Interview

South-West can only succeed with proper restructuring —Oyeleye, DAWN DG

Published by

2 years ago

Director General of Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN), Mr Seye Oyeleye, in this interview with SOJI AJIBOLA, bares mind on the issue of fiscal federalism, restructuring, need for policies that will fast track.

WHAT is DAWN doing on economic interconnectivity of member states?

Oyo State governor, at a stakeholders meeting on the 2024 budget said the things that we have actually discussed like six, seven years ago. When Ogun State government said they were having the Lagos- Ogun Commission, I just laughed. In fact, 2013, we already made proposal to all the states that it’s important for states that are side-by-side like Lagos and Ogun, Oyo and Osun, Ondo and Ekiti, to have development commissions as well, that would be like the subsets of the DAWN Commission because it makes everything easier. Let me speak from sector to sector now. Well, I’m sure you heard of the do-cocoa documents. We have a document here, we worked with the development partner, DFID and the World Bank as well in producing a document for the reinvigoration of the cocoa industry in South West Nigeria. We are not implementers, this is more or less an agency that has many hearts and one of our hearts is the technical hearts. So, we produce policy documents for the states and interpretation of policy document does not happen instantly, which is one thing that we’ve noticed. Because all the states are not on the same page when it comes to finances and resources, it’s not something that can be rushed. I’m not saying this in the defence of the states, but people should understand that just because Lagos is doing something today, it doesn’t mean Osun Sate should do it instantly, and revenue are different. For cocoa, we have the do cocoa documents with the states now. For health, we have a Regional Health road map. The road map was produced by the finest brains in the medical profession in South West Nigeria from the private sector. The team was led by the former Minister for Health, Prof Isaac Adewole. That document is ready now. We are just waiting for the governors to convene so we can launch it. The programme and project areas in the road map, we can start implementation. Some of those implementation will be done probably by the DAWN Commission in partnership with the states. Some will be done by the states themselves and some we build a coalition around them to make sure they are implemented. We have a road map document as well for digital literacy. We set up a digital literacy impression committee that was chaired by Professor Adenike Adeyemo, who is the current Secretary to the State Government in Oyo State. We are going into the programme phases as well. We are currently at the stages of drafting a final MoU with the Technical University. We are going to be working with the academia on that because the idea behind that literacy project is that we want to leverage the digital space to provide efficiency and excellence in the public sector and also provide people in the private sector with the opportunity to prosper economically. The academia, we’re going to be working with them and some private sector ICT organisations. We’re working with NITDA as well.

What efforts is DAWN making about rail interconnectivity of South-West states?

In 1953, seventy years ago this year, the old Action Group of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, set up the Michael Adekunle Ajasin committee to work on Western Nigeria rail. So, you’re asking yourself that if 70 years ago, some people have thought of having a rail network to move people around, why is that 70 years after we are still struggling. There was no Dubai 70 years ago, but we had who sat here in Ibadan and conceptualise the idea that we must have a rail that will link us. I was speaking with the SSG of Oyo State today and I said the forecast for population growth in 20 years time is that we are going to have a population of about 400 million people in Nigeria. Today, the estimate is we are like 200 million plus. So they’re saying that within the 20, 25 years, our population will be the third largest in the world. Now, we are working on the premise that the 400 million population, a lot of them will not be giving birth to in the South West, but they will be residing in South West because this is still the most developed part of Nigeria. So the idea when we start pushing for things like the regional rail is to say that we now need to prepare for 25 years time because 25 years time is only around the corner. It’s only about five election cycles away before you get to 25 years time. Everybody here knows what they were doing 25 years ago. It’s like yesterday, 25 years ago is 1998/1999. We all knew where we were, I knew what I was doing in 1998. Fast forward 25 years time. So, we are now trying to push the idea that if your population is going to be 400 million, how are you preparing for them? When we said regional rail, the idea is to get people from point A to point B without necessarily having to live in that point B. So, if a man can wake up in the morning in Ife, sit on the train and come and work in Ibadan. When he closes at the end of the day, he goes back on that train to Ife. Now the money he earns in Ibadan, he is going to be spending it daily in Life, which means that you are eradicating poverty in Ife. It also means that everybody does not have to come and live at the city centre. Today, in South West Nigeria, we have towns that are dying away because people have left the towns. I tell the story of a town I went to in Osun State and the town was practically empty. I went there for a function about three/four years ago. I even thought that maybe we went on a day when they’ve all gone into their farms. So we spoke to the monarch that we didn’t see people and he replied people don’t live here anymore, they have left because they can’t find anything to do in the town. Because we are urbanised, several towns like that are dying away. Now, if you’re going to have that huge population in a few years time, there would be an explosion in the urban centres, so you have to find a way to disperse people out. I was in Canada recently, maybe in April, even the remotest parts of Canada where people don’t live there are rail lines there. All these Nigerians that are relocating, they will send them into those obscure places to start life there. We are going to set up Western Nigeria Railway Regulatory Authority, which would be peopled only by railway experts. They are the ones that would then drive how rail will start here. The good thing about rail is that it grows organically, which means that it’s not that we’re going to start in all these six states on the same day. It doesn’t work that way. The first underground rail line in London was built about 170 years ago. That line is still there. But as at two years ago, the late Queen commissioned Elizabeth line, meaning that 170 years later, they are still commissioning more. So if we start something now, 50 years down the road, they will still be building more rail lines to interconnect, but we must start and that is what is driving us here at DAWN. The Awolowo, Akintola governments, they were not in power for 20 years. Awolowo himself was only there for like six/seven years before he handed over to Chief Akintola. If you look at that period, from let’s say 1954 to 1965, about 10 years period. Within that 10 years, everything we are still talking about today happened during that period.

READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE