Our plan to make Osun foremost investment destination in Nigeria —Oyetola

Osun State is planning a three-day economic summit. As a prelude, the state governor, Mr Gboyega Oyetola, in an interview with journalists, speaks on the state’s comparative advantage and efforts to guarantee the safety of investments, among other issues. SULAIMON OLANREWAJU presents excerpts.

What kind of incentives are you offering to attract investors across all sectors? Most times governments offer incentives by words of mouth and they do not walk the talk when the push comes to shove. Are there plans in place to sustain those agreements whether you are in or out of office?

The issue of incentives, if you talk of agriculture for instance, we have a land bank where we have been able to have so much of the land available for investors. That would save them the trouble of going to the communities to start to talk about land and then have issues. So, government is providing land to investors. That’s part of the incentives that should attract investors to come to us. Our state is rated the safest and we intend to keep it that way.

Talking about agreement, we are a state that believes in the rule of law. That’s why I brought the attorney general and commissioner for justice to this meeting. Once agreements are made, they are binding on the government. Well, government is a continuum anyway. Once an agreement is made, you keep to the agreement. So, I don’t see any problem on whether or not you spend four years. Once you make an agreement on behalf of the state, it is binding on whoever comes in after your tenure.

So, what we are assuring investors is that not only will they be safe, their investments are also safe.

Osun is blessed with mineral resources, however, a lot of these are being mined by artisanal miners, when you talk about regulating them, what are your plans?

Concerning miners, the federal government has actually put up a presidential artisanal miners initiative. Kebbi and Osun are the pilot states. And the intention is to actually encourage our youths to go into mining. We will find a way of accommodating the artisanal miners, train them and even fund them. There is a particular fund that is made available now by the federal government to train them. Since the government is actually diversifying from oil to non oil, mining is a key aspect of that diversification. Talking of regulation, if we leave them entirely to continue to do what they are doing, there is a lot of destruction of the environment. Again, you may end up realising that investors may be discouraged if we don’t sanitise the sector, not by driving them away, but you accommodate them by regulating their activities. As I speak, we are registering all miners in Osun to ensure we are able to flush out criminals that come under the disguise of mining. We want to keep criminals at bay, so we are registering every miner in our state, whether artisanal or investor so that we can, at least, know precisely whoever comes to do business in Osun is protected. So, our case can never be like that of Zamfara. I think they left it too unregulated for too long a time. We have learnt from that and we are regulating right away from now, capturing every miner that is operating in Osun, deciding on the investors and trying to protect the environment as well.

In terms of readiness for investors, it will interest you to know that, although mining is on the exclusive list, Osun is one of the very first few states that proactively reached out to the federal government and got its own mining titles and about the largest, currently in the entire country. It will interest you to know also that a private company is currently in Osun and has put Osun on the global mining map. The company is about the only recognised gold mining company in Nigeria. Already as a result of the effort we have made, they have reported over 1.5million ounces of gold on one of their sites, which is over $2 billion worth of asset. The state has about 16 mining titles about eight of which are in Osun and we have other mining titles across Nigeria; in Niger, Kaduna, Zamfara even as far as Ebonyi. We are doing our resource estimate in partnership with Nigerian Geological Survey Agency. They are giving us tit bits on possible reserves that are available. However, we are partnering with investors that will do the proper exploration to determine the commercial quantity.

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How serious are you about implementing the outcomes of the economic summit because the practice in the country is to hold economic summits and abandon the outcomes?

For us the economic summit will not be a talk show, we don’t even have the luxury of time for a talk show. What we have tried to do here is to bring Osun to the entire world. We are organizing the summit because we believe we have a lot of potentials that are not known to the world. So, we are holding the summit because we have something to show to the world.

First, there is an abundance of mineral resources. This fact is not known to many people. Then, we enjoy about 18 hours of electricity daily. This is enough incentive for anybody to come and invest. These are things that are not known to a lot of people. It’s a question of trying to show what we have to the entire world. And we are serious about it.

I want to tell you that an investor is ready to sign an MoU with us on mining. He has actually deposited a huge sum of money as a proof of his readiness. People are showing interest. They are not aware of what we have. They are only aware that we have artisanal miners doing a little bit of business. They don’t know precisely the potentials that we have. And the particular company we are talking about is already listed on Toronto Stock Exchange. It’s a Nigerian company and an Osun company. And we have quite a lot of these opportunities. We are serious about it and I can assure you that it will not end with the summit. Immediately after the summit, we swing into action because our plan is to make Osun the country’s foremost investment destination.

What is the state’s relationship with donor agencies?

We have partnership with a lot of donor agencies, the World Bank, the DFID and a lot of them. We are doing a lot with the World Bank, for instance. They are supporting us on a lot of things, both in technical terms and with grants. Only recently, in the area of health, we were able to win so much because we’ve done so much. We’re revitalising 332 health centres across the state. That makes it a health centre per ward, because we believe that health is wealth. These are some of the initiatives we’ve taken on our own. And we’ve been given awards by most of these agencies. We are partnering with them but it can never be enough.

Talking about artisanal miners, Itagunmodi comes to mind as a rural area where artisanal miners were feeding on. What is the state of Itagumodi mines now?

Itagunmodi is one of the major mining sites where there are many artisanal miners, and I believe it is part of where some of the investors are willing to invest in. That’s why we believe the first thing is to create that enabling environment for investors to be able to do their business without being molested by artisanal miners as it were.

