Mr Tunji Adigun Sadiq is the Oyo state chairman of the Labour Party, in this interview with YINKA OLADOYINBO, he spoke about his assessment of the present administration and the preparation of his party for the next elections.
What is your assessment of the Seyi Makinde administration in the last five years
To be honest with you, assessing performances of governments is becoming increasingly difficult these days. This is because various variables that are not empirical are being introduced into performance assessment. And it is not just starting today. It has been like that for a while. For example, many people are given to assessing government performances based on the performance of the preceding governments. You are not strange to statements like: our government has done better than previous governments. But the question is, who made the performance of the previous government the standard of measurement of performances? I think we need to cultivate the habit of assessment of performance based on a standard to be established. For instance, in WAEC examination, there is a standard for awarding A1, B2 and so on. If you score the marks that qualified you for A1, then you are awarded A1. But for government, our assessment is exceedingly subjective and no two persons would agree on the scale of performance. Moreso when the bias of politics is introduced.
But we can evaluate based on the various social economic interventions in education, health, security, road infrastructure, and investment attraction to the state. The government in Oyo State no doubt tried in the area of education. I am aware of the various interventions of the SUBEB in the construction of classrooms. The health is another area with the construction and equipping of primary health centres in almost all the wards in the State. But I am not able to talk to you on the facilities and service delivery there. Security has improved especially with the advent of Amotekun Corps. Though more still needed to be done in the area of security in order to assure food security. Once the farmlands are secured, farmers and more people can engage in effective farming. Road infrastructure is continuing on daily basis. More audit should be placed on the quality of jobs being done. It should be noted, however, that no matter the level of performance, there’s always room for improvement. Improvement stops when growth stops. And of course, government is a continuum. Succeeding government will eventually take off from where this government stops.
Having said these, we at Labour party have set a standard of performance for our incoming government. For us, the well-being of the people is the ultimate measurement of the performance of our government.
You were the gubernatorial candidate sometime ago, what are those things you would have done differently as a governor.
You are right. That was in 2019 election. I was the governorship candidate of my party. It is not always an easy task assessing a government from afar. Leadership is not tea party. Most of us don’t know what specific challenges the person on the hot seat is experiencing. Like the saying in football, the spectators are always better footballers. Having said that, I would advise that the government, both the present and future government should give attention to agricultural development, housing development and land use control.
Like I said earlier, the well-being of the people is the ultimate measurement of a government. And the first priority of human is food. Government should be intentional about food production (agriculture). Yes. It may not bring revenue which I think is the reason why some government don’t pay close attention to it. They are more concerned about revenue. But, we should know that reducing cost is a sort of revenue. If people feed well, they will be healthy and have little reasons to visit hospitals. A lot of diseases are attributable to malnutrition. Most of these diseases are avoidable with good feeding. Improved food production for healthy living is a form of revenue to the community as the budget on health would reduce. Time wasted on health care would reduce and be available for productive activities.
Housing development is another area. Government has to be involved in housing delivery. This is more so important for effective town planning. Government is trying on this. The housing corporation is doing fine. So many GRA around the city of Ibadan now. One area begging for intervention is affordable mass housing. So many people have built their houses many kilometers away from the cities. Take Ibadan for example. Many people have gone to build their houses in satellite towns and they have to spend so much in transportation every day to come to work and for their children to come to school in the town. Remember, there are no government schools in the newly developed places. So, they have to come to the nearest school which are domiciled majorly in the city centre. This cost would impact negatively on their well-being and income. This alone is a veritable reason for the poverty level we have in our society. Ibadan has extended so much but I don’t think there’s any reason for the expansion other than planning failure. There should be conscious efforts at redevelopment of the inner city for mass housing. Then, people can start living closer to their places of work and schools. In our school days, hardly did you see any student taking taxis to get to school. There’s always a community school within your community and one can walk down without any fear or cost.
