The piece titled, "Osun: Why launch Opon Imo in Lagos," by Ayo Aluko-Olokun, in The PUNCH of Thursday, May 16, 2013, confirms a Freudian slip reflecting the puerility and poverty of ideas in the rank and file of the Peoples Democratic Party as opposed to the fecundity of ideas and pragmatism brimming within the Action Congress of Nigeria.
Aluko-Olokun is the spokesperson for a former Minister of Youth Development, Olasunkanmi Akinlabi, who has declared his ambition to occupy the Oke-Fia Government House, Osogbo, on the platform of the PDP. Why he chose not to reflect his true identity in the aforementioned write-up could be because of his lack of conviction in the ability of Akinlabi to govern Osun or because he is not proud of the underachieving and rudderless PDP-led Federal Government. Naturally, people like to identify with good things.
The Opon Imo is a unique initiative conceived by the state governor, Rauf Aregbesola. It is unique in the true sense of it because the Opon Imo computer tablet has never been used anywhere in the world prior to its advent in Osun State. Aluko-Olokun asked, "Why launch Opon Imo in Lagos? The answer is, Opon Imo was never launched in Lagos and has not been launched anywhere either. What was done in Lagos was a media presentation of the computer tab for critical review by ICT and Education correspondents in the country. Undoubtedly, Lagos is the hub of the Nigerian media and ICT base. Both Akinlabi and the writer, Aluko-Olokun, shall get an invitation for the inauguration of Opon-Imo.
Then, on the N8.6bn saving the Aregbesola administration made for the state on the project, it is instructive to note the admittance by Aluko-Olokun, who said that Osun saved "about N4bn," and not N8.6bn. The most pertinent question to ask the writer is how much did the PDP administration in Osun ever saved the state while it imposed itself on the state? He predicated his arrival at the N4bn saving on the supposition that "the maximum number of textbooks required by a pupil would be 27 textbooks." But the truth is, each Opon Imo has 63 textbooks in it! Maybe, Aluko-Olokun needs reeducation to be able to get simple mental sums right.
In celebration of the centenary of The Guardian, the editor, C. P. Scott, in his famous essay, "A hundred years," wrote that, "Comment is free, but facts are sacred." The desperate and paranoid musketeers in the PDP have no shred of FACT in their criticism of Opon-Imo. What is wrong in a pupil having 17 subjects and 63 diverse books in a 1.1 kilogramme device? It is anti-education for Aluko-Olokun to suggest that each pupil should only have the subjects they would be taking in their Senior School Certificate Examination in the computer tabs. It is our government’s conviction that for a broad horizon, our pupils should at this level be exposed to know something about everything. Government should be a vehicle for enriching the horizon of the citizenry and not diminishing it as the PDP had done regionally and nationally.
The writer raised the question of inadequate electricity to charge the computer tabs that would soon be distributed free to Osun secondary school pupils. This question highlights the confusion, paralysis and inertia the PDP has so far foisted on Nigeria. Pray, how can a member of the PDP ruling class complain of lack of electricity in Nigeria? Which political party has superintended the lack of electricity in Nigeria?
On another level, however, the question of electricity raised by the writer shows that the article is not a product of thoughtful, objective and balanced analysis but an attempt to pooh-pooh the Opon Imo initiative at all costs without admitting the PDP's failing in the area of electricity supply. It is on record that the Olusegun Obasanjo administration stopped the Independent Power Project initiated by former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu. In any case, if every phone user in Nigeria (grandpas and grandmas inclusive) charges their phones using ingenious means, public school pupils in Osun State using Opon Imo will get electricity to charge these inestimable devices.
Yes, Opon Imo is experimental just as every technological innovation is. Technology evolves daily just as governance should evolve daily to continue to find fresh solutions to the current challenges confronting the society. But the PDP model of governance represents stagnation. For the information of the narrow-minded goons in the party's cocoon, the telephone has continued to experimentally evolve from Graham Bell in 1876 till the present smartphones; even Ipad has now experimentally evolved to version 4, Ipad 5 is around the corner. Science and technology will continue to churn out latest versions of devices including the groundbreaking Opon Imo.
In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. must have envisioned the PDP of this world, worst of all the Osun genre of it, when he said, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”. Absurd and laughable is the contention that pupils would still need to print out information from the computer tab. The writer, at this age, has yet to realise that the world is fast reducing the use of paper. His gaping ignorance reflects the inability of the government of the party he defends to execute a campaign for sustainable environmental development through tree planting and beautification, which the Aregbesola administration has done in Osun through the “Igi-iye” component of his O-CLEAN PLUS programme.
It is sheer impenitence for any person to speak on the innovative Opon Imo computer tab when the previous administration that held Osun by the scruff of the neck for seven and a half years never had enough blackboards to go round public schools in the state.
•Ilori is the Chairman of Opon Imo Launch Event Committee
