Governor ‘Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, interacted with journalists in Ibadan as part of activities marking the second anniversary of his administration. He spoke on how he is addressing the infrastructure deficit of the state, loans obtained by his government and the preceding government, as well as activities of the security outfit, Amotekun and challenges in the last two years. KUNLE ODEREMI brings some excerpts:
YOU marked your second year in office on May 29. How far will you say you have gone regarding the mandate given to you by the people of the state and what have been the constraints?
From day one, even during the electioneering, we brought out a document, which is our Roadmap for the Accelerated Development of Oyo State, 2019 to 2023, and we focused on four major areas: education, health, expansion of our economy through where we think we have the comparative advantage, these are agriculture, agribusiness, agro-processing; and the fourth pillar is Security. Last week, I visited the Ikere Gorge Dam, because I wanted the focus to shift to what we are trying to do with tourism and solid mineral development. I can tell you boldly that we are stabilising with some of our programmes.
What are those deliberate actions you’ve taken?
What did we do? We got the best agribusiness practitioner on this continent to come into this government and got engaged with all the research institutes around here. In Ibadan, we have the FRIN, CRIN, IITA, and all others. We have people doing research here and what have we done with their research outcomes to lift our agricultural output? We started approaching them one after the other and we got IITA to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with us and it gave us one of its best brains in agribusiness and, from that point, we started the STEP for the young ones out there. We reorganised what they used to call OYSADEP, which was just a drain pipe, established the Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency (OYSADA) and moved the headquarters to Saki. We did the commissioning of the OYSADA Complex as part of the activities marking the second anniversary of the government.
The Rural Community Development Centre at Awe was turned into an incubation centre for agribusiness. Of course, not up to six months in office, COVID-19 hit everywhere and we were faced with different kinds of issues. What we tried to do was to turn this into opportunities. We gave inputs and fertilisers to farmers and assisted them with a lot of other things. So, we believe we have stabilised in that area too. What is next? We have to keep expanding our economy and the next thing for us is solid mineral development, because we are blessed with the deposits all over the place. They already discovered lithium in certain parts of Oyo State and while the world is looking for 40 percent purity of lithium, what we have found and tested is around 75 per cent purity. Also, the tourism potential of Oyo State. For us, we are thinking about our nearness to Lagos and how we can exploit that to boost our own tourism earnings. We may say the world is in the throes of COVID-19 and travels around the world for tourism have been hampered but how about internal tourism?
Let us even say Nigeria is not such a fantastic place for anyone from around the world to visit at this period, but internally, rather than people going to Dubai or Ghana, can we have people coming internally and our natural target will be Lagos. So, if people want to come from Lagos and other places as internal tourists, what are the things to put in place for them? We need to address infrastructure deficit and security. And with the rail line coming, people can come in. It is 145 rail km between Moniya-Ibadan and the Yard at Lagos. They are moving at 70 km per hour now. But when they are modulating, they will get to 90 km per hour. That means you can leave Moniya and be at Yaba within one and a half hours. So, for us, to harvest all of those people, we have to deal with our infrastructure deficit, which is why we invested money on Moniya-Iseyin road. That is also the reason I wanted to take you to Ikere-Gorge Dam, because within the next year, that road will also be fixed and our vision is that the place becomes the equivalent of our own Sun City in South Africa. By our calculation, if you are leaving Moniya for Iseyin, it is about 40 minutes and from Iseyin to the Ikere Dam, it should be around 20 minutes. So, within one hour, you land at the train station here and you are out there to enjoy your life. So, we believe we have been a little bit successful with the expansion of our economy.
The last leg of our major pillars is security. Yes, it has been quite challenging for us as a state, even country-wise but people easily forget the fact that Amotekun was not in existence before this administration came in. We looked at the control of the federal agencies. They may call me the Chief Security Officer of Oyo State but in reality, I am actually the Chief Logistics officer; I can only give them logistics. If I call the Commissioner of Police to carry out an assignment, she will have to call her Inspector General of Police in Abuja for further instructions. For instance, when we got to Ikere, which is still under Ogun/Osun River Basin Authority, we sent a message to a guy that we were coming and he also sent a message to Abeokuta where the headquarters is located. And because he did not get any response, he refused to open the gate. And we said, okay if you are not opening the gate, we have a part of the fence that is broken anyway. We are going to walk in and go check what we want to check. So, those are the challenges you have with the federal arrangement and that is what we saw with the issue of security and we decided to operationaliseAmotekun. At this point, I don’t think anybody in Oyo State can imagine the state without Amotekun. That is how much impact Amotekun has been able to make within this very short period of time. So, on those four pillars, I think we have made good progress.
