Excerpts:
What is the state of things in your state since about two years that you came on board?
We really believed that coming on board would be an end to all the headaches, both corporate and individual in Ondo State. So, that for us was a special challenge to apply ourselves to the very rigorous art of governance and make the choices that will translate and turn around the socio-economic circumstances of the people. So, for a long time, that left us to little or no time actually to move around and I must also tell you that in two years, we have also had to contend with four elections. So again, anybody that knows what it means in terms of energy time will know that it’s a lot in two years to have four elections. And we have virtually recreated governance to be able to reach what we perceived as the disconnect between our people and government. So, all of these have actually resulted in a big challenge on our time. I must thank you because on the average, I must say that we have enjoyed good press coverage and it’s again because one, I have many friends in the media. And two, I have the goodwill. I keep telling people even when we were in the judicial trenches as it were, during the course of our 22 months struggle, that the good thing about Nigerian media is they are always on the side of the oppressed. So we benefited from that point-90 of goodwill that generated because of the perception which was true that some people want to match us under the jackbooth of state power. And I think we can still carry a lot of these into governance, I don’t want to sound immodest, I will also say that to a very large extent there will be issues when you govern the people for two years. But to a very large extent, we have kept faith with our people and people have always asked me that what is my greatest achievement in two years?
I say my greatest achievement is that people are as excited today, as they were when I came in two years ago. For a people, like the people of Ondo State who are politically conscious people, if there is anything called ‘par capital resourcefulness’, I am sure we have the highest in Nigeria. There is hardly a home in Ondo State now that does not have first or second generation graduates. The people are very conscious politically and that is why they always stand up for their rights. So, for them, the last two years, you all know the build up to our coming on board how excited the people were that we managed to keep the enthusiasm of our people. That today people are saying and thanking God that the choices they made about the Labour Party (LP) for us is a very great achievement. But the point I am making is that, apart from the goodwill thing that we have always had, I think we have also delivered. Pardon me if I sound immodest, we have delivered. In some cases, we have delivered beyond imaginations of people. We have recreated governance; we have redefined governance to mean a common man on the street. Today in Ondo State, people will not talk of government as they, it’s now we. We changed it from they to we. People are seeing democracy translating into government caring for them, little things that people bother about on daily basis. And suddenly the people understand that their little headaches in their rooms is also the headache of the government. So, there is this new paradigm shift that we have created the perception and actual delivery of governance is our biggest and highest point.
I am sure from all of these to a very large extent, that we have had the support of the press but I must also like people say, not allow people to tell our story. We must be ready to tell our own story. This is a very good gathering, for me it’s an icing on the cake of what we have enjoyed. Now this interaction with you one-on-one can also give you an insight and I cannot pretend that we are excellent in all fronts. There may be areas of concern as friends you can give pieces of advice, some things we are doing you think we are not doing right. Some people are saying that we probably are not telling enough of our story. I always quarrel with my Commissioner for Information-he wants me to be on air everyday. It’s a paradox that I am a politician but in a way, I am also press shy but then I have been convinced that we must also come out to tell our own story the way it is.
You see, a lot of the things we are doing are novel. Our volunteer scheme, our Abiye in the health sector, our free eye initiative which is the first real well thought down bottom-up integrated rural development in Nigeria as it were. Our quality education assurance agency in terms of concept, in terms of pragmatic execution, is novel. Our Mother and Child Hospital, we are doing a lot of novel things in Ondo State. Even our urban renewal programme which we deliberately targeted at the commercial centre. But, what is most interesting is that we are touching the lives of our people, especially the man on the street. Those who are under privileged in the society, that is what we are doing, we are deploying resources and we are making choices on their behalf and they are excited in the state. Yes, we have our challenges. In a few areas there may be some great expectations, but I am very lucky that I am governor over an enlightened people. They understand your limitations much more than you even imagine. Our people are very grateful for the little that we are doing for them and that is why today, Labour Party is the toast of town in Ondo State and guess we will continue to be toast of town provided we keep steady on our course. To get here have been a lot of battles, risks taking and I had to resign as minister of the Federal Republic Nigeria against......so I have no doubt in my mind that I will deliver. And pardon me if I sound immodest.
Concerning the Nigerian project, do you think that after the just concluded general election the country is heading to the right direction?
