…Why he remains the best candidate for House of Representatives
THE UPS
Hon. Aloysius Adeiza Okino is one of the prominent, humble and God-fearing political leaders as far as Ajaokuta local government is concerned. He is a leader with good antecedents who began his political journey as Vice Chairman and subsequently became the acting chairman and chairman of Ajaokuta local government respectively.
During his short spell as the acting chairman, he was able to record success beyond our imagination. He embarked on a number of projects and 100% salaries were regularly paid to workers, even though prior to his assumption of office as the acting chairman, workers were being paid on percentage by his predecessor. This propelled the people of Ajaokuta LGA to vote him as the chairman because of their belief in his abilities and visions.
To God be the glory, he was able to reciprocate with outstanding performances which occasioned the initiation and execution of several projects across the local government which rekindled the hope of the people and brought about positive transformation to our dear local government.
Thus, it is necessary to highlight some of his achievements to avoid misconception of bare facts. To start with, Hon. Aloysius Okino during his reign as the chairman of Ajaokuta local government builts computer centres and rehabilitates classrooms across the local government in order to create a conducive environment for learning and enhance education performances of students in the area.
He also grazed and rehabilitated the feeder roads across the local communities so as to facilitate smooth transportation of farm products of the local farmers to the market and also eliminates any form of wastage which could have been attributed to lack of accessible roads.
He distributed over 700 motorcycles to the staff of Ajaokuta LGA for free. The rationale behind this was to encourage and enhanced the performances of the staff as they effectively contribute their quotas for the development of the civil service commission. This magnanimity also prevented workers from going late to their various offices.
He constructed and rehabilitated healthcare centres across the local government. Prior to his emergence as chairman some of the healthcare centres were in a pitiable situation. In fact some were obsolete before he assumed office. But because he believed in the assertion which says that “health is wealth” he rehabilitated and equipped some of the hospitals with much needed facilities with immediate alacrity. He set up laboratory and introduced scanning machine in those hospitals and made sure there was a resident doctor who even performed surgeries for our people.
As if all these were not enough, he also provided pipe-borne water across the local government to forestall the people from going extra-miles in search for water, and this averted the Ajaokutans from witnessing yet another scarcity of water.
He gave out bursary of over 2million naira to over 200 students at 10,000 naira each. This was devoid of political party affiliation and ‘only my people politics’ as it is often common among many political leaders.
It is quite impossible for me to mention all the good work he has done when he was the local government chairman.
But I believe the few I have mentioned so far is enough to vindicate his efficiency and effectiveness, considering the meager resources at his disposal as at then. Even though the economic situation of the country as at then was not favourable, he was able to register such success, thanks to his administrative initiatives.
Ipso facto, having considered the rate of his achievements, the people of Ajaokuta local government says to themselves “they’ve witness the birth of new political leader ” and afterward, he was nicknamed ” OZIOWOWA'” out of felicity.
THE WRONGLY PERCEIVED DOWNS
Ask anyone that criticized Hon. Aloysius Okino, where has he wronged him/her? He/she would pinpoint two factors that led to his criticism. And these two factors are;
1. Percentage payment and
2. Retrenchment/‘Not on PV’ or victimization as some may call it.
Before I proceed, I would like to advice the people of Ajaokuta local government to be open-minded and avoid bias-mindedness in the course of digesting this message, in order to avoid misconstrue of facts.
Having said this, I would begin with the issue of percentage payment. This simply means paying below 100%. The issue of percentage payment could be traced back to the period when he was the vice chairman under the chairmanship of his predecessor, Hon. Samson Bako. This was where it all started from and it was as a result of gradual decrease in oil price which also led to gradual decrease in local government allocation. That is to say, the dwindling allocations made percentage payment of salary inevitable as at then. Even up till date, such menace has not been tackled and it has even become worse.
Let me quickly draw our attention to the period when Hon. Aloysius was the Acting chairman, then he paid noting less than 100% and things were moving smoothly both at the local government and state level. He even went ahead to pay the balance of the NULGE loan and interest they took in First bank Ekpoma before he came on board. But the fall of oil price after he had become the chairman affected what Ajaokuta received as monthly allocation and it became impossible to pay 100% and that was a general problem all over the state as the country witnessed what economists tagged ‘economic meltdown’ at that time.
Inexplicably, the price of oil which was the major source of Nigeria’s income dropped drastically and that seriously affected the country’s economy and the statutory allocation gotten from the state government was very low. I want us to also have it at the back of our mind that Ajaokuta local government is second to the last local government that received lowest allocation as far as Kogi state was concerned, even though the local government had the third highest staffs strength in the state.