The last bit on the expansion of our economy has to do with the engagement of our youths. A lot of them are out there on the street and not able to engage in productive ventures or do much. Some of them are real talents as far as sports is concerned, and that was why we went to Lekan Salami Sport Complex and worldwide, sports is a 6 Billion Dollar industry. But here in Oyo State, we have not been able to get a fair slice of the money. This is another area where the issue of being deliberate in what you want to do comes in. Before now, Lagos used to be number one at any national sports festival, but this last one, Lagos beat Oyo State on the last day by one gold medal. They came fifth and we came sixth. So, we are remodeling the Lekan Salami Sport Complex and we are putting an Olympic-sized swimming pool, gym, tennis court and the rest so that we can bring in talents here and also see if we can get a small slice of the sport industry deliberately.
So, what have been the challenges or the constraints so far?
A big challenge for us has been the kind of federalism that we are operating. I signed an anti-open grazing law in November 2019 and we could not implement it because you talk to the Police and they are not willing. They are watching the body language of their folks in Abuja; the IGP and the rest. So, that has been a very big challenge to us.
Then, when Amotekun came, we were in total control of their operation and that was why when I operationalised them, I said I should be held accountable for their conduct. But when they tried to implement the anti-open grazing law they were being arrested, I went to the then Commissioner of Police and asked why Amotekun operatives were being arrested even when the Police were supposed to collaborate with them to make the state safer for us. And he said if people write petitions against them that they killed someone or carried illegal firearms, the Police were the only organisation authorised in Nigeria to investigate those cases. So, if you look through, they are telling us it is almost like the voice of Jacob and the hand of Esau. They didn’t want Amotekun to succeed in the first instance. So, we had to pull back and re-engage to let them know that we are actually pushing towards the same objective, which is to make this place safe. You have inter and intra-agency rivalry. People will want to protect themselves or their agency in an advantageous position. So, that was what we have seen and those are the major challenges we have faced, which have slowed us down. We had COVID-19, economic meltdown, security challenges and all that but we are dealing with them.
For all these projects listed, how have you been able to source for the funds to finance them or, as it is being insinuated, you are doing all these by embarking on a borrowing spree?
Well, you definitely must have seen the release from the Debt Management Office. At this stage, I think Oyo State is probably owing about N90 billion and about US$200, and since we came in, we took N24 billion for contract financing and we have not accessed everything. We are probably still around N18 billion.
The US$200 million was taken by the previous administration for the Ibadan Urban Flood Management Project (IUFMP). Before I came in, they already spent about $54 million of that money and they had committed about $100 million, as well. For the award packages, they have done the evaluation, selected contractors and it was remaining the final sign-off. I was going to cancel it when I came in because I did not see any need for that but the World Bank came and said it will affect the relationship with Oyo State. So, I said they should go ahead with the commitment and I am the one spending the over $40 million remaining right now. But I have changed the work plan. For instance, I thought the Agodi Gardens Lake was the major source of flood in Ibadan, and it should have been part of the programme to start with. So, I asked them to change some of the programmes and put in the gardens to desilt that lake so that water can flow freely, and also desilt some of the major streams in Ibadan.
So, that insinuation of a borrowing spree is not correct. These two are the major chunk of money Oyo State is owing. Our government took N24 billion because when we came in, it was almost like we did not meet anything in the treasury, and what was coming from the federation account could not even cover the salary bills. So, what we did basically was to try to increase the IGR, which we have been very successful in doing. We have increased our IGR from less than N2 billion to over N3 billion now, which means monthly, we have N 1 Billion available, which was not there before now. The N1 billion in a year means I can do 12 Billion Naira worth of projects and the target for us is to push that IGR to about N7 billion per month, and we think Oyo State has the potential to quickly get to that. Take, for instance, we changed the waste management architecture and now have the Land Use Tax. I know they have sent bills out to people worth about N20 Billion. Even if we have half or 60 percent of that, say N12 billion, that is additional N1 billion aggregate monthly. So, that will immediately take our IGR to about N4.3 billion. And you also remember that for this increase, we did not increase the taxes people are paying but all we have done is to just expand the base because when I came in, I told them that nobody has ever given me a bill in my own house here. Everywhere in the world, you pay property tax, which is supposed to be utilized to ensure that you have security, evacuation of thrash, provision of water and electricity, and other infrastructural facilities but here, people just feel you build houses and don’t have responsibilities for the common areas. So, what we have done was to move in there, enumerate the houses in Oyo State, and try to bring out a bill commensurate with the type of houses that we have seen. This will be our first year of enforcing that and if we are successful, 60 percent, it will push our IGR by another N1 billion and I think we are on that path. So, I have not borrowed anything compared to the previous administration.
