HOW has the acceptance been since you entered into the race?
As I was talking to my people, when we started, we were ‘one of those parties.’ We were not considered a party. Later, they started calling us social media politicians, and later, they pushed us to Igbomina party. But now, when they saw what we have done in the Central Senatorial district, we are now like a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), All Progressives Congress (APC) and the other parties.
But after December 25, 2018, we are the minor party that now gives the major party the headache. That means we have tried our best within the shortest possible time.
If you emerge as governor, what will be that first major thing you would tackle among the challenges in the state?
I will still go back to what I had been doing first, because that is of priority to me. That is provision of portable water. It is a key thing. We can talk about agriculture, health, and others. If we don’t have water, the first two cannot work.
Another example. If government decides today that it wants to build mechanised boreholes in all 193 wards in Kwara State and channel them into pipes, you could have an internally generated revenue (IGR) of about N1.9 billion every month. If that can be done, one of the major problems is almost solved. Do we really need to dig new ones to do that? We can repair most of these boreholes. If it were not for greed, I think local governments, even based on what they said they are receiving now, should be able to maintain the boreholes within the local government areas.
And we can then look at the health system. If you drink water and you have issues, you will go to the hospital. As a result of the stress level in Kwara State now, most of the time, you need to go and see your doctors. When they are not even available, what do you do?
Most of the hospitals in Kwara State today, I don’t want to say they are bad, they are wonderful. And that is the truth as of where we are today.
We really need to tackle the issue of cottage hospitals around the state. We need to buy beds. We need to make sure they have basic things and we need to supply the drugs.
When they can provide that primary care, we are good. If they need a referral, people can take them to bigger hospitals. In Kwara State, we have a health insurance organisation. It is not as if it cannot work, but are they making it work? Most of the hospitals you have around you don’t have personnel, neither do they have drugs. It is not like we don’t have answers to our problems. We have just refused to look at where the answers are and continued to live with the problems.
I keep saying to people that Kwara State needs help. But the people that will render that help to us are still Kwara people that have overlooked where they came from; people who now believe that they are from Lagos or they are from Kaduna, forgetting that the same Kwara they are looking at and saying ‘I don’t have the time,’ is the same Kwara that invested money and time in building them up to where they have got today.
The truth is that Kwara people are not asking for too much. They are just asking for the basics, and it is not like we can’t afford the basics. How can a government say it is budgeting about N180 billion a year for running cost, recurrent and capital? Now, you said you pay N2.2 billion as salary every month, how is that possible? If that is so, why do you have to go and contract out most of the jobs you do?
How confident are you to wrestle and gain power in the forthcoming governorship election?
That is not me. I don’t look at life like that. If they ask, I don’t say I’m the best candidate. God Almighty knows who is the best. And I say to God that may the best emerge, who will do well for Kwara State. I know myself. I know what I can do. I will continue to sell what I can do to the people.
and then