All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship aspirant in Oyo State Prof. Adeolu Akande spoke with BISI OLADELE in Ibadan, the state capital, on his ambition and the need for a government of continuity in the Pacesetter State.
What is your mission in politics?
My coming into partisan politics, and seeking the office of the governor of Oyo State is borne out of my experience. As an academic, I studied political science and I have been exposed intellectually to how government is organized around the world so that the government could satisfy the yearnings of the majority of the people. Secondly, I have worked at the federal and state levels, as Special Assistant in the Presidency and Chief of Staff to the governor of Oyo State, where I had practical experience of the potentials we have as a country and as a state. When I combine my intellectual experience with my practical experience, I have no doubt that these things have great potential that we could explore to make life much more meaningful. I am in politics because I believe I have been equipped with theoretical intellectual background and I have the practical experience to know all the challenges and the potentials that we have in Oyo State and I believe I will make a difference, if I have the opportunity of serving as governor.
Do you think you can survive now that you really want to go into it as a major player?
As a journalist I have had first-hand experience about the dirty side of politics, I reported politics all of my life as a journalist. So, I have firsthand experience of the downside of politics in Nigeria. And as an academic, I have done extensive research on politics and government in Nigeria, and I also have the experience and as somebody who had been in the government I have been directly involved in the formulation of policies and practical politics. So, I am aware that there are so many challenges in partisan politics in Nigeria. But my conviction is if everybody who feels he is clean runs away from politics, then you leave it for the so-called dirty people, and the consequences of bad leadership will affect you regardless of your comfort zone. If everybody keeps saying politics is dirty, you don’t want to go in there, then you leave politics for people who are not equipped to make life better for the people. We grew up knowing the likes of Wole Soyinka, Tai Solarin, Dele Giwa. I have come to the conclusion that it is not sufficient to stand by the ring side and criticize, we need to step into the arena and make a difference if you could, and the only way you can make a difference is be part of politics, be part of those who determine who governs, if possible, offer yourself, work with people of like minds to form a government that can bring about the Nigeria or Oyo State of our vision or of our dream.
What difference do you intend to bring to the table now that you want to become a major player?
There are so many challenges we have in the society. If you look at Oyo State today, I am not sure there is any household you go that you don’t see young men who have been out of the university for three to four years and are unemployed. I believe that youth unemployment is the number one problem that we have to solve in Oyo State. The incumbent government has done well to address the problem of security. When this government came in 2011, security was a major problem. No one was sure that if they leave their home and before you get to anywhere in Ibadan they will get there in one piece. The incumbent government has successfully resolved that. The government has also done well in the area of infrastructure. Now we need to shift to how do we provide jobs for our teeming youths. We have the national statistics that about 40 per cent of our graduates are unemployed and it can’t be different in Oyo State, if it is not worse. So, we need to address that. What is the way out of this problem? That is an area I am passionate about. We need to look at our education system and bring in vocational training and skills acquisition so that we will equip our youths. Before they leave secondary school they have a vocation with which to earn a living. We need to increase the budgetary allocation to education. Today, the allocation to education is not enough to prepare our youths for the challenges of the future. So, we need to address that. We need to ensure that our schools are well equipped with laboratories, they are well equipped with libraries, they are well equipped with computer work stations. The educationist says that the illiterates of the future are not those who cannot read and write but those who cannot use the computer. Yet, computer is not commonplace in our schools. So, we need to focus on all of these so that our youths, by the time they leave secondary schools, can earn a living, so that when they go to universities, regardless of the course they study they will be able to employ themselves and employ two or three other people. It is through education that you can provide manpower for small and medium scale enterprises. If you look at the economies that are doing well all over the world, 65 per cent of employment is provided by small and medium scale enterprises and the only way that can come about is through the development of manpower in the education system and in the informal sector. We have people who are bricklayers, who are tile layers, who are mechanics, who do not have appropriate training. Many of our mechanics trained with old technology, and now they cannot handle the new cars that are coming up. When people in Oyo State are building their houses they go to Ghana and Republic of Benin to bring in brick layers because they say the brick layers here are not good. As a society we have the duty to retrain them. You cannot simply say they are not good and then when you bring in people from Ghana or from Togo, from Republic of Benin to do these jobs, you are exporting the jobs that are meant for our youths. So if there is a social problem, that our brick layers are not good, rather than all of us going to Ghana or Republic of Benin, it is the duty of the government to design a retraining programme so that all these people can now develop the manpower, so that people can earn decent living. I want to make difference in all that. I also want to look at our health sector, I am bothered because we have a huge population but our hospitals are far behind in the use of technology. The infrastructure is not good enough, and we do not have enough manpower.
Even Oyo State is grappling with scarcity of funds. What magic are you bringing to the system?
The first thing you need to do is to expand the economy of Oyo State. You know we are operating with an annual budget of about N50 billion. If you look at the finance of Oyo in the last one year, what we got from federal allocation is between N2.5 billion and N3 billion per month. If you add that up in a year, that gives you about N30 billion or N36 billion at most. If you add Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) at 1.5 billion per month, you will get about N48 billion. We are operating a budget of about N50 billion for a population of about 8-9 million. It is really inadequate. We need to expand the local economy so that we create more opportunities. We need to expand the taxable revenue because the primary source of government revenue is tax. But in good conscience, there is little you can tax if the economy itself is not expanding and that’s why we keep saying the government has to provide a conducive environment for the private sector to thrive. The comparative advantage of Oyo State is in agriculture. There is vast arable land that we need to explore as a comparative advantage. Within agriculture our priorities, our advantages are cassava cultivation because we are the largest producer of cassava. In poultry, because we are the largest producer of poultry and in fishing with Ikere Dam which we are not yet exploiting. If we take cassava, Nigeria produces 54 million tons of cassava every year. Not up to 1 per cent of it is exported. What that means is that we are importing more indeed. If we look at cassava product, if you take ethanol alone, Nigeria imports 98 per cent of its ethanol consumption and that is at a value of N800 billion. So if you produce tonnes of cassava in Nigeria and Nigeria still imports cassava products in excess of N1 trillion every year then the logic of it is that multiply what you are producing, can you multiply it? Can you triple it? Can you produce it ten times fold because the market locally is huge and then the market internationally is yet unexplored. So if you do that, focusing on agriculture, we are going to quickly expand the economy of Oyo State. How do we expand agriculture? One, encourage large scale commercial farming. Two, bring young men into agriculture. The average age of farmers in Oyo State today is between 55 and 61. Yet you have a youthful population. It is difficult for old men to feed young men. It is easier for young men to feed old men.
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