Social Protection: Strong Pillar Of Governance In Ekiti State

By Muyiwa Jimoh

Late last year, one of my very close associates who belong to the labour movement in Nigeria, specifically the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) at the national level had a chat with me which I considered then very interesting and which set me on the journey to this piece. He told me that the TUC had just concluded a week-long international workshop on Social Protection Floor (SPF) in OATUU Complex, Accra, Ghana. He was surprised at the very high level of participation and the number of people that attended. What intrigued him though, he said, was the high powered representation from the Ekiti State Government led by the Chief of staff to the Governor and some commissioners including special advisers and representatives of the labour movement and the civil society in the state.

He wondered and was truly excited at the seriousness with which the government took that workshop and its outcomes which they also participated in generating. It was this thread of thought that made me to make inquiries and investigate further the place of Social Protection in the governance of Ekiti State knowing full well that at the heart of any governance is the quest for effective and sustainable social net especially in a traumatised and disarticulated economy like ours.

When I therefore visited Ekiti State recently and conferred with some of my colleagues in the state and after discussions with ordinary folks who do not occupy any public office in the state and the activities which I witnessed, I finally felt it was time for me to talk about this in the media so that Nigerians will know that this is possible and to also point the way for other state actors on the possibilities which governance can provide for the citizenry.

This does not imply that I had not known before now the effectiveness of governance in Ekiti State since Governor Fayemi became its governor. On the contrary, I have followed this very progressive governor who has in many ways endeared himself to some of us who have come to admire his style of leadership and the very impactful policies and programmes which have all come to epitomise his government in Ekiti State.

At this point it is good that we understand what Social Protection is and its congruency with the dictates of good governance and why any government that says it is doing well but has failed woefully in making impact in this area would be adjudged to have failed irredeemably. In this is also found an explanation for the continued insistence of critical segments of the civil society that all the hoopla about economic growth will not and actually does not make sense if it is not tied to its direct expressions in the lives of the majority of the citizenry. Nigerians rightly do not therefore see anything to be excited about when the statistics of enervating economic growth is bandied about by our economists at the federal level.

The implications of this is that there may be growth without direct impact on the lives of the people; that governments may actually be governing without positively affecting the lives of the people and that huge sums of state funds can be appropriated and spent without corresponding changes to the lives of the people who are supposed to be direct beneficiaries of such exercises or expenditure. Some schools of thoughts have chosen to call it fallouts of economic growth and social transformation but any honest student of society understands what this is all about: that it is about expropriation; it is about non-inclusive and non-participatory economy; it is about the marginalisation, alienation and peripherialisation of the majority weak and hapless members of the society by the strong and mighty who have commandeered the instrument of coercion and means of production to themselves and their cronies to the detriment of the rest of the society.

While these may have happened in some places and at some levels, Ekiti State has become one of the states where the government under Kayode Fayemi has made deliberate and properly calibrated effort to ensure that there is a deep correlation between government activities and the welfare of the citizens of the state. His government has shown a deep understanding of this inequality that is the outcome of every political framework that is built on the capitalist mode of production. He has also humbly accepted the duty of the government in such a setting which is to ensure that income is redistributed in various ways to seek an equalisation or mitigation of these innate distortions and to lift lives above these artificially generated constructs.

Why would there be economic growth and yet more people get poorer and why would there be skyscrapers and other paraphernalia or trappings of social transformation and yet, the people experience increased mass deprivations, homelessness and destitution? For example why is it that Nigeria’s economy is estimated to be growing at between 8% and 10% per annum and is classified as one of the fastest growing economies in the whole world yet, at least 75% of Nigerians live below the poverty line, about 65% of the youth remains unemployed while general unemployment is around 30%? In all the Human Development indices released by different international agencies and organisations, this country is found within the same category as countries at war – Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Chad, etc.  These create huge gaps in access to public services and social infrastructure for the ordinary citizens, leaving them heavily deprived and unable to meet the basic needs of life and living.

