Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo is a politician of no mean repute in Kwara State’s political firmaments and of a progressive ideological bent. He is so passionate about Kwara he said he was ready to die for its cause. In this interview with our correspondent, Adeleke Solomon, he bares his mind on Kwara politics and how the incoming administration of the All Progressives Congress, APC, would govern the state, among other sundry issues.
There will be a change of guard in Kwara on the 29th of May when APC will effectively take over the administration of the state from the ruling, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. What is the significance of this?
What the residents of Kwara State voted for in these elections is a complete overhaul of bad governance in the state. It is a complete departure from the past. We ran campaigns for years that what the outgoing administration was doing was terrible. Kwarans were not getting the best of services from the outgoing administration. Whether you talk of education, health, poor roads, water scarcity, poor environment, collapsed infrastructures, food insecurity as our peasant farmers, who were the producers of foods we consume were not assisted by the government and unemployment among the youths and other several problems. We mobilised the residents and sensitised them to the extent that they became awakened and voted out the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. There is going to be a new political atmosphere in Kwara State. The incoming government will be people oriented and residents of Kwara will be major stakeholders in governance. The approach to governance will be from the bottom to top model in contradistinction with the cabal form of governance under the rule of one man that characterised the outgoing government. The incoming government of Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq will not alienate itself from the residents of Kwara State. Basic needs of the people are going to be prioritized. In a nutshell, the political orientation of the residents of Kwara will change.
What are some of the pressing issues you feel the administration of Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq should immediately address after assuming power on May 29?
There are many issues I think deserve the immediate attention of the governor-elect, Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq after assuming power. But for me, I think these particular issues are more important and deserve to be immediately looked at because they will determine how peaceful and healthy Kwara will eventually become in the future. They are political and economic summits. These are very important and they deserve immediate attention. Political summit is the number one and it is presently urgent in Kwara at this juncture of our history because Kwara is made up of different ethnic groups with different cultural outlooks. And these different ethnic groups are not relating very well with one another. The surface or superficial harmony you see in Kwara amongst these ethnic groups is a mere facade and a deception. This is what the concept of restructuring the people of the Southern parts of Nigeria such as Southwest, Southeast and South South and even the people of the Middle Belt, especially those from the Benue and Plateau axis have been agitating for. It borders on the issues of true and fiscal federalism.
At our own level in Kwara State, we should not fold hands and allow these developments to catch us napping and unawares because they are recurring decimal that will keep on coming and affect our unity until we have the courage to address them. They are perennial problems of democracy’s sustainability and viability in a heterogeneous society. They are about how to grant autonomy to the local people who want self-determination especially those with different cultural backgrounds within the context of Kwara State. Local government autonomy and issues that affect the traditional institutions come under this agenda. The said political summit will address these and problems of fairness, equity and justice in the distribution of resources and allocation of projects in Kwara State. This, I believe will address the problem of marginalisation in the state.
Then the economic summit can come after the political summit. Under economic summit, there will be education and health summits among others. Let me tell the residents of Kwara State that they should expect a large-scale turnaround or reforms in our education sector. The Kwara State governor-elect, Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq specifically mentioned this in one of his public speeches. One of the reforms is that the missionary schools in Kwara State will be returned back to their original owners, whether Christian or Islamic missionary. They will get their schools back in due course. This will enable government to concentrate on its own schools because the incoming administration of Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq will take over government owned schools otherwise known as public schools and turn them to model schools with the state of the art infrastructures and facilities and other incentives that will make school appealing to the younger ones.
The schools that belonged to the Catholic will be returned to them, those that belonged to the Anglican, those that belonged to the Baptist, those that belonged to the Cherubim and Seraphim etc, will be returned to them. Same will apply to all Muslim schools that originally belonged to the Islamic missionary. This is necessary in order to ease the burden of running these schools on government. I do not see the rationale behind government taking over private schools when it has not successfully managed its own.
Most of these schools were taken over by the military administrations in the 1970s, while successive governments whether military or civilian had retained them but they have not been managed very well, which is the reason among others those schools have become dilapidated. Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq’s incoming administration will reverse this due to the need to prudently manage the scarce funds of the state.
