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By Kayode Akinmade     
Friday, Oct 7, 2011
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ADVERTISEMENT
Iroko Stands Tall at 57
ADVERTISEMENT
‘Count your blessings and name them one by one’ was that memorable
quote by John Oatman Jr. (1897). Blessings have great significance, even
unto God. It is recorded in the Bible that there were so many people blessed
by God. But the archetypal example of God’s blessings is Abraham, whom
God told: ‘I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make
your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless
you, and whoever curses you, I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be
blessed through you’.

Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State turned 57 on Monday October 3,
2011. The governor has certain things in common with Abraham. God has
made him great. A governor is great by all standards. He is blessed in his
professional calling – medicine – and politics. He is also a blessing to Ondo
State. Like Abraham, those who bless him are sure to be blessed. For
those who curse him (the opposition), may Father forgive them; ‘for they
know not what they do’.

When you count your blessings, you are bound to appreciate God. It is apt
to count Mimiko’s blessings at 57 and thank God for what He is doing
through him. If not for God who had brought him to power, the ‘CARING
HEART’ that is rapidly transforming Ondo State perhaps would not have
been. To name the blessings the governor has been is to see him through
the fulcrum of human and infrastructural development that today makes the
state a toast of all to the envy of its peers.

The governor himself testified to the goodness of God in what is happening
in the state at a recent public outing. Said he: ‘Ondo State today
exemplifies the synergy between people, power, good governance and
democracy. In Ondo State (and this is with all sense of modesty), the
Labour Party government has adopted novel approaches to masses-
oriented, bottom-up development programmes to emplace wealth creation,
employment generation, and strengthen the bond between the people and
government’.

He continued, ‘Since we came into office in February 2009, we have not
deluded ourselves that good governance is a given. We have not been
complacent, thinking that the solutions will work themselves out. From
designing a broad-based programme called ‘A CARING HEART’ which
captures areas of our focus towards the delivery of good governance to their
actualisation, we have remained conscious of the circumstances of our
emergence’.

In the area of rural development, the Mimiko government has through the ‘3Is
Initiative’, a rural integrated community development exercise, opened new
opportunities for the people to identify their development needs, prioritise
them and participate in the implementation. It is also a strategy of
development to empower clusters of communities with common and shared
infrastructural facilities to support industries and commercial agriculture.

This approach has been applied in all the local government areas of the
state with 230 communities’ projects identified, prioritised and implemented
in the two and a half years that the caring heart government has come on
board. The effect of government’s initiation of the process of identifying and
funding the desires of rural communities for rapid development has aroused
a frenzy of different community self-help efforts and brought about higher
commitments to the projects being executed.

This initiative has also engendered a sense of proprietorship. This has been
a practical demonstration of what some economists have referred to as a
‘trickle up’ development paradigm. The Abiye, Safe Motherhood programme,
launched on October 28, 2009 with the objective of bringing qualitative,
accessible, and effective healthcare to women and children; to reduce
maternal and infant mortality; and to increase the utilisation of healthcare
facilities is yet another home grown intervention effort of the government.

It was conceived to ensure that ‘pregnancy may no longer be a death
sentence in Ondo State’ through the provision of free and adequate
healthcare to pregnant women and children 0-5 years of age. Designed to
tackle four major factors predisposing pregnant women to death, that is:
delays in seeking care when complications arise, in reaching care when
decisions are made, in accessing care on arrival at healthcare facilities, and
in referring care from where it is initiated to where it can be completed, the
Abiye Programme has been piloted to global acclaim such that it has been
signposted as the model for tackling infant and maternal mortality in the
developing world.

In fact, the World Bank has officially listed the Ondo State Abiye
programme on its website as one of the success stories coming out of
Africa!  At the Mother and Child Hospital, another home-grown intervention
and the referral apex of the Abiye programme, 31,000 patients have been
treated and 9,879 babies have been safely delivered, 1,224 by Caesarian
section in one and a half years of operation, surpassing the records of much
older facilities!

Indeed there are other initiatives that are good governance compliant in
Ondo State. In education, the Mimiko administration has a Quality
Assurance Agency that has turned around the old order of inspecting
schools for quality of teaching, facilities and compliant with standards. Not
only has this been acclaimed as the way to go by relevant stakeholders in
the sector, it may have started to manifest in improved performance, as
students from the state have posted remarkable performances in several
national academic competitions.

Students from the State came first in the June 2011 NTA/ETV competition;
1st and 3rd in two different categories in the 2011 Digifest Competition; 1st
in the National Quiz Competition organised by the Science Teachers’
Association and 1st in the NNPC National Quiz Competition in the South
West Zone, among others. The state government embarked on training and
re-training of teachers, the most recent being the training of teachers to man
the new Mega Schools now at various stages of completion across the
State.

It is apt to say they are modern, well-equipped 21st century compliant
centres of learning conceived to expose the children of the less privileged to
quality education and enhance their capacities to compete under fair and
equal conditions with their counterparts in the private schools. The Mega
Schools are also to serve as models below which future public and private
schools cannot function.

In agriculture, the Mimiko-led government has completed the first of three
major Agricultural Villages in Ore and is way into the completion of two
others. Each is designed to have at least 1000 unemployed graduates who
after exposure to training are involved as participant-owners of their various
farms. This intervention is also a means of mopping up a number of
productive hands from the unemployment market.

Is one surprised that the governor has done so much in the little time that he
has been in power? Not at all. A man of vision, Mimiko came into office
prepared to elevate his people from abject poverty to the modernity that the
21st century represents but which successive administrations in Ondo have
denied them. And to a large extent, he has succeeded.

His cognate experience of having been a commissioner, secretary to the
state government and minister at different times must have adequately
equipped him to serve the cause of humanity on a broader scale as we have
seen him doing close to three years as governor. Before then, he was a
Student Union leader at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo
University).

He cut his teeth in politics as publicity secretary of the Ondo Council
Chapter of the Unity Party of Nigeria in the Second Republic and in the Third
Republic, an ex-officio member of the Social Democratic Party in the
council. Mimiko's wife, Kemi, is part of his success story because without
her having been an able better half, he would not have gone this far.

At 57, the story of Mimiko is a story of a man of courage, a man determined
to serve humanity, man redefining true governance amid leadership rot, a
man of the people. No wonder he is likened to Iroko, the most valued tree!

Akinmade is Ondo State Commissioner for Information and Strategy
Gov. Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo state
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