YOU are showing your interest in becoming the next governor Osun State, how come it is the governorship post that you are interested in?
I know that’s the only area whereby I would be able to attend to my people’s needs, and I am competent to hold that office. Though there may be many other people interested in that office, but even the people of Osun have approved and endorsed my candidature. You know there were calls from the kings, the elders, from members of the public, from the civil servants and also from other set of people in the state that I should come out and contest. So my candidacy has been accepted and endorsed because they know I am capable of holding that office, because they know that I am the most qualified candidate for that office. Everybody knows me in Osun State, so I have no doubt of winning that election, when it comes to having the potentials to rule that state, I don’t have problem.
Have you ever held any political office in the past or currently?
I started my political career in 1979 during the Second Republic, so I was chairman of the Youth Wing of the National Party of Nigeria in Osun Senatorial District 2. From there, I served in different capacities in Alliance for Democracy. The day the AD was launched, I was part and parcel of the launch, so I have never crossed to any other party apart from AD, which has metamorphosed to All Progressive Congress (APC). So I am a very strong member of the party, APC, and a very loyal member of the party.
Now, the incumbent, Mr Rauf Aregbesola, has done very well in Osun State. He has done very well and I will always give kudos to him for his interest and spirit of patriotism in the State, for what he has done and for what he is doing, but there are some areas which he cannot do much due to insufficiency of funds. For instance on industrialization, the governor has not been able to dabble into that area for the development of the state because of insufficiency of funds.
Another problem now is that our people are crying foul of hunger and poverty in the state. We know that we have poor IGR in the state, our IGR is very poor. I can say that the governor is a very prudent financial manager because the bulk of the money that is available is based on monthly allocation from the federation account, so touching the grassroots has been very, very difficult. And Osun State being an indigenous place and one big family, with similar culture, similar tradition, similar mode of life, among others is supposed to be the food basket for this entire Nigeria, and now there is acute scarcity in the state.
If you say Governor Aregbesola has done very, very well, how come people are suffering hunger?
You know there is no way a governor can touch all segments of life of the people at a time; it is not possible, even the fund available is not sufficient. What I am trying to say is that you know that in Osun State, starting from the era of old Oyo State, before the state was carved out, our people were farmers, so they relied solely on farming as their means of livelihood. So they did farming, but now the productive segment of the population of Osun State consisting of youths are no more into farming, they have travelled out of the state. So only few people are farming in the state, so there is no sufficient food in the state, a lot of money now chases available food so making the price of food items to go beyond the reach of ordinary people. Therefore, eating three times in a day has become difficult in Osun State, that is the first battle I am going to fight and win through agriculture.
What are you going to do differently giving the paucity of fund in the state?
The areas that Governor Aregbesola has faced like construction of roads, we are okay with them now. The governor has aspired to construct a network of good roads, by the time he is completing his tenure, he would have completed 80 per cent of the projects under construction, so we would have little to do on construction of roads. What we are going to face is that we would resort to making food available to the people through agriculture and this time around, I am not talking about giving hoes and cutlasses to the people, I am talking about mechanised agriculture. I have been making contacts to invite foreign investors to Osun State, especially those who are specialists in agriculture. So when they come, this would make it easy for us to achieve a lot, we have to invest in agriculture.
So, when we invest in agriculture, it would later address the unemployment that is another monster hunting us in Osun State now. With that approach, a lot of people that don’t have anything doing, both the educated and the uneducated would be engaged and I would ensure I erase the misconception in the minds of the uneducated that political opportunity is only for those people who are educated. I want to erase that misconception from their minds by first making government funds available to them to be used in their trades or in agriculture venture I am talking about.
Talking about paucity of funds to run the state, I can say that God has a function for proposing to use me in that state. For instance, one day, at CAC Ikoyi Mountain, God called me out and made a covenant with me that He is sending me to His people who are languishing in poverty and penury. The call came in the midst of 1,000 ministers of God from different parts of Nigeria. So, God called me and made a covenant with me that He is going to send me to rule Osun State and when I get there, I must to carry out His instruction in order to alleviate the sufferings of the people, that is one.
Secondly, God promised that day that He has a stock of wealth and mineral resources which He had never revealed to any of my predecessors, that He is going to hand over everything to me when I take over the mantle of leadership of the state, so that’s it.
I am the best candidate for the office and everybody knows, and some people through prayers and other means, have investigated a lot about me and they know this.
The question I wanted to ask is whether you have money before jumping into the race?
To answer your question, I would say in the past, the mistake which our people made was to allow themselves to be induced by politicians to vote for them in an election, but in Osun now, people are now wiser, so they are not for that anymore.
But then, nobody can come out into a race without a reliable source of funding, that one is there but this time around, it is not a matter of throwing out money, the people know we want to serve.
Who is your godfather?
God is my godfather, the only God in heaven is my godfather. My Almighty God is there who is taking me to that promised land.
You said God called you to go and be governor and you know in the past, some people like Dr Olapade Agoro in Ibadan, Pastor Chris Okotie, among others have said so, how can you convince us that it was God that actually called you?
Those who made those claims, most of them are religious leaders, they are ministers of God so my own happened in the presence of over 1,000 ministers of God from all over Nigeria, even on the mountain. I am not a prophet, even I did not expect the call that day, I was purposedly there for another thing entirely that day. Evidently, God has been manifesting that, He has been living up to His covenant. So I have been seeing the miracle and that powerful hand of God in the area of acceptability.
You are on the platform of APC and when you interact with some people in Osun, they would say Aregbesola is APC, he has been governor and we are not enjoying him, and you are on the same political platform with him, how are you sure that Osun people will still like to vote APC?
Before, people were complaining about Aregbesola, but we have enlightened many of these people that the problem is because of the meagre of funds that is available to his government, that is the problem. And if you see these roads he is constructing, he is forcing himself to build them. So it is because of these things, people are now seeing another thing entirely. Before, people nearly stoned him, but when they see him now, they hail him because of the beauty of the roads he is constructing. So people’s perception of him has changed drastically.