Are there plans to create economic clusters in the state?

Part of what we are trying to achieve with this summit is to see if people might want to invest in industrial parks. We are looking for people who would be interested in investing in industrial parks, where you have opportunity for businesses to be sited with some degree of amenities. So, that’s part of what we think we will be able to achieve after this summit.

Another area is the free trade zones that are already available for investors to come in and start their business once they are ready.

Osun is strong in the area of cocoa. Are there plans to start processing cocoa rather than selling as raw material?

Yes we have a cocoa industry that is manufacturing cake and cocoa butter but we realised that the major investor had some issues in China and left. I believe they are coming back. We recognise the need to ensure that we have a value chain, it’s not enough for you to just talk about exporting cocoa. If you’re

able to do this agro-allied industry in your state, it boosts your revenue and provides opportunity for employment. And it’s a win-win situation for all. So, we are not looking at the people who would just use our place for raw materials. We are already creating the opportunity for value chain. In cassava processing, for instance, we are looking at producing ethanol. That’s part of what we are selling to the entire world to come and invest in our state.

As you expect miners to come, one fact that you won’t be able to run away from is the impact of the activities on the environment. How are you going to interface with these people so that they don’t leave a challenge for you as they go about doing their businesses?

We ensure that in the MoUs we are signing, we are integrating the World Bank’s international benchmark to contain environmental and social risks. Part of the things we are currently doing is studying the livelihood sustainability around our mine areas to ensure that the social and environmental risks are considered and are heavily integrated in the MoUs that we will be signing.

Currently we are speaking with the SMDF. They are supporting us in looking at the damages done ecologically to the environment by the activities of artisanal miners. This is part of the reforms that we are currently putting in place.

Whenever state governments come out to solicit for investors, there are other issues that they don’t emphasize; taxation and such issues. How are you going to address this problem of remaining friendly with your investors when they are fully established that you won’t begin to give them one tax after the other?

The taxes that should be paid are specified. For instance, when it comes to company tax, it is purely that of the federal government, what the states charge, perhaps, will be in the areas of premises and things like that. I don’t see much of a problem with taxation except for the federal government taxation policy on profit which is beyond the control of the state.

You mentioned agriculture as one of the areas you are expecting investors to come in. As the agro allied industry grows, there would be need for them to move their products. How are you going to address the issue of infrastructure so that the cost incurred by these farmers and manufacturers will not be passed on to the consumers?

I think we have done so much on infrastructure. If you’ve been to Osun of recent, you’d have seen a lot of improvement in that area. In addition to that, the federal government is doing the rail line that will go through the state to the north. So, in terms of movement of goods and services, we can do that by road and by rail.

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Now that you are exposing Osun to the world, is it part of your plan to continue with Osun airport project?

Then, regarding tourism, apart from the popular Osun Oshogbo festival, is there any other festival you wish to promote to the outside world.

The airport was conceived before we came in. It was supposed to be a partnership arrangement between the federal government and Osun as far back as the time of Governor Oyinlola. It was supposed to be a 50-50 agreement because the federal government was supposed to put in 50 per cent while the state puts in another 50 per cent. Osun started but the federal government was not forthcoming. Realising the fact that if you want to encourage movement of produce, a cargo airport is desirable, informed the decision of the administration to have gone into that.

But what we are looking at is to look for investors that want to take it over and we give them 25, 30 years lease certificate. It is going to be build, operate and transfer. So, the government is not willing to put more money into it other than what has been invested so far. But quite a number of investors are actually showing interest in wanting to partner with us and complete the cargo airport which they believe is viable. So, it’s part of what we’ve been marketing to the entire world to come and invest in that. Look at DHL. DHL has lot of cargoes, so if we have something like that coming in, it’s going to be an opportunity to, first of all, develop the movement of cargo and again create employment opportunities and commerce for our state. So, it’s desirable, but we are not looking at putting more money into it other than to ask investors to come and take it over and then we can do a lease of about 20, 25 years as the case may be.

The ministry of mines and steel development came up with a piece of advice to the states to incorporate an investment company to be part of the mining industry. Is Osun considering that?

There is a huge amount of mineral resources we have across the state. In terms of what the ministry has allowed the state to register, we registered our own company over 10 years ago, and the company has acquired lots of mining titles to enable us do business.

One of the things that have hampered Osun State for some years now is the issue of debt. So much of the revenue accruing to the state is deducted. What are you doing to solve the debt problem? Do you intend to increase the debt portfolio?

Debt is not really seriously something that is like a taboo. What is important is for you to apply your loan to something productive. If you must wait to have sufficient money to do infrastructure, you can’t have it at all. If you don’t have adequate infrastructure there cannot be economic growth. They are correlated. If you don’t have infrastructure you can’t talk about economic growth, because all the things you’d want to do will depend on infrastructure. And should you wait until you have sufficient money, it will not be there; you can’t even have it anyway.

If you look at inflation, whatever we did some two, three years ago, should you be thinking of doing now, it will cost you two, three, four times that original cost. Again, we’ve already taken some of these loans out of our book. The N30 billion is expiring either this month or next month. We are going to be taking off another N11 billion by next year. So, in terms of ratio of debt to our GDP, we are still very, very low. But like I said, if you ask me, will you be taking loan, if it is for productive activities, why not? Even the investment we are talking about, we are going to have partnership with a lot of these people coming in. So, loan is really supposed to be applied to productive sector not to recurrent expenditure.

Nigerian Tribune