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What’s your reaction to the insinuation that the APC administration in Kwara State will be dictated to from Lagos considering the moral support Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Bola Tinubu gave in the effort to dislodge PDP and the Saraki’s dynasty?
That can never be true. Kwara will never be ruled from Lagos by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu because there are many people in Kwara who have experience in politics and governance and administration. Yes I quiet agree with you that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu showed interest in Kwara and therefore played a role in the victory of the APC in the state, that is natural and it should be expected being a national leader of the party. If you see closeness between Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Governor AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq or if you see the latter going to Lagos frequently, it should be expected because Asiwaju is the national leader of our party. You should also remember that our Governor, Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq is an APC member; he must therefore be expected to interact with the party leaders wherever they come from, whether from Sokoto, Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Anambra etc, he has to interact with them. So I can assure you that nobody will go to Lagos to seek counsel on how to govern Kwara as all we need to govern the state are here with us.
How is the incoming administration going to approach governance in Kwara, given the popular perception that APC is ideologically a progressive political party?
Let me tell you that currently, all political parties are ideologically fluid. I cannot specifically say this is the ideology of the APC, the party I belong to. It does not have a specific ideology currently. All this boils down to the political orientation of the individual politician. For the Governor-elect, Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq, I think he is more of liberal capitalism ideologically given his background in private sector than a core progressive like me. His administration will likely be more of a progressive capitalism in which government will allow those private individuals with resources to thrive while at the same time government will intervene to provide comforts for the common man on the street through many social interventions just like President Muhammadu Buhari is doing at the federal level with his social intervention programmes. Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq will run government that is efficient in providing social services to the residents of Kwara State unlike the outgoing administration that runs a capitalist system that is strictly profit making which is detrimental to the welfare of the residents. For example, who does Shonga Farm benefits in Kwara? The incoming administration of Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq will prioritise the welfare of the residents of Kwara.
What should the residents of Kwara expect to celebrate for the first 100 days in office of the APC as the party in government in the state?
Kwara State under the administration of Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq will prioritize the payment of civil servants’ salaries, including pensioners within the first 100 days. The incoming administration will also address the distortion in the civil servants’ salaries because the outgoing administration didn’t pay Kwara State’s civil servants the N18,000 minimum wage that has become a law. The governor-elect will immediately look into that in order to redress it. It will also look immediately into how the N30,000 minimum wage would be paid if the bill is signed into law by the Presidency. And just as I have said earlier, there will be massive renovation of government schools after those that belonged to the missionaries have been returned to them. On agriculture, there will be commercial farming for investors, both local and foreign, who want to go into large-scale farming. The administration of Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq will encourage them with many incentives. Small-scale commercial farming, through mechanization process, instead of our traditional subsistent farming, which peasant farmers practise will be encouraged. This is to make farming attractive to the younger generations, especially youths. Tractors, bulldozers and graders would be made available to the youths and peasant farmers. This is one of the problems of the outgoing administration. It outrightly neglected agriculture. Unfortunately, Kwara is an agrarian state with huge potentials for food and cash crops that can be turned into moneymaking ventures but was neglected. The incoming administration will redress this. Both Kwara North and South, which have comparative advantages in food and cash crops, will be allocated with agricultural resources to boost their yields per hectare. Baruten and Kaiama, which have comparative advantages in yam and grains cultivation and yam flour production will be encouraged to maximize this, while Kwara South with a comparative advantage in cash crops such as cashews and cocoa etc, will also be encouraged to cultivate this to an optimum level. This is to change the farming orientation of our people just as it is expected to take care of the problem of food security in Kwara State and even exports. Agriculture is going to be practised in whole as farming will be made a handmaid of industrialization. Agro allied industries that will process the farm products into value added commodities will be encouraged to create employments through agriculture.
How is the incoming government going to handle the problem of high cost of governance often arising from unnecessary political appointments to compensate those who worked for the party’s victory?
