Why Ogun has Nigeria's lowest food inflationrate

LAST week, in yet another confirmation of the visionary governance template in Ogun State, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) identified Ogun as the state with Nigeria's most modest year-on-year increase in food inflation.

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According to the NBS's April Consumer Price Index, Ogun State also exhibited a decrease in food inflation on a month-on-month basis. The report, which indicates that Benue recorded the steepest year-on-year food inflation rise at 51.76 percent, followed by Ekiti at 34.05 percent, and Kebbi at 33.82 percent, rated Ebonyi (7.19 percent), Adamawa (9.52 percent), and Ogun (9.91 percent) as the states with slowest year-on-year food inflation increases included.

This is, of course, not due to sheer happenstance. Time and again, the Ogun State government led by Prince Dapo Abiodun has exhibited strategic foresight, placing the state at a vantage position as Nigeria navigates crisis. For instance, long before the Federal Government removed subsidy, the Abiodun government had rolled out CNG-powered buses, tricycles and motorbikes to bring down the cost of transport and leave citizens of the state with higher disposable income. It is no surprise that today, most okada riders, charging their bikes at a pittance at the designated points provided by the state government and sometimes running on that single charge for as many as three days, have abandoned any thought of petrol-run business altogether. Ogun State it was which first approved a N10,000 palliative and reduced working days for workers before other states rolled out theirs, and it similarly blazed the trail by crediting the accounts of students of the state's origin in higher institutions during the immediate aftermath of subsidy removal, and the accounts of parents of primary and secondary school students during the same period. This was in addition to various other measures, including the creation of markets selling food at subsidized rates. Naturally, Ogun was one of the first states to announce a new minimum wage for workers.