This question excites me the most. I have always believed based on history, based on my own personal experience and I have been engaged in this political space for some time and you know where I am coming from. I have been commissioner twice in my state, I have been Secretary to the State Government and I have been Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. So I can say authoritatively that I have been engaged in the Nigeria’s political space. I have always believed passionately that until we have credible elections in Nigeria that we will not get out of the woods. And I have said it clearly before the election; I have said it with so much passion. We had 10,000- man walk for democracy, one-man one-vote in our state and we made it absolutely clear that if Nigeria will ever become anything to reckon with globally that we must have credible election. And the reasons are very clear and simple, credible elections invariably when it’s sustained will throw up the real leaders of our people; people who have passion for development. For every politician, you must worship something, if you are there through a godfather the chances are that you will gratifigate towards god fathers. But if you got your mandate through the people no matter how bad you are the chances are that the concern of the people will be upper most in your mind. But the main thing is that once it’s sustained, gradually the system in a predictable manner will throw up the real leaders of the people that will drive development in the state. After the National Assembly election and I was one of those who predicted that if we didn’t get it right in 2011, that we should probably forget about the Nigerian project.
After the National Assembly election, I came out convinced that God is a Nigerian that there was a great future ahead of us. And I was one of those who made it clear that one of the reasons I advocated that we should vote for Jonathan (President Goodluck) in Ondo State, was that before all our eyes we saw a man who demonstrated the capacity to rise above his party. Because ordinarily judging by the victory of the PDP and do-or-die election in Nigeria, nobody believed that the National Assembly election would come out the way it came out. And after the National Assembly election there were other elections. For the first time, some of us in our adult lives have now been active even as a student in University of Ife those days, I was active politically. Nigeria was always about port congestion those days, military coups and then we graduated into 419, and we graduated to do-or-die politics. In the international domain, we have never had anything positive about this country. But for the first time (you remember 2007 election?) they said even by regional and national standards that we failed woefully. Now four years after, the international community is applauding, and saying that we have gotten it right. That something positive is coming out of Nigeria and I am sure that Nigerians abroad are even walking taller now. Once we can sustain this, look whatever anybody says, we have a president that has a pan Nigerian mandate.
This is our decade, if all our hands are engaged, we are seeing a positive burst of hope in the horizon. Suddenly every Nigerian is hopeful, suddenly we believed we can do it right, sudden we are talking of 10 years where we will be. That it will no longer be bleak, it will be brink and Nigeria will be one of it and one thing I know about this country, is that perhaps we are the most resourceful and most resilient people on earth. Once we can galvanize and channel this energy in the direction of development, power problem, security, public transportation, Nigeria will eventually explode on the world globally because we are such a resourceful people. I believe that we are on course in doing it right and the president has been doing some wonderful jobs. I was reading THISDAY, Punch agenda for Mr. President all over. In the print media, there was even piece on who should not be made minister. That is activism; that is the type of activism we want. That is, everybody is on board, every hand is on deck –Punch series, letter to Mr. President, THISDAY today (Saturday) on agenda four-Health all over. That means there is hope for this country. So I hope it will continue to grow in this direction and I have no doubt in my mind that in the next 10 years everything being equal, that Nigeria will actually get it right completely. Because all the ingredients are there even the investors are now coming back to Nigeria; those who left, they are now coming back. So, I think we are growing on a steady course and I think all hands should be on deck.
What is your view on the Government of National Unity (GNU) that President has proposed?
I don’t like to hear the word Government of National Unity because I don’t know what that means. But for Labour Party before the election, we came out as a party to endorse Jonathan. We didn’t have a presidential candidate and said of all the presidential candidates that Jonathan is our candidate and we asked Labour Party members all over the country to vote for Jonathan as president. So if he invites us to join his government, we will participate because from the beginning we believed he is the best. Labour Party, we were in a peculiar situation because we had no presidential candidate, so we endorsed and adopted Jonathan as our presidential candidate. And I have no quarrel with those who don’t want to join the government because they also believe they want to provide opposition. It’s the beauty of this democracy. For us from the beginning, President Jonathan has been our candidate and we made it clear. In fact, we didn’t equivocate about it and said look, nationally Labour Party said we have done a run through all the candidates and the feeling in the circumstance of Nigeria is 2011 that Jonathan should be the candidate.
So, what you are saying is that you don’t see anything bad in your party joining President Jonathan’s government?
