The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi (Ojaja II), has rallied governments at all levels, especially in the South West, to pay keen attention to road infrastructure, culture and tourism development.
The monarch, while receiving members of the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI) at his palace recently, said the critical infrastructure would upturn the socio-economic fortunes of the people for good.
He lamented that the neglect of tourism, culture and gradual erasure of history by the government would have negative effects on the country. And to salvage the situation, there must be practical efforts by all to sustain the culture and history of the region, warning that without this, wrong information may be passed to the next generation.
According to him, several of the histories of Ile-Ife were either not well-documented or told from the biased point of views of whosoever that is promoting them.
He explained that in order to ensure true representation, the Ile-Ife royal stool has instituted Ife Studies where history and culture of the city would be well-told and documented.
“We have what we now call Ife Studies where knowledge about physics, medicine and others are done. The Bible is only 6,000 years old, but we had one Ooni that was on the throne for 2,200 years.
“When we tell this story, the majority feels it is not possible, but we had Methuselah in the Bible who lived for 962 years. If Methuselah was enthroned as Ooni at the age of 30 for instance, at least, he would be 932 years on the throne, which is almost a thousand years,” the monarch said.
President of ASRTI, a think-tank group of the air transport sector, Dr. Gabriel Olowo, said they were in the palace to appreciate the Ooni for attending his recently held 70th birthday and the launch of his book entitled: Cutting Costs without Cutting Corners, in Lagos.
Olowo also decried the bad road networks across the region, stressing that this was adding to the cost of sales of agric produce.
He said that with effective intermodal transportation, which is linked to airports, transportation of goods and services would be easier and cheaper. He canvassed for the abrogation of some infrastructure and amenities under the exclusive clause of the Federal Government.
He said: “I am strongly for the termination of the exclusive clause, which puts a lot of things under the Federal Government. There are some things that we should leave to the State and Local governments, let us build our immediate environment and together, we shall be a stronger nation.
“The exclusive clause has been a bigger problem to the growth of the economy. We have things on our grounds that we can make use of and generate wealth for our economy. That is a vital lesson to be learnt from here and this is not only in Ile-Ife, it is like that in the western region,” Olowo said.
