How media ‘under-developed’ Osun
If you focus on sensations and titillations, to the detriment of core developmental news, you are not only subverting a government striving to attain the Jeremy Bentham model of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, you are also frustrating a putative governmental model that could lift millions of other Nigerians, from their misery.
That would appear an objective appraisal of the media coverage of former Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola years.
Top news headlines, impassioned analyses and even thunderous editorials, framed almost exclusively elite pastimes -Osun’s reported debt burden, salary delays, alleged attempts at “Islamization” and “secession”, etc.
Salary delays and worries over a putative debt overhang are earnest and serious, for a media doing its watch dog role. But charges of “Islamization” and “secession” are clearly ludicrous.
On the balance, however, the media, earnest or complicit, just weighed in, on Osun elite pitched battles, which had little or nothing to do with the wellness of the greatest number.
Yet, the fundamental pillar of governance is catering for the overwhelming interest of the vast majority. That is where the government earns its legitimacy. Besides, the 1999 Constitution stipulates some fundamental principles of state policy, which are people-skewed.
The latest proof, of this media fixation with shadows, instead of developmental substance, is a three-year study, which the Federal Ministry of Health (FMH) just released on a project it calls Saving One Million Lives Programme for Results (SOML-PforR).
SOML-PforR is the code for six discrete indicators, gauging the performance of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja, from 2015 to 2018, on maternal and child health service delivery.
A casual glance at the 2018 survey returns shattering results, on a core human development front: only 12 states out of 36 (a third) and FCT passed the muster.
That means only a third of the states have been addressing human capital development at perhaps its most critical juncture: maternal and child health. That is where it all starts -- and could also end -- for the poor and the vulnerable, who are in the vast majority.
The poor (not the rich or even the middle class) mainly patronize public hospitals, which FMH and state ministries of Health run.
Yet, two out of three state governments in Nigeria have, at least in maternal and child health, shunned that majority. It’s yet another proof of a general elite indulgence, and neglect of the poor, in Nigerian governance.
But it’s in this rare and consistently better deal for the poor majority that the Aregbesola government posted a refreshing difference, over eight years. But it’s that same core developmental area that the media virtually blacked out.
In this SOML-PforR survey, Osun with an improvement rate of 97.4 per cent, came only next to Yobe (133.4 per cent).
Other states with improved performance are Borno (63.5 per cent), Kano (35.2 per cent), Nasarawa (33.6 per cent), Adamawa (29 per cent), Niger (26.8 per cent), Jigawa (21.9 per cent), Taraba (13.5 per cent), Gombe (9 per cent), Ondo (6.4 per cent) and Zamfara (1.3 per cent). The FCT (42.6 per cent) makes up the number -- and just as well, for it shows the FMH, which powers the survey, at least walks its talk; but not as much as Yobe and Osun.
Another surprise is that most states that achieved improvements are in the North, supposedly the less developed in the Nigerian territory.
Indeed, only Osun and Ondo bucked the parlous survey results by the southern states. Still, the southern media point fingers and thunder at others, while their own uppity states lag behind in this crucial area.
No state, South East or South-South, even with South-South’s oil wealth, made this leap. Yet, these are comparatively wealthier states, than their northern counterparts.
But again, this is where Osun, under Aregbesola, sparkled. That is even more glaring, when you contrast the Osun survey results, with the rest of the states in the South West.
From this survey, Osun despite its poor purse, is splashing more resources on the poor and the society’s most vulnerable (97.4 per cent); far better than super-rich Lagos (-14.3 per cent)!
Still, the general lesson is for the other South West states to follow the Osun example: spend more on critical facilities concerning the poor, who have nobody else to turn to.
Local economic gauging agencies like the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and Financial Derivatives Company Limited in Lagos and international development agencies: the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Institute (OPHDI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), have consistently returned a positive growth and development results, over Aregbesola’s eight-year tenure as governor and affirmed the success of its antipoverty programmes.
Between 2010 and 2018, Osun’s GDP grew by 108.3 per cent, from N191.1 billion (2010) to N398 billion (2018). During this same period, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) almost trebled (182 per cent), from 481, 451 (in 2010) to 1, 358, 446 (in 2018).
Instead of beaming the searchlight on these developmental strides, in a period of dire economic adversity, much of the media got fixated with the salary crisis.
They not only made Aregbesola a scapegoat for a pan-Nigeria crisis, that skew also robbed other governments the benefit of tapping into the Osun success, to solve similar problems, in their own states.
Prompt payment of salaries is a right. Even the Bible says the labourer has a right to prompt pay, even before the sweat of his labour dries off. So, the problem was not agitating for prompt pay.
It was rather skewing it as the sole index to judge a state striving to expand its economy, ironically to make those same salaries a mere routine.
It was a classic in the misplacement of media priorities; and a wanton skewing of the media space towards elite problems -no matter how pressing or legitimate -- to the detriment of the majority. Civil servants are seldom up to 15 per cent of any state’s population.
The media mis-coverage of the Aregesola governorship should teach the different lobbies, different lessons. The media must focus on what mattered and shun inanities. The reverse was the case in covering Aregbesola’s Osun.
New Osun Governor, Gboyega Oyetola, Aregbesola’s chief of staff, for most of his tenure, must learn from Aregbesola’s mistakes. But he must also fiercely focus on his development agenda, no matter the media distractions.
That is the only way the Osun poor and vulnerable majority can continue to secure better deals from their government, with a media so fixated with the elite agenda.
The media mis-coverage of the Aregesola governorship should teach the different lobbies, different lessons. The media must focus on what mattered and shun inanities.