Dr. Olusegun Mimiko

Ondo State Governor Olusegun Mimiko, last weekend held a media parley with journalists in Akure, where he revealed that real development would be taken to the doorsteps of the people. NIYI BELLO was there.

What are your experiences in the task of governance since you assumed office eight months ago?

We had no doubt that things were not going right. If things were going right, I would not take the risk of resigning as a minister, despite pressure not to do so, to enter the race and contest for the governorship.

We faced a lot of challenges in the last eight months, some of which we did not envisage, but we thank God we were able to surmount them.

For instance, we have no handing over notes. In the corporate world, that is called hostile takeover. We expected some of the reactions from the people we took over from, but be that as it may, we had our focus. While we tackle the challenges, we never allowed ourselves to be distracted.

Can you tell us how, in concrete terms, you are going about development in the state?

We had no doubt from the beginning that we have to change the trajectory of development in the state and re-invent government. There is no doubt that government must be redefined towards the welfare of the people.

During my inauguration, I assured the people that I would work for them. Let me say that within the past eight months, we have been working for the people of the state. One fundamental difference between our government and what had always been is that there will be a paradigm change in development, that we will get the people involved, not only in their needs assessment, but also give a voice to their institutions.

We will get them to be part of implementation and monitoring of projects at the local level; we will catalyse a system whereby the creative energy will be unleashed, so that people would take hold of their own development. We will also put an to end the disconnect between the government and the governed._

We have started what we call the 3Is Initiative, that is Institution, Infrastructure and Industry, and borders on integrated community development, starting from the bottom to the top, getting the people to drive their own development. It

We took it out of the Yoruba mantra of old: Ise, Ibukun loogun Ise.

We have started this initiative in three pilot local government areas in the state; one for the North senatorial district (Owo); Central (Ifedore) and South (Odigbo) by engaging the people we call Community Change Agents (CCAs).

These are unemployed graduates we have trained in the art of community engagement, to go to the communities, identify the existing institutions within these communities, interface with them and ask questions, such as ‘what are your needs; your expectations from government and if you have to priorities your needs, what are these priorities?’

These change agents were trained and given new skills, taught to be computer literate and given two Camera Camcorders and GPRS devices each for them to be able to define the actual location of projects for implementation.

These young men and ladies did a wonderful job and through their efforts, we have identified the needs in 80 communities. In doing this, we engaged the existing institutions, such as the Baales, Council of Chiefs, the outer ring of authority and, in situation where they could not readily agree on what the priority would be.

In some of the communities, some would say town hall, some would say health centre. In a situation when consensus could not be reached, we resort to simple voting, and we have been able to do that for 80 communities and have identified these projects.

We have embarked on ‘Quick Win Confidence Building Project Implementation.’ As I talk to you, we are working in 80 communities. In Uso community in Owo Council, for example, their town hall project had been abandoned for about 20 years, but when our CCAs interfaced with the community directly, after some voting, they identified the town hall as their priority. If you go there now, the town hall had been roofed and turned into a beautiful edifice._

In Eporo community in Ifedore Council, the community said what they needed was a market, because they don’t have any market infrastructure. For years, they have been going as far as Ekiti State to trade, and ironically, they pay taxes there.

In the next couple of weeks, the market will be ready; it is getting to roofing stage presently._

There are communities that said health centre as their priority. We are now building health centres in almost 10 communities, in line with their wants and priority._

The beauty of these is that you are establishing ownership from the beginning and whether you like it or not, no matter our pretences, you cannot know the needs of the people like the people themselves.

In Ondo State now, we are empowering the people to drive their own development. There is a community that said, ‘look, we do a lot of cassava plating here, we need some automated cassava industries.’ Anybody that saw the documentary about the 3Is on television will know that cassava industry is actually necessary there.

These 80 communities are pilot communities. I can assure you that in the next budget year, we are going to budget handsomely to cover most of the communities in this State.

What is the recently launched Ondo State Social Security Residency Card, otherwise known as Kaadi Igbe Ayo, all about?

We are piloting the scheme. I am not too sure if it has been done in this comprehensive way we are going about it in Ondo State anywhere in the world before.

