Date: 2013-10-08

Dr Muyideen 'Femi Akorede is the Senior Special Assistant to Governor Ahmed Abdulfatah of Kwara State on Media and Communication. In this interview with OLUSEYI DA'SILVA at the Government House, Ilorin, he says that Kwara would be more transformed than this. Excerpts:

What factors does your government consider before embarking on its projects?

      The policies of government are drawn from the medium term and trust strategies, which is the blue print for governance within this four year tenure, from 2011 to 2015 and basically, the MTTS outlines what the governor intends to do every year; With what resources, within what time, what the techniques and approaches would be and the performance indicators, what determines whether we have achieved it or not. Now the second point is that these policies are drawn from public feed back. When the governor was campaigning in 2011, part of the things he did was telling them what he would do for them as he was also asking them what they wanted. In this you will discover a lot of emphasis on youth empowerment, the consistent feed back he got during the campaign was "eba awon omo wa wa ise" meaning jobs for our children. Also, he realises that a good proportion of our population is the youth, so empowering the youth will literarily solve the problems of our people, so our policies and projects are drawn from public feed back and the MTTS.

Looking at the International Vocational Centre, Ajase-Ipo, some critics of your government say this project is not worth the noise being made about it?

      How can they say it is too small? Government has set up a school to teach people globally recognized vocational skills. The school is in phases so the physical structure you see there is just one phase, the next phase we would expand. The idea is to make kwara State the vocational hub in West Africa, not just in Nigeria alone. So, basically we are determine to give our youths globally recognized skill. Secondly, what is obvious to all is that we cannot employ every body that comes out of school, so the way to go since we cannot employ every body is to develop the capacity of our youths, train them to be able to employ others. If you build a house, if you are doing POP, you are most likely to employ someone from Togo; if you are doing tiles, you will most likely employ someone from Ghana, the carpentry is probably done by someone from Benin Republic. We are giving vital jobs that our youths should have to foreigners, so building that vocational centre is to expose our youths to globally recognized skills that will enable them work in Nigeria and abroad and the curriculum has been designed in partnership with City and Guides of London and also in consultation with employers association.       The other level is the skill acquisition centre, few weeks ago, the governor flagged off the master trainers' scheme and the idea is that any skill centre or artisan that has more than ten apprentices automatically qualifies as a centre and is registered. What that means is that such centre works with the ministry of education to determine the curriculum for their training. Graduates of such centres are given certificates that are government recognized and this also standardizes the skills attained from those centres whereby any artisan from kaiama will have same skill as one from Ilorin, or any where in the state.
      So in my own view and from the perspective of government, what we are doing there is not small but adequate for government's plan to do.
     

It appears most road constructions are centred at Ilorin neglecting other parts of the state.

     

(Cuts in) That's not true!

      See the state of the link road from Offa to Ajase- Ipo and even the township roads in Offa?
It's not true that we limit road construction to Ilorin; secondly the truth is that it is inevitable that the state capital will take lion share of road projects. Also, most of the people who criticize us are people who sit here in Ilorin and never left Ilorin to other places where we are working. Before I got to this office I never knew any place called Share or Kaiama was. I never knew where Patigi Lafiagi and others were. If I have not come into this position as a kwaran, I would not have known many of these places, so people sit in Ilorin and criticize government. Also thirdly, government has spent N2.8 billion on rural roads; what proportions of rural roads are in Ilorin? Most of the rural roads are outside Ilorin. Aside this we have intervened in roads like the landmark Omu Aran township road in Irepodun local government, Share Oke Ode road in Ifelodun local government, in Kwara North. We just gave an approval for N1.5 billion for Ilesha Baruba road, the state executive council just approved N8billion for Kisi-Kaiama road, which obviously are not in Ilorin. If we take other sectors like health, the rehabilitation and construction of General Hospitals to world class, it's only one in Ilorin. Others are spread across the state like Kaima, Offa, Omu Aran, Share and other parts of the state. New ones that are coming will also go to other new places. And back to the Ajase Erin Ile road issue, that road is a federal road, which you can't touch without approval from federal government and the federal government has awarded the road through FERMA so how can we go to rehabilitate such road. Also it is expensive to take on that road, we are looking at between N6billion to N8billion to dualize it; government does not have that kind of resources to do that of Kaiama and also do that one. So what we are doing is put pressure on the federal government to help us out.

     

       In addition to that the state government is doing the Igbo Oro in Offa for N300million, a town ship road identified by Offa people. We told them that we cannot do the Ajase Ipo road and then they chose that road, and now government has approve the construction of that road, even the contractor went there, did the drainages without mobilization. The next stage is for us to mobilize him and let him do the rest of the work.

Do you think your government is doing enough in the education sector?