Historically, with the advent of Industrial Revolution, the various social bonds that held, supported and stabilised the societies became weakened as people migrated in search of work. Originally the society had a natural mechanism for maintaining social stability by provisioning for the weak members of the families because family bonds and ties were strong, thus children are catered for within the large family setting and are socialised into society through the same process participating and becoming positive contributors to social life. As they become old and thus unable to contribute physically, the same system fills the gap and sustains them even in a more dignified form until death.

The implications of this was that children, women, the handicapped, the old and those that were unable to immediately take care of themselves had roof over their heads, access to food, medicare, education and other social amenities as the society gives a natural buffer from these deprivations. Our societies were therefore devoid of the present sceptre of beggars all over the place; the present overwhelming presence of homeless masses and street urchins who as human beings must seek ways, however possible, for accessing the basic means of livelihood.

This capacity to protect these segments of the society has come under serious challenge as the family and other social ties are broken and new frameworks created to mediate relationships. However, these new frameworks are not as filial and as close knit as the blood ties thus do not offer the same kind of protection that the old societies offered to the weak and vulnerable in the society.

As the societies transformed and rev its engine of growth, more and more people become exposed to the vagaries of the new relations and are often abandoned to the vicissitudes of life. The more, therefore, our societies create heavy infrastructure and build big cities, the more we have increasing number of people becoming displaced thus vulnerable.

It is this vulnerability which has left many citizens unable to access the basic necessities of life, stripping them of the needed dignity to enjoy life that is at the heart of Social Protection. Unfortunately, greater portion of the citizenry has fallen under the category of persons needing to be covered under different shades of the Social Net.

The Ekiti State Government under Governor Fayemi has fortunately realised this and its implications to the other segments of the society, the environment and the overall prosperity of the nation. This vision is what is at the core of governance in the state. He is, therefore, not just trying to grapple with it practically on the ground but also to intellectually understand it better and fashion strategies to interrogate, query and engage it effectively. I am sure that this informs the decision to send that high powered delegation to Ghana which discussed the SPF-I and which my associate was so enamoured with.

Ekiti State’s quest for a cover to all its citizens can also not be far from the governor’s background as a civil society person who understands the centrality of these issues in national development. He has shown his avid mastery of sustainability and the need to avoid the pitfalls of past leaders both here in Nigeria and in other societies. He has brought his wide and deep experiences both here and internationally to bear on his policies and programmes targeted at the poor and the vulnerable in Ekiti State.

Governor Fayemi through his eight-point agenda which is essentially anchored on delivering governance for the benefit of the majority of the peoples of Ekiti State no matter their beliefs and creeds, has overhauled access to social services and public infrastructure in order to tackle these systemic inequalities with their deleterious outcomes. Qualitative education has increasingly been made more available to all segments of the populace stopping the slide that would have made the state to move from one of the most educated people in Nigeria to states with mediocre educational system and performance. Functional and effective education is now free and compulsory in the state, making a mockery of the position of the erstwhile reactionary governors who had until recently held sway in the state.

His health programme has provided access to free medical care for the vulnerable segments of the society, and has made more platforms for delivering same in many locations within the state. This is akin to all the states under the All Progressive Congress (APC) leadership. The new medical facilities which he has built, the old ones which he refurbished and the new hospitals which have come on stream under his leadership are milestones of a committed governor and truly bear testimony of the focus of this great activist in government house in Ekiti State.

His government has grappled headlong with the issues of pensions in the state and has successfully kept this often worrisome area in many states up to date without discernible backlog. This has had positive impact on the incomes of the state’s retirees who are mainly the elderly and whose income needed to be guaranteed and remove the burden of monthly anxiety and apprehension from their minds. This we note as praise worthy and an objective that keys into his overall objectives as encapsulated in his Eight-point agenda.

One of his achievements in this area which has had remarkable impact on me and of which I am indeed emotional about is the feeding programme driven through the State Public Kitchen platform. This is not just a one-off thing or a programme for the cities alone. To show that he understands where this should be targeted at, he spread the locations to all the rural communities throughout the state so that those that truly need to be fed will have constant access to good nutrition periodically throughout the state.

