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‘Oyo People Want Me Back As Governor’

By Debo Oladimeji
20 February 2015   |   11:00 pm
Former governor of Oyo State and Accord Party (AP) governorship candidate, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, speaks on why he is seeking to govern the state for a second time and his plans for the people, if elected. WHY do you think the people of Oyo State would vote for you a second time? I have been…

Ladoja-21-2-15

Former governor of Oyo State and Accord Party (AP) governorship candidate, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, speaks on why he is seeking to govern the state for a second time and his plans for the people, if elected.

WHY do you think the people of Oyo State would vote for you a second time?

I have been a governor from 2003 to 2007. I have two successors and a predecessor in this position. 

  So, in principle, it is to be said that Ladoja had a unique style, which the people of Oyo State have had an opportunity of seeing, I mean my performance and that of my successors, and they are actually itching for me. 

  It seems as if my successors don’t really understand that governance is about people; that you create all those infrastructures for the use of the people. 

  When we look back and see what those things we put in place have become, we discovered that our successors have not got it right. 

  That is why my party, Accord Party, said they want me to come back, so that when I might have finished, I will have an opportunity of recommending to the people of Oyo State, a successor that will rule us in line with your thoughts. 

  So, it is not really my desire; it is a request by my party people, which I think is also a request by the people of Oyo State. 

In concrete terms, what are the things you did in your first tenure that have made you a source of attraction?

  I believe that the minimum you can do to your employee is to pay his or her wages as at when due. And that was what we put in place, by paying salaries on the 25th of the month or one week before any major festival, because we felt we should allow the workers to plan their lives.   

  I created a lot of incentives for the workers because then, they were no more bordering about when their salaries will come; they were able to concentrated on their work, and we saw the benefits. 

  When we came in, the situation in education was so bad that we had to devote a chunk of the budget to it. We discovered that in primary and secondary schools, there were cases of over 100 pupils in a class, no chairs, no desks. During lectures the pupils will be standing or sitting on the window. 

  After we came in, we said there should be not more than 30 pupils per class, and we achieved it. 

  The steps we took in primary and secondary schools were rewarded by the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUPEB) and we were classified as second best in the whole of Nigeria, second to Katsina in year 2004|2005. Since that time, Oyo State has not even feature in the rating. 

  Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) was classified as the best state university in Nigeria and number three in all the universities in Nigeria. Our target was to catch up with the University of Ibadan (UI) that was rated as number one. But where is that LAUTECH today? 

  That is why I said people really don’t know why they are there, because the decline of LAUTECH started with a rift between our former governor, Chief Alao Akala, and his Osun counterpart, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, who belonged to the same party. And the decline has never stopped, as we were not rated again. 

  You ask yourself what has gone wrong?  Why can’t people build on existing structures? 

  In the area of water, we made a pledge to eradicate guinea worm, because it was endemic in Ibarapa and Oke-Ogun at that period. We put in temporally measures because boreholes are temporary measures, as the main water should come from the municipal sources. 

  By the grace of God, within the four years, we eradicated guinea worm. Gowon visited and congratulated us for work well done on behalf of the Carter Global 2000.   

  That is why I say that people should be your focused in government. We have finished the question of temporary solution and we were building on permanent solution, which we classified into mini and major water works. 

  We started one in Oluyole. We started the rehabilitation at Eleyele and Asiyere, which was just completed by the incumbent governor, meaning that a job that was supposed to take two years has taken about seven or eight years to complete. 

  The major weapon of the present government is propaganda. So, they claim it was their job, whereas it wasn’t. There are so many water and school projects we started which were abandoned. 

  In the area of agriculture, we said that our people should move from hoes and cutlasses to affordable tractors. We went to India and brought Mahindra to come and start an assembly plant here. We didn’t invest one kobo in it, the only promise we gave them was that we were going to be buying 100 tractors a year.  

 As soon as we left, the new government decided that their interest was to import tractors, and I think Mahindra packed to Anambra State. 

 We knew that there were wastages of our fruits, particularly mangoes in Ogbomosho area. So, we set up a juice manufacturing plant in Oko. If you visited the Government House at that time, you could not get any other juice than that one manufactured by us, which was also being patronised by every body. But they abandoned it too. 

  We knew the government that we succeeded was saying that awo okaju ilu (the money was not enough). So, we were trying all we could to make sure that the money we had was enough to carry out our projects. 

  We set up an Asphalt Quarry Plant, which brought the cost of building our roads to the minimum. In fact, during our time, it was N10 million per kilometre. During the time of Akala, it was N100 million per kilometre. During the time of Abiola Ajimobi, it is N1billion per kilometre. 

  It was no magic because we were getting the materials from our asphalt plant, which they have abandoned. 

  We were setting up a big factory in Egbeda to use those bricks to rebuild all our schools built before 1960 with mud blocks. We said that all government offices, like health centers (built before 1960) and were to be rebuilt with new blocks. 

  When we were coming in, we said what we were going to do in education and health and that we were going to put emphasis on primary health centres and would put one in every ward, to be run by the people in that area. 

  All these things were there on the plan. We even decided that Ibadan needed to be re-planned by creating an outer ring road.

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