By Samuel Ceezhar

Permit me to use this medium to analyze the speech (here) of the governor of Osun-Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola-on Tuesday, June 2, 2015 at the inauguration of state house of assembly members. As we all know, speech analysis is the “in-thing” now, so, flow with me as we do this “trekking.”

I intend to use available data for this exposition after which you can make an informed conclusion on our case. You see, I live and work in this great state and I know first-hand, the effects of the financial crisis. The figures are from our dear budgIT, oagf and fmf.

It is straightforward: type in your stat(for budgIT) and year of choice, the year’s FAAC allocations will appear. For the other two, type in the month and year, the entire allocations for all the 3 tiers of government appears. I explain all this not because I think you are slow but knowing the social media peeps, one has to be thorough.

The figure you really need from all those numbers is the NET ALLOCATION. I believe now, we can begin the exercise.

ISSUES TO NOTE:

The governor in his maiden address to the house said the total allocations to the state from FAAC, IGR and other accruals are equal to N204 billion. Of this, FAAC and others excluding IGR amount to N108.3 billion.

2010: The Year of Oranmiyan

The governor came in in November and he declared the total allocation for the 2 months to be N4.2 billion. He also said the wage bill is N3.6 billion with a net gain of N573 million.

From the table below whose figures are obtained from the aforementioned sites (at least, we should be able to trust @seunonigbinde’s numbers), you will see it is different.

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The total here is N6.0 billion, no? If you deduct wage bill of N3.6 bn from N6 bn, ‘you go definitely get answer wey pass the net gain.’ I am not an accountant but I try to trust my calculator.

2011: The Beginning of the Rule

Ogbeni said throughout this year, he got N29.9 billion, had a wage bill of N25.8 billion and a net gain of N4 billion- remember, his words, not mine. Again, let us turn to the trio:

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You will find that summing these gives you N48.2 billion with an awesome net gain well above the one above. Anyways, as they say on #Twitter street, #netgainnooni.

2012: The Year of the First of the Deficit

My amiable, quintessential, articulate and ever conscious (sorry, I finished from OAU) Ogbeni said we got N28.4 billion and expended N31.6 billion leaving a deficit of N3.2 billion – the first of its kind.

I am seriously channeling @DoubleEph. Come with me to our table:

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The total from the addition will give us N47.8 billion, which begs the question: If you remove 31.6 from 47.8… again, I say, “kontunu.” In the words of #babahafusa #reminisce, “alabinrin”, why are these numbers doing “falafolo”.

2013: The Second Year of Our Beloved Deficit

Now, I sincerely hope you are getting my message. For this year, we understand that N26.4bn accrued to the state out of which N36.9bn was expended giving us a ‘whopping’ N10.4 billion deficit. Turn up with me to the table:

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Adding them together gives us N44.7 billion. If you remove the wage bill from this number (or vice-versa), there is no way you will have a deficit! I can understand if by now you are confused, trust me; I thought the people from my village have upgraded their operating system-like they did that rich guy who turned to a monk.

2014: The Year of Oil, its Crash, and Revenue Drop

To cut the long story short, “our statutory allocation fell further to N19.3 billion and by which time we were already defaulting on some of our obligations on emoluments, which had also dropped to N22.4 billion, but still left us with a deficit of N3 billion.”

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Before we continue, you’ll notice the asterisks. On ‘oagf’s site, the breakdown page for the states were absent. See here, here, and here. In fact, on BudgIT website, 2014 allocations ended in June. For the month with 2 asterisks, they made a mistake of writing “allocation of October 2013 shared in November 2014-here. Having done that, let’s get back to the numbers.

Now, I know we do not have figures for 3 months, but is it not amazing that without those figures, summation still gives N27.4 billion! This is what I call amazeballs. It means we would have comfortably paid the wage bill of #22.4 billion.

Before putting my pen back in the basket of strange accounting, brethren, let us summarize the first main point. If you add all the figures from the tables, the amount accruable to the State of Osun (excluding IGR) from the year of our Lord 2010-2014 is #174.1 billion.

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I am not trying to elicit anything nor am I forming opposition. As @ayosogunro said, there are two types of people in a polity: party faithfuls’ and citizens. I belong to the latter. My submission is this; obviously, there are two different figures here. Which one is true and which is false? If we say we are progressives, conservatives, fencists, etc., there has to be a converging point for us where true data is given and relied on. This definitely is confusing and I am sure people will take sides but if we are to be #activecitizens, we need to start asking serious questions about the figures we are given.

Personally, I think the governor owes us a breakdown of the allocations, debt profile and its servicing, government projects (completed, ongoing and untouched). This topic of salaries is a hot one as we are not the only one but if the figures above are true, then the governor of the State of Osun, @raufaregbesola, has no excuse.

I conclude with the words of @elnathan when tweeps were comparing FIFA with Nigeria. With these few points of mine, I hope I have been able to confuse you and not convince you of the need to not be just commentators or “mentioners” but people who hold government officials accountable.

Sorry sir, I do not want to plagiarize. Thanks for your time.

http://www.thescoopng.com/samuel-ceezhar-a-serious-analysis-of-osun-states-allocation-and-wage-bill-the-two-versions/