APC upholds internal democracy, gives level playing field to aspirants —Adegoke

Mr Kunle Adegoke, a legal practitioner is a gubernatorial aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State. In this interview by OLUWOLE IGE, he speaks about the drive behind his ambition, his developmental plans for the state, among other issues.

It seems you are relatively new on the political turf of Osun State. Do you have the political clout to emerge as the governorship candidate of the APC on the July 7 primary?

In the first place, I won’t consider myself to be new on the political scene of Osun State. I have been in politics for more than two decades. This has been so since the days of the SDP and NRC elections in 1992 and 1993. And with the beginning of the recent dispensation which we started in 1999, I was in the Alliance for Democracy (AD). Though, I didn’t come out to contest any elective office before it became AC, ACN and now APC, for more than 12 years now, I have been counsel to the party, serving in that capacity as a legal representative in many cases, to the extent that in Nigeria today, I can say there is no lawyer that has served this party as much as I have done more so in many cases without being paid, not only in Osun, but all over Nigeria. As far as politics is concerned in Osun, I have been on the field for so many years. If you look at the structure of my campaign organisation, “Tiwa tiwa lo Osun” and the roles we have played in the last one year and three months, you will see that I am not a novice. Definitely, it shows that we are masters of the game.

With respect to the clout of winning the ticket of the party, I can say confidently that no aspirant has done as much work as I have done. I have traversed the length and breadth of Osun more than three times now. We are concluding another round of consultation now by going to every local government. Not just really talking to people, but to the authentic delegates of the party, who are going vote. Wherever we speak, they are convinced that there is an assured future for Osun State, economically, politically and socially. With the number of people that are following us and the number of delegates that are sympathetic to our cause, we are sure that if the primaries are conducted tomorrow, we will come out victorious.

July 7 has been tentatively fixed by the leadership of your party for the primary election. Do you believe in the credibility of your party to conduct an election that is free and fair?

We have done it repeatedly; we have done it in Anambra, Ondo and recently in Ekiti. If somebody had taken a step three times and has come out clean, how can we say such a leadership doesn’t have the power to conduct free and fair primaries? We believe that the leadership has the power to do it because the APC upholds internal democracy and that is why level playing field would be given to all aspirants. With the recent examples I have just given, the leadership has the power, will and the conscience that can pull through a very clean and transparent primary election. As far as Osun State is concerned, I believe that is what is going to be done.

If you clinch your party’s ticket to contest the September 22 governorship poll, what do you intend to do differently from what has been done so far by the government of Rauf Aregbesola?

I am going to carry out a lot of positive changes in the system which will be beneficial to the existing policies and the peaceful co-existence of the people. If you look at the economic existence of the people right now, the government in power has tried by doing its own bit. However, the economic situation in Nigeria has impacted a lot on Osun and many other states such that quite a number of states cannot afford to pay salaries as at when due till this moment. To that extent, I want to make sure that the IGR of the state, which is currently reported to be in the sum of N600 million monthly is increased in the next three years to the sum of N15 billion.

How do you intend to achieve this feat?

This is something we have worked upon in the past seven years. I have done a lot of research and work to ensure that I can achieve this. With the tenacity we are bringing into it and support of the people, we will meet this target. In Osun today, we have more than one million acres and 330 hectares of land unutilized. So, if you travel from Apomu in Isokan and Irewole local governments down to Owenna, you will see that there are forests on the right and left sides of the expressway. If you travel from there to Oke-Ila, in Ifedayo local government and Ora community, which is the border town to Kwara and Ekiti, you will discover that there are various shades of forest all the way. Ditto for Ejigbo and other parts of the state. There is no big farm in existence in Osun State. We are deploying a new system by embarking on agricultural revolution that would achieve maximum production of food crops. We want to have in the next three years at least one farm settlement in each of the federal constituencies. We have nine federal constituencies in Osun. I was discussing with a poultry farmer recently, who is importing about 11 trucks of corn from Katsina every week to be used in processing feeds for chickens. The implication is that we are not producing enough corn in Osun to meet the needs of this single poultry farmer. This means that if we go into what we call mono cropping, let us say from Apomu down to Ilesa, we have only corn field, then we would be able to produce enough maize. This farmer told me that if the cost of transportation from Katsina down to Osun is removed from his expenses, he would make a huge gain. So what we looking at is that if we embark on massive production of corn and this man is buying one truck of corn for N1 million, the implication is that N11 million is leaving Osun for Katsina every week and in a month, that is about N44 million. You can imagine how much that would be in a year.

Look at the cassava requirement of the international market today. Osun alone cannot supply it whereas we are not making sufficient efforts in this respect. There is going to be a farm settlement that would be dedicated to some of these crops. For instance, Songbe axis is good for rice farming and if we maximally utilise it, we are going to be a major rice producer in Nigeria. Every week, a large number of trucks come to lift banana and plantain from Oke-Il and Ora Igbomina axis. About five trucks leave that place every week. The implication is that if we work assiduously on these crops, we are going to have maximum production of food.

