Olatokunbo Joseph Talabi is the Secretary to the Government of Ogun State. In this interview, he speaks with General Editor, TAIWO ADISA, about the key pillars of the administration of Governor Dapo Abiodun, the legacy projects in the area of water and energy and the Ise Ya agenda. He declares that in a very short while, the people of Ogun state would be counting close to 200 days of uninterrupted power supply, among other developmental initiatives.
As the engine room of the administration of Governor Dapo Abiodun in Ogun State in the last four and a half years, can you highlight the key pillars upon which the administration is rested?
The first thing to look at is to ask what was the intent of His Excellency when he came to power to lead this administration. He was clear on what he wants to do and that has been encapsulated in a vision statement. The vision statement, if you look at the content, is exactly what we have been following in its entirety, which is that the governor is determined to give Ogun State a focused and qualitative governance and to create an enabling environment for a public, private partnership, which he believes should be a fundamental requirement to creating an enduring economic development and once there is an enduring economic development, it means that people will begin to prosper, which is the bottom line.
The bottom line is what is in it for the people. So, if you look at the work that we have done, we remain focused. Whether it is political distraction, social distraction, or health distractions in terms of COVID-19, all forms of distractions, we just remain focused on the agenda that Prince Dapo Abiodun has set in place and you will see that, in almost in all our programmes and projects, there is always private, public partnership in focus.
In our own case, we call it public-private, meaning that the public should take the initiative, not that the private people are coming to say can we work for you. No, rather, we want to work with the public. Some of the projects we have done, for instance, I will give you two examples. The first one is the road between Ijebu Ode and Epe, we are planning to toll that road. If we had waited for the private sector to come to us, it is going to take forever, analysis over analysis, extra analysis. But we have de-risked that process by going ahead to do the construction so the public has taken the initiative and when it is ready, we are saying come and do business. The construction is done, the facility is there, it is almost like de-risking the project that is what we have done.
The second one, more recent one is the cargo airport. If you are going to do anything now and you want someone to build airport for you, it is huge. But when they know that whether we have an identified investor or not, we are just going ahead with the project. When you do that, people know that you are focused, determined and you want to make this thing work. Then you will be surprised at the rate at which people will come and join you.
For us to do that, we needed to have pillars and those pillars are what we have encapsulated under our Ise Ya Agenda which is infrastructure, social economic wellbeing, education, youth employment, and agriculture. Each one of those pillars has projects around them, that we are constantly expanding and enlarging to bring prosperity to the people. Those are the things that have guided this administration in the last four and a half years.
Now having implemented the development agenda in the last four and a half years, how satisfied are you with the execution of these objectives?
Sometimes, you will ask yourself, are you satisfied or not. First, you will have to look at the effective number of months that were available to work. Don’t forget that in the first term is when we had COVID-19, it took a better part of two years out of anybody’s administration. So, if you look at what we have done encapsulated into the time frame available, you will see that we probably used two and a half years to work out of four and you can see all the projects that we have done. For instance, in housing, we built closed to 3,000 housing units much more than all the various governments that we have had in the state put together. We’ve built 500 kilometers of road networks in that same time. Now that we don’t have those restrictions, we have upped our IGR significantly now.
We did Sagamu, the interchange to Abeaokuta in the same two years. We renovated over a 100 primary healthcare centers across Ogun State. If there is anything that is spurring everybody on, it is the fact that yes we have done something that is really satisfactory. And you have to give it to His Excellency because when we started, his disposition was that if we don’t frontload these projects now, we may not be able to do them again. So you can imagine all the devaluation that happened to the Naira. If you are going to do any of those projects now, you are going to be needing three to four times the amount you spent then. Education is one of the projects. In fact, when the governor came on board, he had to declare a state of emergency on education sector. When we started, prizes were being won by the private institutions, but now, more of the prizes are being won by students in public schools. That is an indication of how well we are doing.
Education is also an area I am interested in, Nigeria generally has the problem of out of school children and the South-West is also suffering its share of that menace. How is your state tackling the issue of out-of-school children?
First, part of the reforms that have taken place is to make sure that every child in every school is visible to the state. So, we have a unique number for each child and every child’s profile existed on that software. First, we took out all fake schools, because sometimes, you might think the children are not out of school but they are going to schools where there is no quality education. That way, we began to profile the schools which they attend. If you know that your school is not approved, the State will not accept students from you to be listed and if you are not listed, you are not recognized as a school. So we’ve seen a lot of people coming back to enlist in our schools.
