,000 high quality, well-educated pupils would have graduated from its high schools, adding, “in the next 50 years, their number would have crossed the half million threshold. They will take the world by storm in excellence in education, science and technology, the professions, entrepreneurship, the priesthood, sports, arts and entertainment and every field of human endeavour.”
The governor, who promised to provide solar-powered energy to the schools before the end of his tenure in November next year, appealed to parents to be good role models to their children at home by letting them realise the importance of education; prepare them for school at the right time; help them dress properly; and prevent them from truancy.
He said teachers should also assume fully their role in the making of a completely educated person in learning and character. “A teacher should deem himself or herself (and will be so adjudged by society) to have failed if his or her ward should fail examinations and be found wanting in character. Teachers especially should show interest in the physical appearance of their pupils. It is very disheartening to see pupils in tattered, dirty, un-ironed and ill-fitting uniforms. Grooming is an important aspect of education. Teachers should be proud of the physical looks of their pupils. As a government, we have played our own part very well and we will do more if the need should arise. It is now left for parents and teachers to do their own part.”
He recalled when he was in school, saying that “the way a student must look was of serious importance to us. It distinguished us remarkably from those who did not go to school or were in school. We were stylish in the way we walked, the way we combed our hair and the way our uniform and other dressings fit our body.
This affected our mannerism, phonetics, what we read, what we ate and the way we ate. This is the grooming, the informal education that makes a complete educated person. I want to see this return to our schools. Those that are not ready to play this role have demonstrated that they have no place with us.”
On infrastructural development, the governor said the state has redefined the architecture and environment of quality education, adding, “the schools we have built are state-of-the-art and will compete with any school from any part of the world. Any of our high school is a three-in-one school with the capacity to accommodate 3,000 students. Each school has four principals with three superintending over 1,000 pupils each, and an overall senior principal.
“It is standard that each school has 72 classrooms of 49 square-meters, each capable of sitting 49 students. Each has six offices for study groups. It is also equipped with six laboratories, 48 toilets for pupils and another eight for teachers, one science library, one arts library, facility manager’s office, a bookshop and a sickbay.”
Other facilities he said are the senior principal’s office, three principals’ offices, a bursar’s office, three general staff offices, a record store and security shed/reception, which have been fully furnished, as well as borehole and power transformer.
“Each school complex also has 1,000 square-meters of floor space multi-purpose function hall capable of siting 1,000 students for external examinations. The hall has storage for equipment, utility storage, a stage, office space, documents storage, four female toilets and four male toilets.
“For sporting activities, it has an Olympic-sized football field, seven lane sprinting tracks for 100 meters and 400 meters events and an outdoor basketball court that doubles as tennis court. The complex has ample parking space for more than 75 cars,” Aregbesola said.
He expressed delight about the environment of learning, saying that it is as important as the subject of learning.
“The architecture of the school environment, in neatness, orderliness, organisation, harmony with nature and sheer beauty is an integral part of the character formation essence of education. Where the schools are run down with decrepit facilities, the pupils tend to be dirty themselves and are predisposed towards hooliganism, indiscipline, truancy and unruly behaviour. In contrast, neat, beautiful schools, with well painted buildings, well-manicured lawns and sparkling facilities always have neat and well behaved pupils.
“It is the principle of man being the product of his environment. We see this play out when we transfer badly behaved pupils to new beautiful school environment, they start behaving well. This is why we embarked on the ambitious project.”
He said the state has established the Osun Education Quality Assurance and Morality Enforcement Agency to assure education quality and enforce morality in its schools; as well as invested a large amount of money, energy and other resources in education.
“It is not because we have these in surplus. It is because of the value we place on education being fully persuaded on how it will shape the future.”
The Deputy Governor, Mrs. Titilayo Laoye-Tomori said the provision of functional education is one of the six integral action plans of Aregbesola’s manifesto, presented to the electorates during his electioneering campaign, adding that the state-of-the-art schools with modern facilities that now adorn the state are purpose-built, and predetermined.
“The motive of government is to make the new high schools centres of excellence in Nigeria that will produce students that are excellent in academics and well-grounded in ‘Omoluabi’ ethos. We envisioned our students being able to compete excellently well with their counterparts anywhere in the world.
“It is against this backdrop that the diverse interventions of government become understandable and reasonable to the ordinary citizen. It becomes obvious therefore that the building of new state-of-the-art schools and the rehabilitation of existing ones is just one step towards the goal,” Laoye-Tomori said.
The Principal of the school, Dr. Taiwo Adeagbo, who thanked the Aregbesola administration for its efforts, said the facelift would enable the school to compete favourably in the country.
While pledging the teachers’ commitment to teaching and maintaining the facilities, she said, “we will always be grateful to you. It will remain green in our memory.”
The head boy and head girl of the school, Master Afolabi Israel and Miss Victoria Egunranti, appealed to the governor to continue to stand firm in his commitment towards enhancing teaching and learning in schools, while commending his efforts.
“He is a trail blazer and a governor with an indomitable spirit, he is the Awolowo of our time and in terms of security, he has been able to secure the school. If anyone had said it was impossible to have this structure, now, the impossible has been made possible.”
The PTA Chairman, Femi Ogunsanya, who stated that government cannot do it alone, appealed to the administration to help in reducing the rate of thuggery in the school.