Beside, the Lagos markets have not been effectively utilised by most states, Osun inclusive and we have not really felt the impact of law as an instrument of social engineering. The Land Use Act says land belongs to the governor to be held in trust for the people. No government in Nigeria has been able to effectively utilise this legislation. By the time we embark on this agricultural revolution, majority of these lands are held by families and because these different families cannot effectively utilise land, they cannot cultivate it because the lands are too huge for them; what they do is that they have been selling the land.

So, I have been begging them to stop selling these lands. The structure we want to build is to create a tripartite arrangement or relationship with the. We are going to give most of these families Certificate of Occupancy to their lands free of charge. That is one seed we are going to sow into the agricultural system we are to build. The details of the tripartite agreement are simple and it is going to involve the families, the government and private investors in agriculture. The investors have the money and the seedlings, but no land.

Whenever they come to negotiate land with our people and the amount turns out to be hundreds of millions, they would say we are coming back and that would be the end. We are going to bring them back; I brought more than 15 organisations that wanted to go into farming. Lands belong to the families and the government alone cannot implement these agricultural projects and these Organisations that have the wherewithal would partner with us in a joint venture. At the end of the day and after harvest, we sell.

From whatever we make, if 60 per cent goes to the investors, 35 per cent comes to the government and five per cent which will go to the families would be more than the amount they will sell the lands. So, they are going to be getting something like royalty on the land perpetually. That is going to be a huge source of encouragement to them, without the government forcefully acquiring the land from them.

When we start this agricultural revolution and other farmers buy into it, you can imagine the magnitude of the success. In the farm settlement, thousands of people will be employed in mechanised farming. I have an arrangement with an organisation in California that is ready to give us modern technologies in agriculture. I have had interactions with a lot of organisations and even government bodies. They have agreed to work together with us. In 2013, I brought two professors in charge of the agricultural department in California State University.

They are ready to assist us in this regard. To that extent, we have really done our preparation. We would have more than enough to supply to markets. For instance, in Lagos, they say there are 25 million people there. Let’s reduce it to 15 million. If an average Lagosian is spending about N200 to feed per day, this would translate to spending about N3 billion on food per day and with all that we’re planting in Osun, if we are able to supply 10 per cent of what Lagos consumes, that is enough. I can’t use Mile 12 market in Lagos to sell our produce because that is a market already dominated by a cartel from the North. I will create Osun commodity market in Lagos State and it’s going to be accessable to population from Yaba, Oyingbo to Ikeja, Mushin, Isolo down to Alimoso and Agege axis.

These areas are more than 40 per cent of Lagos in terms of population because that is the most concentrated parts of Lagos. The implication is that I have a market, where more than 10 per cent of Lagos would be patronising. If we are able to sell 10 per cent of what Lagos consumes, the implication is that we are going to be making about N300 million per day. In a month, I will be making N9 billion into the coffers of Osun State. The wage bill of Osun is N2.7 billion and let us assume that with the new recruitment we are going to make, it would grow to N4 billion, the implication is that I would have made more than the capital I invested into this agricultural project. There is much money in palm oil than petrol.

There is more money in agriculture. A litre of petrol is sold for N145, whereas a litre of palm oil is sold for more than N300. If you want to buy four litres of palm oil along Akoda road, they sell it for N1,600 or N1,700 and you can imagine the thousands of households we have in Osun with a family using not less than a litre of palm oil every day. We have not really invested into it and look at our palm trees, a lot of them are dying and they are more than 70 years old. We must have new plantations for palm oil. I have discussed with the head of NIFOR and trying to see what we can do with respect to Osun. By the time we have huge production of palm oil, the price would come down and we would have more to offer the international market.

When we carry out a graphical analysis, we will discover that we can make nothing less than N4 billion monthly from palm oil in the international markets available to us. Think of our bamboo plantation which is contained in our manifesto. In this part of the world, we don’t plant bamboo, it grows naturally and we have never harnessed it. What we do is cut it for use in decking of the buildings. What the international market requires of bamboos today, Osun alone cannot supply it.

Let us look at what we have in tourism. Tourism is like a car, if you don’t drive it, it would not leave the spot where it is. What we have in most parts of Nigeria is not tourists’ attraction, but mere tourist sites. They are just natural sites that nature has endowed us with and we are not doing more to explore it. Look at Olumirin Water Falls, thousands of litres of water waste away every hour from that mountain.

The mountain has about seven levels and each level has a huge plateau. Once we succeed in generating electricity from the dam of the cascade of water, we are qualified to have a cable car that would lift tourists from the basement to the seventh floor with maximum comfort. The implication is that thousands of tourists would be trooping there. We would bank on local tourists and not depend on international tourists.

In Osun, we have 28 higher institutions and we have more than a hundred thousand students in these public and private higher institutions. We have a cross section of youths who are very adventurous and majority of them are from Lagos, who are sponsored by their parents with sufficient money to engage in some luxuries. If we provide this luxury for them, then they will pay for it.