Hon. Kamorudeen Mudasiru is the chairman of Lagelu local government area of Oyo State. In this interview with YINKA OLADOYINBO, he speaks about local government administration, the controversial autonomy and the chances of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the next general election.
Almost one year after you were elected chairman of Lagelu local government area, what has been the experience?
It has been rewarding, but let me first appreciate God Almighty for giving the privilege to become the executive chairman of Lagelu local government also thank His Excellency, Governor Seyi Makinde for giving me the opportunity to showcase my capacity and to serve my people. In the last one year, the job has been very tasking, but it has been a very good one because if one is doing something and you are seeing the result, it shows that one has planned before assuming office. I didn’t assume that office without being fully prepared, so I was prepared and I made sure that before the election I had a blueprint called SFABU, that was my manifesto and the document contained about seven agenda. So in the last one year, we have been able to achieve part of the agenda and we are still working on the remaining.
Can you lead us into some of the programmes in your manifesto and how far have you been able to achieve them?
The first thing we did was what we called community engagement, talking about local government, it is one of the tiers of government and we know it is the closest to the people, the only way the people can feel the impact of government is for it to be closer to them, that is why we started the community engagement under it we have the opportunity to meet with a lot of stakeholders in the local government, the traditional councils, community leaders, religious leaders, the CDC, part of the programme was to ensure that we don’t just dump projects on the people. We went to them to ask what their priorities are, a government that knows what is doing will ask the people what they want, it will let the people be part of it, so with that programme we interact with the people and at the end of the day we will be able to implement only projects that they demand according to the order of importance. With the community engagement we have been able to achieve a lot, there are peculiarities in each of the communities, some will say they want transformer, and we have been able to install about five transformers in those communities. Some demanded for the beautification of their environment and that is one of the reasons we are reconstructing the Alegongo market, it is a government property and we feel that Akobo has been growing rapidly, when you coming from General Gas to Akobo Ojuirin then to Olorunda it has changed from what we used to have about six years ago. That axis has really changed, kudos to Governor Makinde for having developmental idea for this area, with the road network being done by the governor, there has been development. So we have been able to construct roads, we have also graded some roads, we have sunk boreholes and given security buildings to communities.
Does that mean your local government is not affected by paucity of funds as being complained in other areas or you have other sources of revenue?
If some local governments are saying funds are not available to them, it means they didn’t prepare before assuming office, Lagelu local government has been able to achieve a lot of things under my watch. The first thing we did was to make ensure we manage our resources, so I called the administrators of the two LCDA that we have and told them that we centralise our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) because many people collect revenue on behalf of the local government without remitting them to the council, so what I did was to digitalise the revenue and after doing that, we also centralized it to ensure that all revenue comes into the purse of the council. There are some local government properties that we have brought new ideas into their management, I embarked on the survey of those properties to have an accurate number of those properties, I then inquired about what the council was realising from those properties but after doing my evaluation and collation of the data I discovered that what we are realizing a year from each of those properties was not up to N1 million and looking at the environment that they are located, I now renovated and modernize those properties and doing that has led to increase in our IGR, it has also given a new face to the local government. So that is what we did to Alegongo market, that is what we did to Dizengof, that is what we did to TEXACO.
Lagelu local government, being a less city council, how are you taking advantage of the massive land that you have to boost your revenue?
I can tell you now that Lagelu local government is producing garri, we are about to be producing palm oil, we have large expanse of land that has been there for many years without being put to use, so what I did was to look for investors that have interest in farming and we gave the land to them and they planted cassava, palm tree and maize, so it is the cassava from the farm that we are using to produce garri, we have set up the factory within the premises of the main local government. We have a Public Private Partnership (PPP) agreement with the investors and under it out own contribution is the land, while the fund and equipment were provided by the investors, so at the end of the day the local government will have a percentage of the total income, while the investors will also have their own share, so it is going to be a win-win situation for the parties, rather than leaving the land without usage the local government is also making money from it. In the local government premises alone, we have over 10 hectares of land that is now being used to plant maize, they also planted palm trees, so we have a lot of arable land that we can use to transform the economy of the local government and to ensure food security.
Over eight months after the Supreme Court judgment on local government autonomy, the federal government is yet to begin the implementation, what can you say to this?
When you have a leader that doesn’t play politics with the lives of the people, our people are not fools, they elected us based on trust, I will completely align with the position of Governor Seyi Makinde on the issue of local government autonomy because he will always say the truth to power. Now many months have gone after the judgment on autonomy and the federal government has not done anything. The intension of the federal government is to find a way of getting the attention of the state governors for the second term of the president not the issue of local government autonomy perse. I was a two-term secretary to local government, now the executive chairman so when talking about local government administration under Governor Makinde I can tell you how the local government is performing. There is nowhere out of the 33 local government that you won’t see a project of about N1b being executed by the local government, in Ibadan we have a lot of project, if you go to Oyo, Akesan market that was burnt was built by the local government, in Oke Ogun, Ibarapa many projects were executed by the local governments, so if we are talking of local government autonomy councils in Oyo state already have their autonomy because of the way the governor is running their affairs, all the local government are doing wonderfully well. Talking about Lagelu, before I became chairman there was an eight kilometers road constructed by the local government, but with the autonomy being proposed the local government cannot have the fund for that kind of road. The autonomy being propagated by the federal government is being politcised, it was designed by the cabal in the federal government to get attention of the state government and negotiate with them to support the second term agenda of President Tinubu, it is to divert the attention of the people to another thing, rather for the people to concentrate on the economic woe of the federal government. People are not talking about what is going on in the country, what people are saying now is autonomy, they forgot that the federal government is not doing anything to make life better for people. Because since they started the issue of autonomy the governor has told us that whatever they asked us to do we should go and do it, we have submitted the accounts of our councils, we have every necessary thing that we need to do and since then nothing has been done and what Governor Makinde said then was that if we are talking about local government autonomy how do we pay the teachers, the pensioners, the local government staff, all the structures how do we cater for them, there should be a well laid down plan and discussion before autonomy. We all know police is under exclusive list but in Oyo state, the state and the local governments are the ones buying patrol vehicles for police, just two weeks ago we gave N1 million to each of the security agencies divisions in Lagelu, we gave police, DSS, Immigration, NSCDC, these are federal agencies, when was the last time the federal government bought single Hilux Van to any police division, now it is the responsibility of the state and the local government.
As a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with the crisis in the party do you think it has what it takes to be victorious in 2027 both at the state and the national levels?
Talking about Oyo state we have a governor that is performing, people have always been saying that second term governors don’t perform but I can tell you that Governor Seyi Makinde has changed the narratives, he has told the whole world that a second term governor can perform, so the governor in his second term has performed more that the first term, the people of Oyo state are seriously waiting for the governor to present his candidate for 2027, so Oyo state is a no go area for APC. At the national level, there is no party that doesn’t have its crisis, we can see the CPC bloc of APC pulling out. That means APC will return to a regional party like the AD and ACN, it is only PDP that has the grassroots, it is only PDP that has the grip of the people, so I can tell you that the next election is not going to be between APC and PDP, it is going to be between APC and the Nigerians, just like Governor Makinde said because our people are fed up with the APC government and with what the PDP Governor’s Forum is doing presently, the party is becoming stronger again.
READ ALSO: Local govt autonomy will address Nigeria’s challenges ― NULGE President
and then