We acknowledge this effort and deeply appreciate the humility with which this governor has delivered on most of this people-driven programmes and policies. He has not allowed the perquisites of office to separate him from the people but has turned the office into a vessel for increasing and deepening contact with the people of the state. He serves regularly in some of the feeding programmes and this we must confess is not just for show as in most of the places witnessed, there were no journalists around who could have reported on these good deeds.

I would also want this to be seen from the standpoint of the paucity of resources available to the governor in relation to what he has been able to accomplish within the past four years that he had held sway. I know many states that receive more allocations than this governor but have found it difficult to even achieve what he has within this short time.

I decided to talk about some of his achievements in this area but it will be important to say that indeed the people of Ekiti State are blessed to have him at this time as their governor. He has decisively touched every segment of life in the state positively. The road networks have taken a new look, old ones expanded and extended, new ones that had hitherto remained an imagination have become real making the state one of the few examples of good and progressive governance in the federation.

In a country where governance seems to have become synonymous with corruption, Fayemi has shown great accountability in his handling of the affairs of Ekiti State. We had been assailed before he came into the Government House in Ekiti State with gory tales of mind boggling heist of public funds but these have all ceased. Ekiti State is now no more one of the states where issues of corruption are mentioned within the corridors of power and this is within the ambits of the numerous projects which he has successfully executed. In his time, we are, therefore, not likely to see poultry farms with exotic chickens without droppings which some people in those days described as Ekiti wonder.

We must show this governor that we are watching what he is doing and the lives he is impacting positively in the state so that we can encourage him to do more and to motivate others to learn from him and deliver good governance to their people.

I am proud of his numerous achievements not just because we belong to the same political party – the All Progressives Congress (APC) but that we are of the same ideological bent having been immersed in the various struggles for a better Nigeria and being moulded in the same crucible of activism devoid of personal pursuits and primordial sentiments. He has become one of the other shining examples of public officers who have shown the capacity to marry theory with practice and activism with effectiveness in public service. He has also shown that he has learnt well from other progressive governors and especially from Lagos State where he has made the incumbent Governor,  Babatunde Raji Fashola, one of his models. He is truly a scion of the progressive family. We are proud of his attainments.

As the people of Ekiti state go to the polls on Saturday, 21 June, I am assured that as a people known for being politically conscious, they would not hesitate to show clearly their preference for this governor who has shown the possibilities of good governance in the lives of the citizens of a state no matter the nature of the nation’s economy at the federal level and its standard of politics. He has shielded the state from the vagaries of mal-administration at the federal level and has delivered on most of his eight–point agenda. At this time there is no other person that could do these more effectively than the person who has been doing it in the last four years.

As he musters the needed energy to craft a comprehensive framework to deliver the SPF agenda to the people of the state, we are sure that this will continue to take centre-stage in his next tenure. We are sure that it will form the nucleus of his activities thus spending so that the state will continue lifting up the standard in the promotion and provision of SP to its citizenry. We urge him to take the lead in organising a Nigerian-wide SPF-I conference that will thrust this global agenda unto our national stage and consciousness so that its fine tenets and provisions will become a national reality. That is why we call on all stakeholders in Ekiti State to mobilise all available resources to ensure that this promoter of the Social Protection principles is given victory that is not only resounding but very loud and compelling capable of showing the opposition once and for all that there is no room for them in the state within the foreseeable future.

He has been tested, he has delivered abundantly. He has to be empowered to continue the good work for the people of this state. Promises are not what is needed at this time but only the person who is tried and tested; only the person credible experience and only the who is deeply rooted in the people which Dr Kayode Fayemi has come to typify is good enough for Ekiti people. Ekiti deserves the best as it marches forward from a civil service state to an industrialised economy.

•Jimoh is member of the Lagos State House of Assembly representing Apapa II Constituency.