No, no, no. Even the GNU, are all parties in government? It will never happen. Those who said we want to present credible opposition its okay; it’s good for our democracy. I have no objection to it, but all those parties have presidential candidates. But you remember Labour Party had no presidential candidate, he (Jonathan) was the candidate that we endorsed and you will recall that before we endorsed him, we had what we called our minimum agenda that we presented to him. If he continues on that course, we will work with him. But the moment he diverts from the course, we will say thank you and we will pull out. There is no question about that. But so far that he goes along with the course, we will continue to support and endorse him.
But you run the only Labour Party in government in Nigeria and the South-west. There is this news flying around that you may likely pitch tenth with the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) while some are saying that you are planning joining the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Your Excellency, are you considering joining any of these political parties?
Being the only Labour Party government in Nigeria is also a challenge. I must confess it has its own ups and downs. For me, it’s a call to duty. I keep telling you Labour Party actually was a creation of NLC (Nigerian Labour Party) and in the ideological spectrum in every society Labour Party is always on the left. And people have said that there is no more ideology in the Nigerian political space and in Ondo State, we are proving it wrong. I am working assiduously to show that even as closely knit ideological as it seems to be that there is still a line to be drawn. Because the issue of ideology is what are the choices that you are making since the extreme right will trickle down the ideological perspective, grow the economy and eventually the benefits will trickle down to the masses. But we believe that the masses would have been dead before it trickles down (laughter). So our own approach is grow the economy and also grow the under privileged, so there will be a convergence. Our own, it is convergence, let us move up there...We made it clear we will continue to run government to create the enabling environment for the private sector to thrive. But in terms of basic social services that will give everybody some modicum of equality of opportunity in society, we believe that as a Labour Party government we owe it a duty.
I give you example in our healthcare programme. When I came on board and I said look ‘we want to build the best hospital in Nigeria in terms of responsive services, quality services and in a very ambient environment and that our services will be free of charge.’ And my folks said that that was a paradox, how could you bring the best services as free of charge? But today I don’t want to sound immodest, one and half years on, mother and child hospital is probably the best run public institution in Nigeria and in Africa. It has been acclaimed by World Bank, in fact, I am supposed to go to Washington to describe that wonderful template to the World Bank for some to see. Everybody has been there, Fourth Foundation, everybody is coming to applaud what we are doing there. We give excellent quality services free of charge. Today, we are one of the busiest maternity centres in Nigeria, taking 25 deliveries a day on the average. Everything free of charge and I said it, we discharge our caesarian operation 48 hours after surgery like the standard in any best hospitals anywhere in the world. Now that is a choice, it’s an ideological choice. Of course, while I am reading out we got resources, that quantum of resources can be deployed elsewhere which can still be justified. So being a Labour Party government look under our three ‘R’ programmes which is a bottom-up rural development. We went all out to communities to give me their assessment, to identify local governance institutions in the communities. They voted on the priority of their community, what are your needs? As I speak with you, we have completed over 200 projects in rural communities in one and half years. Projects dictated by the people; life changing projects. We have deployed almost N2 billion in community development much more than since the creation of Ondo State. That is an ideological choice. People who did not look in that direction they necessarily look at the tangent of the concept of the ideology. So for me, it’s an opportunity to demonstrate to people that ideology is alive.
Look let me tell you, what we are doing in terms of urban renewal in Ondo State, you need to come to see things for yourselves. Like I told my people, the easiest thing to do is to get people out of streets and take bulldozers to bulldoze the tracks and get them of out of the streets and build nice spaces. But from the ideological perspective, we recognise the historical imperative of gari trading on our streets. It never used to be so, but because we are Labour Party, we are a social democratic party, we analyse that look why are there no longer stores and palm trees in houses? Ask my brother, we grew up together where we stored things in our house. How many houses now have stores? We used to store food for one month, two months but since the structural adjustment era, a deliberate international financial conspiracy against us, that was structural adjustment by removal of subsidies from social services everything went bunkers. So everybody was eating on a daily basis, by 5pm you have not even made enough money to put soup on the table. So there was market for people in the evening to line the streets and compete with vehicles on the maidens of major roads selling tomatoes and vegetables and all of that. So from that historical, ideological perspective, we took the decision that we will not get these people off the streets without providing alternatives. Again, that is an ideological decision. So what we did was to take inventories of our street traders, then provide modern market facilities; 24 hours water supply, 24 hours light, paid environment that is even the envy of those who hitherto considered themselves as privileged in the society. Somebody came to Ondo State and said that he found street traders as entrepreneurs. These are ideological positions. So for me being the only one in Labour Party has a special challenge to demonstrate that ideology is still alive if we must develop rapidly. In other words, I don’t subscribe to a 100 per cent market driven economy because the market is never equitable anyway. So your economy can be growing seven per cent annually and more people having private jets and you are deepening poverty in the society. I am sorry, that has been our experience in the last few years. More people will have mansions in all capitals in the world but at the end of the day poverty will be deepening, that has been the experience with free market 100 per cent driven economy. But, we are redefining it, the private sector profit motive, they are more nimble, more responsive and we must create the environment but we have the responsibility as a government to ensure that you bring the people along. Look at the education sector, only 25 per cent passed WAEC (West African Examination Council). I said let them disaggregate it 90, of what we did for the private institutions and for the post independence generation education used to be the gateway out of poverty, but can you say the same today? Can you say that is what packaging economy is all about? When Awolowo (Chief Obafemi) democratised education in the Western Region by deliberate policy of free and compulsory education more than 50 years after in terms of regional disparity, we have deliberately recreated society along those parts, so for me, it is an opportunity to demonstrate as Labour that ideology is relevant.