Another thing we are doing is being creative with the way we handle our projects. The Moniya-Iseyin project was given out through a contract. We gave the contract out to KOPEK and we paid them based on that contract. But on most of the other projects, we are exploring the Alternative Project Funding Approach.
For Moniya-Iseyin, we paid 60 percent upfront. We went outside of the procurement law to give special approval because that road was in a very deplorable state when we came in and we thought if we want to start repairing the economy of Oyo State, that is the first road we have to fix, because it is the link between Ibadan, the major consumption area to where we are producing our food in Oyo State. So, I did not want any delay and wanted the project done within 12 -18 months and it was delivered in 18 months. I was actually pushing for 12 months but COVID-19 came and they had to slow down. When we paid the 60 per cent, we told them not to come back to us until they have attained 75 percent of the project and that worked out in the end because they did not come back to us not even with N1 variation on the project.
When we were discussing the 60 percent payment upfront, we agreed on it based on the fact that they should go out to buy anything and everything that may have inflationary pressure. We told them that once they were able to buy everything that may have inflationary pressure, it means they would be talking about their staff and a few other things, so we should be home and dry and that was why the project was completed on budget and almost on schedule, if we take COVID-19 out. So, we have been creative.
APFA in other areas like Saki-Ogbooro, we paid 10 percent commitment but before we start making the monthly payment, they must have at least 30 percent of their scope. So, for most of the APFA projects, by the time they are handing it over to us, the payment that must have gone out from the government purse is probably between 40 and 45 percent. So, they have 55 percent still hanging with us. Therefore, they had better do a very good job. Nobody in his right mind will do a project like that that will fail after two or three months, because they still have 45 percent of their money here and those monthly payments are tied to the satisfactory performance of the project. I will also say we have blocked a lot of loopholes and reduced the cost of running the government here. Remember that for one year, everybody in the cabinet was using their vehicles and the ones we met here. I was using my own car. So, we prioritised project delivery for the people as opposed to taking care of ourselves first.
What are your thoughts on restructuring and true federalism and would you say the current constitution is a waste of time? Also, when are you going to pay the sacked local government chairmen, who won at the Supreme Court?
Did they win? There is a process. Why did we dissolve them in the first instance? They held elections into 68 local governments and Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) and we said, look, the Nigerian Constitution only recognises 33 local government areas of Oyo State. Okay, what the Supreme Court basically said with their judgment is that they are not even going to look at why we dissolved them; that it is their policy that governors should not dissolve local governments but the Court can dissolve them. So, they expected that I should have gone to Court, and then, they would look at the case and dissolve them. But I know if I had gone to Court, it would have taken them much time to come to judgement, they would have used their entire term. As a result, that would have become an academic exercise. Now, they will still need to go to Court to interpret the constitution and say, okay, we have 68 chairmen but only 33 are recognised by the Constitution of Nigeria. Which ones do we pay? So, it is still a long process.
On the issue of restructuring, before now, if you want to apply to University, you apply to that University, you do their exam. If they think you are a good student, they admit you. Then some people were not getting into the University that way. So, they created JAMB, and then with JAMB, we started hearing of educationally-disadvantaged states and all that. What that has done is to drag everybody down to the same level and that is what some of us are fighting against, asking for true federalism and restructuring. What we are saying is, look, don’t level down everything for everybody. Some of us may want to develop at our own pace. We set the standard for ourselves in Oyo State. For instance, we have set the standard of the road from Moniya to Iseyin as the state’s standard. If that is the state’s standard, I don’t want you to go to Ologuneru and Eruwa and see something different or go to Saki-Ogbooro-Igboho Road and see something of a lower standard. Anywhere we are fixing state roads, that is the standard. So, restructuring, fiscal federalism go just beyond state police or federal allocations and all of that. I mean it is striking at the fundamentals of how do we progress as a people? The country must allow the state or people to develop at their own pace. We shouldn’t say because some people are backward, then everybody should be brought to the same starting line.
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