Mass housing would also reduce the cost of infrastructure. You can imagine government trying to construct roads to all locations as the state is expanding. Road construction may not reach some places in the next 50 years even if the government is constructing 1,000 kilometres of roads every year. So much cost savings can be achieved in the long run, if government is deliberate about mass housing. Please take note that by mass housing, I am not talking of delivery of 200 to 300 housing units in a year. No, not at all. I am talking of delivery of between 5,000 and 10,000 housing units in a year.
Land use control. This bothers more on the need to ensure the well-being of the people. Most farmlands have turned into housing estate these days. If you travel to Iseyin, you see wide expanse of land acquired by various developers for housing estate. Go to Eruwa, it is the same thing on the road. This land is supposed to be for cultivation of agricultural produce and foods. The lands were gated but I just wondered when development would get to such area. Government has to intervene as a matter of urgency. Or do I say there’s the need to declare a state of emergency on land acquisition for housing.
The Labour Party today is enmeshed in crisis at the national level, do you think with that, you can really pose any serious challenge in the next election?
With all sense of responsibility, there is only one national chairman of the Labour Party. There have never been two chairmen at a time. The constitution of the party is a simple document that anyone can easily comprehend. And based on this document, the National Chairman of the Labour Party is and remains Barrister Julius Abure. Be that as it may, I don’t want to pretend as if there was never a challenge at the national level of the party. But the challenge was derived from progress. You will agree with me that where there is progressive development, there’s bound to be push and pull. That’s what we experienced for some time. And in the middle of the challenges, what I and most of the stakeholders stood for was that, not only must the right thing be done, but the right thing must be done the right way. After all said and done, all is a family misunderstanding and the elders are attending to it. Surely, the party would come out stronger with the challenge.
It’s like the Labour Party is not existing in Oyo State as we only hear of the PDP and APC. What is your plan for 2027?
Opposition is not always about criticising the government in power. Like I told you earlier, you can’t appreciate the challenges of governance until you are exposed to it. That’s the bitter truth. So, you don’t go on criticizing in the name of being opposition. As for the party in Oyo State, our kind of opposition is intellectual opposition with a view to getting into governance and shock the people as to what development is possible. We are assessing government performances in all areas of our societal life. Education, health, infrastructure, security. We are taking notes of what the present government is doing right. We are watching the less-than-impressive performances and we are accounting for areas of possible neglect. All these we are putting together to form manifesto for our party’s gubernatorial candidate. That would be party manifesto. What the party stands for and the goals to pursue. We want to ensure that all our elected candidates buy into the manifesto and own it. We want to move away from the usual practice where the governor’s agenda is the only government agenda. The party must have focus and drive of its own upon which the government will revolve. We want to make the governor accountable to the party while the party would be vicariously responsible to the people. That is what is call party supremacy and not individual supremacy as you can see in other parties. And that’s what prompted me to become the chairman of the party. Once the party has direction, our elected candidates would have no choice than to toe the party line with mechanism for whipping back to line of possible renegades.
For 2027, we are planning it. But it is a lot of work. We are scouting for people of different philosophy from what is presently obtainable in most of the people in political leadership. It is positive change that we want and can best be achieved by philosopher kings – those that have conquered their egos and greed. We are gradually making up the team of philosopher kings. We are working on reorientation of the people, and a lot more.
Do you think the Labour Party as presently constituted has the ability to win a national election or is the party working on a merger?
In Oyo State, the Labour party will go all for the election, it is about the people in the last election, the people decided they wanted Engineer Seyi Makinde and they voted for him, maybe tomorrow the will say they want Labour Party, but we are preparing for the election and we are confident that we will win. At the national level, what we are doing in Oyo state we want to replicate another states to make the party strong in those states, if we are strong in Oyo state, Ogun, Abia, Kano and others, it is all those states that will come together to win a general election. Labour Party has the capacity, the tendency and the opportunity to go it alone and win election but this is politics nothing is sacrosanct and the ultimate is to make sure you achieve your interest, if working with another party will help us to achieve that I don’t think it is a bad idea, nothing is wrong in coming together to form a coalition, the goal is to win election.
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