So the issue of being the only South-west government, I must tell you one thing about my perception of Nigeria. Some people will tell you that ACN is a progressive party I don’t want to go into details but I know that Labour Party is a progressive party.
So ACN is a not progressive party?
No, I have not said that. Why I have not said that is this, I want to watch the choices that the ACN governors outside Lagos make. You see, Lagos may not be the ideal place to actually know the ideological tangent and trangentary of influence. Lagos State receives more than N18 billion a month and that is more than what I have seen almost one year. So Lagos can afford to bulldoze Tejuoso and rebuild it.
But compared to the activities that go on in Lagos (cuts in)?
No, I am not saying that it’s too much for Lagos. What I am saying is that you compare life now in Oyo, Ekiti, Osun states in terms of resources, in terms of populations, size, in terms of land mass, in terms of history, in terms of revenue. So the choices of those governments will kind of give us the true character in the ideological spectrum and they have started well. I must tell you that that they have started well. Rauf (Governor Aregbesola) put 20, 000 volunteers and paid them, we started with 5,000. But our own 5,000 apart from training them physically, deploying them to community jobs, we have also given them new skills. Engaging in fish farming, poultry farming and even mushroom farming and they are doing well and they are happy with themselves. We have deployed some of them at community in need assessment, trained them and given them new skills. Some of them have been deployed and trained in advance computer programming but the whole idea that the governor says ‘look we must tackle unemployment’ is an ideological position. So they started well, the tangent and the trangentary will be clear one year down the line. But they are progressives, we are progressives, there shouldn’t be competition. There shouldn’t be you must come to the ACN or I must not come to the ACN. There are many areas of collaboration. Like I said, somebody asked me a question on regional integration, I have nothing against regional integration. It’s an exciting prospect if the South-west, we can integrate regionally, and this must be an integration not based on political parties. It must be based on shared values, the economic imperatives, love, we belonged to the same region, we share almost the same history. Now, wouldn’t it be exciting if we can get a rail line from Lagos go through Ibadan to Ondo, get it to Edo and curve? Wouldn’t it be exciting if we can generate enough power from one single source and distribute it? Wouldn’t it be exciting if we can join hands to build a 21st Century University instead of everybody having this choke choke thing secondary schools that they call universities? These things, it must be based on shared values, what that means is that when that shared value is there and once there is credible election. Today it’s ACN, ACN and Labour Party can join hands. The only magic of Labour Party of Mimiko is that, I keep telling people don’t introduce me as governor. Call me the elected governor of Ondo State. Now, if somebody comes around tomorrow and says he is of Southern Sun Party of Nigeria and the governor of Ondo State, he will continue, provided he got the mandate from the people. Because this integration is something that will out leave us; let’s say we decide to do power plant and take up the transmission and distribution, it’s a programme that will go on for six, eight years. It would outlive us but the basic principles must be there that we shared these values. But the most important value that we share is that power must go from the people, it’s not PDP name that is the problem. It’s the fact that, it’s the credibility of election that threw up those people that we are quarrelling with not the name of the party. So, once there is credible election, we can build on our value. So I have no headache being the only Labour Party governor. Of course, if for some political reasons everybody wants to come together there is no problem about that.
Source: This Day
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