The biggest problem we have is planning. If you don’t know the number of mouths you have to feed in your house, how can you feed them adequately? You must know the number, even if you don’t have enough money. You will know your resource gap and how to fill it.

_ Go to any hospital, hardly can you get to any near accuracy the number of malaria patients that we treat in a year. How many do we envisage next year? How do you provide to ensure that there is provision of sufficient drugs? How do we ensure that every home has food security?

You must have a way of keeping tab on all of these. The Kaadi Igbe Ayo is a residency programme, where every citizen of Ondo State would be registered and issued with a smart card. Every citizen will have a social security number and if you must have application card, your health, welfare and tax data would be there._

On food security, we are negotiating with the federal government to take over some of the silos. We are going to stockpile food and when there is scarcity, we are going to sell food at subsidised rates for every home in Ondo State. But we need to know how many people to cater for.

Education is the only window to get out of poverty, but unfortunately, that window is getting closed. If you look at our public schools, we are not making the right investment in education. I am not sure up to two per cent of public school student who qualify in one sitting get admitted into the university.

The truth of the matter is that we are closing that door; that window that gives the opportunities to the under-privileged to liberate their generation out of poverty._

We are deliberately making determined intervention in education to be able to ensure that it remains the window of opportunities for the under-privileged in society.

How will this be done?

We are going to make deliberate and concerted efforts at revamping the sector. When we came on board in February, teachers were spoiling for a showdown; they wanted to go on strike over their Teachers Salary Scheme (TSS). They insisted that they wanted a pay rise of 27.5 per cent.

Of course, that was at the peak of the global economic meltdown and our income was going down. But then, we had to pay the teachers, the economic situation not withstanding, because the first imperative to a sustainable development is to have a highly motivated workforce.

In spite of the economic meltdown, government is about choices and we made the choice to pay deliberately to motivate them.

We are building what we call our Caring Heart Model Primary Schools. In fact, we are breaking ground for the first one in Akure soon and we will build three simultaneously in each of the senatorial districts. The only challenge we will have is to ensure that the elites don’t take over again.

I am not against anybody, but these primary schools will be a model; they are going to be state-of-the-art, complete with resource centre, computer laboratory, art room, music room, standard games filed, you name it. Everything a child needs to be able to compete with his or her counterpart anywhere would be there, strictly for the under-privileged children.

The truth is that if we don’t make this deliberate intervention and investment, the children of the under-privileged will never be able to compete, and that is why we are ensuring that these schools are built right where majority of our people live and not in elitist areas.

How would all these projects be funded, given the global economic recession and huge debt profile you inherited?

The truth is that you cannot meet all the people’s needs at the same time; every need has priority scale.

Let me give you an example, Igbotako in Okitipupa Council is a semi-urban town by_ any standard. Yet, the road is not the best in the world. I am sure the municipal water is also not the best, but the people said, ‘what we need is a General Hospital, because each time somebody is ill, we have to take him to Okitipupa.’

You get to some of these communities, they say what they need is water. Some of them trek-up to one kilometre to get water to do their basic domestic chores. Then you start wondering, why can’t these people come together and through communal efforts sink a deep well.

Many years of disconnect between the government and the people had affected our people, even at the community level, so much so that they have virtually lost confidence in themselves, in terms of their institutions.

To redress this, we are getting the people to know that they should be the drivers of their own development. We met N117 billion commitments on ground and we are re-negotiating and rescheduling some contracts. There are some that we can’t just but discontinue. There are some of them that the Contracts Assessment Committee, which we set up to verify these contracts, using standard rate, found out were inflated by more than 100 per cent.

For such contracts, we are sitting down with some of these contractors to tell them, ‘look, these are the standard rates, fault these rates.’ If a contract is worth N600 million and you gave out at N1.4 billion, we say, ‘look contractor, what rate did you use to get that?’ Fortunately, the rates and quantities can be measured.

But we are happy that despite the paucity of funds, some of our projects are being co-funded by donor agencies. For instance, the Abiye (Safe Motherhood) programme is going to be supported by the World Bank, which has agreed to partner with us and is going to put over N300 million into the programme.

We are going to look for funds and invest in the critical areas, if we must bring Ondo State back to its pristine glory.