        See, no government can ever do enough in education sector; we are doing a lot is what I would say because no government in the world can ever meet the aspiration of the people in education development. But in specifics, we are doing our best the recent N3billion car loan to civil servants, most of the beneficiaries are teachers. We approved the promotion of over 12,000 teachers in primary and secondary schools across the state. Thirdly, there is continuous training and retraining of teachers especially in science and technical subjects in the state. We also try to make the work environment very conducive, within a short time we have rehabilitated more than 400 schools at primary and secondary school levels. We are also about to approve the upgrade of over 120 schools to world class standard spread across the senatorial districts. We also have the plan to achieve the UN rules of 1 teacher to 25 students ratio, so its not about just building schools, painting and making everything looking fantastic, we are looking at what the schools require, what they need and provide it. In addition to that, the state government supplied science equipments to secondary schools last year. So a lot is going on. If you look round you will see that our colleges of education have been reformed; they are now barred from doing sandwich courses and university degrees, they are barred to just focus on preparing teachers for the basic level because that is the foundation.
       

There is a lot of criticism about Shonga farm being a window dressed project

        (cuts in) So what do you think. Have you been there your self?
        Yes, I have been there twice or more?
        So what did you see there?
       

Am speaking as regards their products not seen in the markets in Kwara, how productive is the farm?

        The truth is that through Shonga farm we started the first commercial farm in kwara State and we learnt a lot. In this commercial farming what you do is supply chain management; you know who requires your product even before you harvest them. It is unlike the subsistent farming where you plant cassava and when you harvest you don't know where to sell your product. When a cassava farmer in our commercial project is planting, he already knows that someone in China is waiting to have his harvest of the cassava. We guarantee the market. When you are milking your cow, you already know that WAMCO is waiting for your harvest in Lagos and that is why you won't see such products in the market. The fact is that we don't have a fresh milk culture in this country, if you prepare tea and put fresh milk for some people, they would not drink it; they prefer powdered milk or evaporated milk. The same goes for chicken; these are usually paid for by eateries, Kwara Hotel and others even before we kill them. We always have a ready market for these products ever before they are available; so this is what happens, we should be very proud of Shonga Farm in this part of the country because it has shown us the possibility and prospect of commercial farming. Aside these, the economy of this axis, Shonga has been greatly transformed since this project started. The roads, the electricity advantage, Hospitals and other infrastructure just name it. The Governor intends to replicate this project in other senatorial districts of the 15 local government areas in the state through the farmer model programme, so that the farmer is not seen as a poor person, who doesn't have anything to do, because there is a ready market for their produce.
       

So in other words, the Shonga farm has added a revenue source for government?

Yes but don't forget that Shonga Farm is owned by a consortium of banks, the farmers and the state government. Kwara State only has a stake in Shonga Farm, not wholly owned by government. We have not gotten to the stage of profitability yet because the gestation period is about ten years. We have however broken even because the farm is doing very well and very soon we would reach the profitability level.
       

Nigeria is 53, as a Nigerian how well have we fared as a country?

For a country with over 230 ethnic nationalities and two strong religions to have held each other together for so long is worthy of commendation. Despite all the problems we've gone through, the civil war, the coups of the 70s, the 79/83 elections and yet we overcame, now we are faced with Boko Haram, yet we are still together, we have fared well in that regards. Yes, people may think we are not yet where we should be, but this country has developed and we have lot more potential, the room for improvement is significant. Like his Excellency said in his celebration speech, we are not a nation yet, unfortunately we are still a conglomerate of nationalities but we would get there once we are getting things right in terms of visionary leadership, in terms of our people seeing themselves first as Nigerians.

Before I see myself as being from Offa, before I see myself as a Kwaran, I must see myself and be proud to be a Nigerian, just as an American would announce to you that he's an American before you know his state. And we would get there through good governance. Just like the Governor would say, ‘Nigerians don't care about who their President or Governor is so far as they can put food on their table, have good shelter, pay school fees for their children and enjoy good health'; and that is the truth, when my wellbeing is guaranteed, it doesn't matter who is there. When we have national values and ethos and aspiration that we can point to; people talk about the American dream, because they all have one thing that bind them together as a people, that they refer to. People say that you can make it in America, so, may be we should also start celebrating our people, that Nigerians are good people; great nation. Nigerians are industrious, friendly and intelligent. Once we are able to identify with unique goals like that it will be easy to see yourself as Nigerians. We would get there eventually by God's grace.
               

What message do you have for kwarans?

       

Well, on behalf of the Executive Governor of Kwara State I thank the people for the support given to this administration in the last two years, for their ongoing support and we promise them more people friendly programmes in the coming years. Kwara will be more transformed than this and developed. Shared prosperity is for all of us to share in the prosperity of kwara because it is good here in kwara.