Taiwo Adisa is the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State. In this interview monitored on Ibadan-based Fresh FM, he speaks on the management of the World Bank-backed Ibadan Urban Flood Management Project (IUFMP), declaring that media reports that alleged undue interference by the governor in the project were false, misleading, and unfair to the Oyo State helmsman. Excerpts:
The name of your boss, Governor Seyi Makinde has featured prominently in the controversy surrounding the cancellation of the loan granted the state by the World Bank to manage flood in Ibadan. Why is this so?
The name of the governor has been wrongly inserted into the matter for certain reasons known to those people who did that. You know there are always interests in this kind of situation. Some interests pushed in the name of the governor to sell a narrative around the fact that the project is not going the way it should be but maybe it is not going the way it should be in their own thinking.
The name of the governor should be on the right side of this story because all he called for when he came on board is what I can refer to as ‘value for money initiative.’
For the World Bank, there has been cordial relationship. There was a time some of their officials came in for a mid-term review at the Secretariat and they were really satisfied with the initiative, which the governor is bringing in to ensure that the project will continue to deliver to the people of Oyo State. Now, in those areas that the name of the governor has been mentioned, there are no facts to many of those reports. First, if you want to write a report, you need to rely on a document to write it. But in most of the report I have seen, they were not directly quoting from the letters of the World Bank because the World Bank did not, in any way, say that governor Makinde influenced a particular project or brought a particular contractor. It did not say so. So, if the letter, which is your source to communicate to the people is saying something and you are saying another thing, you should know that there is divergence of opinions and certain influences are responsible for the distortions in that report.
But your office issued a statement on the matter…
Even the statement we put out yesterday (Wednesday, August 11), some people put it in different ways. In the statement, we said that the governor did not interfere with the project in any way, meaning that he did not nominate any contractor, he did not influence any process of the project. He was not part of it, but some persons still turned around to say the governor is begging the World Bank as if that was the main subject matter.
The main subject matter is that some people have posted it out there that the governor’s influence allegedly infuriated the World Bank to say that they are cancelling the project, and there is nothing like that. Instead of some people to report straight what we have put out, they came out to say the governor is begging World Bank.
But there was an appeal to the World Bank in the correspondence
It was not a letter of appeal but a response to World Bank that we have done so and so. Some other persons are insinuating what is not in the conversation. The governor is not guilty of any offence neither did he interfere with the project. If anybody is saying so, let them come out in their names and not hide under Sahara Reporters to say what the World Bank is not saying. The conversation is between the World Bank and the government of Oyo State. So, you cannot bring extraneous matter into what we are saying because these things are written in black and white.
Whatever Oyo State government or the World Bank has written in black, and white are issues that should be reported but you do not insinuate.
The World Bank says they may review their process. When you see such letter, you should know that it is a working document to say, look at what we have put forward, can we discuss? It is an open-ended stuff from the World Bank. So, the governor has not done anything bad in this case.
Secondly, let us take it from the roots. People are getting it wrong to say that Oyo State is losing so and so money and talking about it in billion terms. No, this is a loan, and it is not a gift. Whatever name you call it, the fact remains that it is a loan and Oyo State is at liberty to reject or accept it. And now, can we review what we have done with the loan before? If two-thirds of the money has been spent, what have we achieved with it? Those are the questions we should be asking rather than people jumping around talking about what is not on the internet or wherever.
Yes, it is a loan but it’s a good loan, better than what you can get from the commercial banks here locally, which you should not lose…
This is not a matter of losing money but the fact that the World Bank is giving us a loan and we need to see that it will be applied properly to the needs of the people in the state. At the end of the day, Oyo State can say that even if World Bank is going to give us N1trillion loan, we don’t want it but want to do it according to our capacity and start taking one step at a time. So, we have that liberty, and we are not losing money. It is a debt that the previous government incurred on the neck of every indigene of Oyo State, which other government must pay. But we must know that the loan will serve us appropriately.
We need to ensure that there will be value for money and all that and that was what the governor kick-started when he came on board. It is not about just awarding contract to a particular person. He did not influence any contract award and has not interfered with the processes of the World Bank as it is.