For these reasons it became absolutely difficult for him to pay full salary that even sometimes he sourced for money from other sources to pay salaries because he was excessively concerned about the wellbeing of his people.
This actually affected Hon. Aloysius Okino as there were unnecessary accusations regarding the percentage payment of workers salary. Back then, there were a lot of fabricated rumours regarding federal allocation where some people concocted that most of the time he received ample allocation from federal government and that he only decides to embezzled the funds and paid percentage to the workers. Some even said that the allocations he often received was more than enough to pay 2 months salary. Although, this was a mere rumour but was a destructive one. However, Hon. Aloysius proved his innocence about the whole percentage salary saga when he told Governor Idris Wada directly to look for ways to tackle percentage salary when the then governor of Kogi state visited Ajaokuta local government amidst his supporters and Ajaokutans who were there to welcome him.
Looking at this issue of percentage payment holistically you will agree with me that he was not responsible for the problem because hitherto, the problem was a major concern, even though he used his initiative to tackled it when he was the acting chairman but the menace got out of hands during his reign as the executive chairman.
The Issue of Retrenchment. This was a phenomenon in antiquity. For many years, Ajaokuta local government was known never to follow due processes in staff recruitment. The issue became worse during the retrenchment that happened in 2004 which aim was to victimize opposition and that led to a lot of forgery and insertion of names of even underage staff to replace those who were victimized. Some of them were recruited with primary school and junior secondary school certificates and other forged certificates to occupy some vital positions.
So, what some critics termed ‘victimization’ today, was as a result of the screening conducted by his predecessor. The screening was done generally in the state as demanded by the state NULGE and Ajaokuta was pegged at 400 staff. The result of the screening was not published until during Hon Aloysius’s regime. Aloysius who was perturbed with the proposed number of staff by the state NULGE to be 400, used his influence to bring back over 1000 staff including his opponents and that is why today Ajaokuta has the highest number of staff in Kogi Central even after the recent screening by Governor Yahaya Bello.
The implementation of the screening reports which was hitherto conducted sprang up criticism as some people thought he deliberately did that to victimize them and that was not the case.
To make it clear, his uncles and political supporters were retrenched as well during his time and those who were above retirement age were all directed to take their file to pension office, those who complied are still taking their benefits today but a lot of others pursued political options to create hatred for the young man.
The issue of “Not on P.V” during Hon. Aloysius Okino’s administration. I had made several enquiries about this particular problem and I was able to understand that most of these incidences occurred without the knowledge of Hon. Aloysius Okino and that, most of these unscrupulous act were either carried out by his followers who had access to Payment Voucher (PV) or the people affected were found wanting by the screening conducted earlier. Hon. Aloysius Okino is an indigene of Ajaokuta LGA who obviously doesn’t know most of the people that were said to be victimized during his regime. For example, those who were allegedly victimized that reside in Ebiya district were only victimized by those followers that also reside in Ebiya district either directly or indirectly because Aloysius doesn’t know your full name or your political affiliation.
After skimming through this, I believe you would understand that am not trying to exonerate him from his pitfalls, but rather to open your mind to the reality. And also to make everyone understand that he was being tainted with concocted and fabricated stories that has no base.
How could you tag Aloysius Okino to be sentimentally and politically bias-driven? Someone who treated late Sheidu Jimoh from Odonu who had an accident with sum of over 1 million naira despite being his opponent; sadly the boy died recently without any help from the person his family voted for. How could you tag someone who gave scholarship to over 200 students from different political affiliations to be bias? How could you tag someone who organized free N-power registration for all eligible Ajaokuta youths to be bias? I wish you all take your time to know this man called Hon. Aloysius Okino. He is a leader who is not ethnically, clanically or politically bias-driven.
Certainly, he has his shortcomings and weaknesses, because perfection can only be attributed to God, as we all know that, human being are all fallible. But Hon. Aloysius Okino possesses certain qualities both in leadership and character that placed him well ahead of others. He’s a type of leader that will accept in public what he would have accepted in secret; he’s a type that doesn’t jeopardize the feelings of his people and this is why he usually pays visits to his people perpetually. He’s more concern about the wellbeing of his people. Certainly, he is the best among the rest.
At this juncture, I would call on the good people of Ajaokuta local government to support and vote Hon. Aloysius Adeiza Okino for member, representing Ajaokuta federal constituency, come 2019 regardless of your political affiliation, clan, and creed.
Remember….. Leadership is in the responsibility and not in the title.
Vox Pop, Vox dei – the voice of the people is the voice of God.
– Ojeje Isah Abdulrahaman