The Federal Government has also helped that process because they have the school feeding programme. Anybody who is hungry cannot be forced to read. But once you know there is food, you are encouraged. We have done that in collaboration with the Federal Government and we say come to school, you will be fed and you can learn something. Even if you are interested in just the food, when you get to the school, you will learn something. That will help us to reduce the out of school children.
Part of the area we are looking at is the issue of technical vocation. We are beginning to see a lot of traction and a lot of support from donor agencies to help us in providing technical education. For instance, people are converting gas to CNG. It is a new economy that is coming alive and you need to train people. Who are those that can take advantage of this, people with skills that have been upgraded through our network.
The CNG project is an offshoot of the subsidy removal policy of the federal government. Some people saw the news coming from Ogun as heart-warming, particularly when they saw the lead being taken by Governor Abiodun in initiating that CNG buses. How operational is the transport system now using the CNG?
Yes, the target of the CNG was to see if we can take transportation back to its original state before the deregulation. We have converted all our buses now. Most of our buses are running on CNG and already operational on the roads. You can see them on the road. We are collating data; we have projection as to what we should expect, but sometimes, when you put the vehicles on the road, you collect data and compare it with what you have done. It is showing that we can actually achieve the previous rate of transportation cost before deregulation.
One of the issues we have in the state is insecurity. Though that is not peculiar to the state, how is the government of Ogun tackling the issue of insecurity?
If you want to provide an enabling environment for business to thrive, the real basis for anybody wanting to bring business to you is the safety of the environment and His Excellency is aware of that fact from the beginning and that is why the issue of security is on the front burner for us. We can say that Ogun is still referred to as the safest state in the country and that is because from day one, we went ahead tackling, whether it is cultism, kidnapping, robbery, or hooliganism.
Let me give you a good example. During the #EndSars protests, Ogun State was the only the place where people did not go and loot the storage, shops or burn whatever and that is because we have security. We used the conventional security and also do a lot of consultations. We have intelligence; we take pre-emptive steps and that is why Ogun State in an investment destination now. We are the fastest growing economy in the country because a lot of people would have seen that things are predictable here. Yes, we may not have it perfect, but we are working on it.
At a point in time, when we first came in, there was so much issue with kidnapping that the governor had to go to the president to give us a helicopter and the president obliged and we were chasing after them. I can tell you that I am proud with what we have achieved in that sector. At a point in time, when we became very effective with the kidnappers, they took their base to another state, came in here and hit and go. The only way was to collaborate with our neighbours and we set up a joint force and we did that and it is working very well.
If we have to talk about the state’s PPP initiative, which you talked about, a lot of people residing outside the state are querying why Ogun State should build airport when it is just a stone throw from Lagos and Ibadan. Though you call yours as cargo airport and now that it is almost ready, how is it going to work?
The good news is that everybody knows that Lagos airport is no longer sufficient to run the business of airport. And naturally there is fallback here. For the one in Ibadan, yes, they have their operations, but I am not privy to how they operate there. But this airport is specifically targeted at agro cargo. We have the largest forest reserve all around us, we are the largest producers of poultry, eggs, cassava. So, we have a lot of these things and all are in the food chain, agro sector, husbandry sector and all that. So we have seen people export flowers before. We have positioned this thing and the Afri-Exim Bank also set up a grading agency here in Ogun State so that any food that needs to be exported, you can grade it and export directly. Rather than taking our produce to Ghana and Ghana will then export for us. So, I can tell you that the airport is becoming such a fantastic effort.
We also de-risked it because we took the initiative to start the construction, when Ogunlesi, the man that runs Gatwick airport came here, we invited him over to come and see and he had to say, ‘Please, use this on social media. This is the best runway I have seen’. This is a man whose stock in trade is airport. He has Gatwick, City, and other airports all around the world. But that is not even the basis for saying that it is successful.
As soon as this airport started, it has been designated as the export terminal for produce out of Nigeria by the federal government. Secondly, the Customs have taken grounds in that airport, up to 100 hectares of land. They want to set up all their customs related issues, residential, storage, everything. We are discussing with the Air Force to have a base in there and a flight or training school in that place. It is not just an airport; it is an Aerotropolis. So, there is a city and business is built around it.