The governor instituted ‘value for money initiative’ on this project just like he did for many other projects. There is no ulterior motive from the governor of Oyo State in the management of this project. It also boils down to the fact that even if World Bank loan does not come, because the flooding issue touches at the lives of our people, the state government, within its own system, will continue to fund this project.
Why was the former Project Coordinator removed and sent to the office of the Head of Service to languish there, is it because he didn’t play ball?
Now, I started with the fact that the governor instituted ‘value for money initiative’ just like he did for many other projects. It is like a simple process in the government that if any investigation is to be launched, they will ask the head of that place to stay aside so that whoever wants to do the check will be free. So, it is not an indictment on Dr. Ayorinde who was heading the place. It was just a kind of ‘value for money audit or initiative’ that was ongoing, which made him step aside.
He has been redeployed but there is someone acting. He has handed over to an acting person. The World Bank did not say he was asked to step aside because he did not play ball. What the Bank said was that one of the processes should be that the acting person should be confirmed so that he can continue to work on the project. He was not asked to step aside because he did not play ball, that’s not the true situation. No, that is the language of politicians who have an interest in this issue because if we dig further on this matter, you will discover that what they are talking about, to a large extent, is not really about the interest of the people of Oyo State. that you have seen some of these stories you have seen.
You will recall that Sahara Reporters raised the alarm sometimes ago and we corrected the wrong impression. The same line is being toed right now that governor Makinde is interfering with the IUFMP. There is nothing like that. You have the letter from the World Bank. Is there any line that says the governor introduced a consultant? Is there any line that says the governor changed the figures of the contract or that the governor sat down with them to choose contractors? No, they (the World Bank) are talking about the timeline and the response by the state to the World Bank has addressed that fully. So, there is no ulterior motive in the management of this project.
People should not hide behind one finger to be throwing stones at the glass house thinking that other people will not know. People know some of these issues, but we are not going to talk about the details of some of the things they did under the table and why they are pushing some of the narratives that you see. Some interests are the problem.
“What we want is to derive value from this project or the money that the World Bank wants to loan us. If the value for money is in question, we could take our decision and say we don’t want the remaining part of the money again and we can source for it locally or within our IGR.
But that would come with huge interest rates…
It must not be through a loan. All the projects that the governor is doing now are not funded by loans. The APFA is not necessarily a loan. So, if there are things we can take up within our own means, why not? So, people should not paint it out there as if Oyo State is losing money to the extent of N26b. No, they should let us talk to the fact on the matter.
One, Governor Makinde did not influence the contractors, he did not influence the choice of the contractors. There are issues in the past as to who got what in those projects. There are even issues as to what was delivered with the two-third of the money already spent. Now, we are just awarding 45 streams. Where were those 45 streams when two-thirds of the money was spent? Who are the people getting what? That is the question.
There is no cause for alarm to the extent that this project would stop or that the people of Oyo State would experience flooding. I was in Orogun the other time and I saw that the channelization is going on ferociously.
So, you want our people to know that the governor is thinking about local content and indigenous local companies…
I also want to assure our people that Governor ‘Seyi Makinde whom they voted for did not interfere, has not been interfering and will not interfere in the process of selection of contractors, award of the contracts for either the IUFMP or any other project.
We have local content law in this country. There is the need to ensure that people who are competent within Nigeria space are also given the right to compete, not just people from outside. I don’t want to mention any country but there are people who have unduly benefited.
This is Oyo State money that is going to be paid back to the World Bank but then, you were giving contracts to people from a particular country. All the time, it is people from that country that must pass the test.
But World Bank’s system is strict…
I can assure you that there is no test that the World Bank will give that it is only the people from a country that will always get it.
So, it must be straightforward to the extent that people who are competent within our Nigeria space are given the right to also bid and compete. And when they compete and pass the test, you give them the contract. You don’t paint things in a way that the winners must always come from a country.
Are you talking of Lebanon?
I‘ve not mentioned the name of a country…
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