The big thing is that we have already found an investor who is ready to take over the airport and the basis for the relationship is different. The concessionaire has agreed to reimburse us all the money we have spent on the airport and the airport still belongs to us. We are just leasing it out to him. Before, people used to do build, operate and transfer, but in our own, we were building, the concessionaire will operate and then transfer. So effectively, the man is the one building, operating and then he will transfer after a X number of years.
For those who will not fly, there are concerns about roads around the state. Particularly there has been outcry about the Lagos-Abeokuta road. Recently, we heard the Federal Government plans to give the Ogun state the go ahead to fix. How far have you gone with that?
Road infrastructure is one of the areas His Excellency has made some significant impacts because what we met on ground when we came has a lot of gaps in terms of efficiency and all that. He took it upon himself to call all the local governments and said give me three roads that you think are priority to you. There are some roads that are not on the list but considered essential for the state especially the ones that link Lagos, all those were done. People actually chose those places that they feel have largest impact.
In terms of roads, we have done close to 500 kilometres. Maybe you cannot finish everything but I think we have made some significant impact in fixing the roads. Lagos-Abeokuta from Ota side, that was a very, very controversial road from the days of Obasanjo. There has been battle of who should do the road. The road is in a state of disrepair. But all these are federal government roads that you cannot just go and be digging, we did a joint request to the President at that time and said ‘please, release this road to Lagos and Ogun State, we will do it and put a toll there’, but somehow that didn’t go well with some people.
As a state government, we cannot touch the road but when it got so bad, we had to touch the road and just do some palliatives. That is what we have done with the road. Even the Agbara road, where we have the largest concentration of factories and industries in Nigeria and even at that, there is no good road. Lagos State is doing some rails to Badagry and we are doing a spur to Ota. That rail goes straight to the port and you can always take your product to the port. We have a dry terminal in Kajola that is being proposed now. There will be a standard gauge rail so, they can take something from Kajola straight to the port and it will also be like a container terminal.
Politics is never devoid of distractions. Your opponents will be throwing tantrums here and there, whatever the level of performance. So, how do you handle political distractions from opposition elements?
Stay focused. If you look at all the distractions we’ve had; you will see that we haven’t engaged anybody in any word or friction. No matter what they say, we just stay focused on the fact that we have a job to do. Like the governor will say, it is a covenant between himself, God and the people of Ogun State and he will not allow anything to distract him.
Have we seen any significant improvement in the internally Generated Revenue drive in the state since the current administration came on board?
Of course, when we came, the whole IGR of Ogun State was maybe N40 billion, but after the first one year, that is after COVID-19, we hit about N100billion. I think we are doing N150 billion to N200 billion. In fact, when we you look at the index of the IGR by ranking, we are number three now. Lagos is first, Abuja is second and we are third in terms of growth in the country. The rate that we are going, we are sure and certain that we will still move a little bit up. Our target is to catch up with Lagos anyway.
By the time this administration would be concluding its tenure, what song do you think the people of Ogun State will be singing about Governor Dapo Abiodun?
Adedapo, maa base relo/Ise re ma ntewa lorun…I think the legacy projects that the governor will be leaving behind will be enormous. We have done the airport; it is a legacy project. We have rehabilitated most of the roads that are troublesome, the ones that are outstanding, the Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta, they are going to start work on it because the Federal Government has finally released the road to us. The Papalanto to Interchange, Dangote is going to construct that with concrete and that is another 20 years of no maintenance. And part of the policies is to start constructing all our roads with concrete now so that we know that very little maintenance is needed. The legacy this time is centered on two things:
The first one is water and the second one is electricity. We are going to witness before the end of this administration, and mark my words, that we will be able to count days un-end, maybe 200 days, 100 days, 300 days where electricity would not blink in Ogun State and we are starting with the urban areas first.
The next is water reticulation all over. Those are the key areas, apart from the areas of Ise Ya, where we have done infrastructure, where there is construction going on. We are still going to be doing all that. In fact, one of the banks in Nigeria just came and said they want to build and finance 10,000 houses for the people of Ogun State, and 10,000 is a lot. Many legacy projects that are being left now, and I am sure when this administration concludes, the legacy projects will be so manifest that people will be yearning for such quality leadership to take place.
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