Well, I indeed don’t know how Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq will handle the pressure for political appointment from different quarters. But on the high cost of governance, I believe strongly that he will prudently manage the lean resources of the state to achieve the goals of good governance which is the objectives of our party. I personally will advise him to embrace a low profile lifestyle in governance with emphasis on modest or few convoys of vehicles to follow the government’s officials, including the governor himself. I will also offer an advice on the need to discourage private jet for the governor and other government’s officials. This will be too expensive for a poor state like Kwara to sustain. These are some of the factors that contributed to the fall of the outgoing government and its godfather. I am sure that Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq is aware of this and he will avoid that. He would rather create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive, especially the small and medium scale enterprises through which employments will be created. He will not overburden bureaucracy with unnecessary employments that will increase the government’s wage bills.
It was being speculated that one of the elected members of the All Progressives Congress, APC, into the Kwara State House of Assembly from the South Senatorial District, Prince Saidi Popoola, has been positioned to be the Speaker, a position that should go to Kwara North. Is your party, APC, not taking the North for granted, having been schemed out of governorship and its deputy governorship positions?
Kwara North can no longer be taken for granted in Kwara State’s politics. I can assure you that nobody can take the people of that part of our state for granted and nobody should think of doing that. I believe that, that piece of information is a speculation just as you said. This is because anything like that has to be discussed at the party’s level and to the best of my knowledge, nothing as far as that is concerned, has been officially discussed. If you take a close look at the just concluded elections, the presidential, National Assembly, governorship and House of Assembly elections, the people of Kwara North had impressive outings. They voted with anger against the ruling party in the state and its godfather. We had the best outings from that area in the just concluded elections; therefore it will be difficult to take the people of that part of Kwara State for granted any longer.
They voted the way they voted because they wanted change and wanted to be fairly represented. If they do not see these changes they voted for, they will of course vote out our party the way they voted out the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. They massively voted against Saraki and his party, despite the booby trap of one tenure memorandum of understanding he entered into with their elders. They knew he was deceiving them, which was the reason they voted out all his candidates and his party. I strongly believe that our party and the APC government under Alhaji AbdulRahman Abdulrasaq will not do that. But people of Kwara North have to be united and be in one accord on what they want in Kwara. You cannot expect Moro to be demanding for one thing while Baruten, Kaiama, Edu and Patigi are demanding for another thing that contradict one another. I am for Kwara North and I will support their aspirations and agitate on their behalf but they have to be united.
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Given the insinuation that Kwara’s debt is in excess of N50 billion contrary to the figure of a little over N30 billion that the present government and other suspected mismanagement of funds, is the APC government going to probe the outgoing administration?
Honestly, I do not know the mindset of the governor-elect on this but what I am quite sure of is that books on what the outgoing government left behind for the incoming administration are going to be examined thoroughly. They claimed that the state’s debt profile is a little bit above N30 billion, but the information reaching us reveals that the state’s debt profile is in excess of N50 billion. We are going to crosscheck their claims and if they are right, we will come out to inform the members of the public that they are right and we are wrong. If they are wrong due to the information we stumble on, on the other hand, we will come out to tell Kwarans that they are wrong and that we are right. So, on whether the incoming administration will probe the outgoing administration or not, only the governor-elect can answer that. What I am sure of however is that we are going to examine all their claims in their hand over books.
What is the incoming administration going to do to increase the monthly N2 billion Internally Generated Revenues, IGR, to augment the dwindling revenues from the federation account, considering the enormous amount that will be needed to turn the state around?
What I believe on the IGR is that government will need to first and foremost meet the infrastructural needs of the residents of Kwara. There will be provision for water, health, schools, roads, transformers, clean and hygienic environment, affordable foods etc. If the residents of the state see these and you ask them to pay taxes, they will gladly pay. Unfortunately under the outgoing administration, residents of Kwara are being forced to pay taxes without commensurate values in term of infrastructures and social services for their money. Nothing of such will be allowed under the incoming administration of Alhaji Abdulrahman Abdulrasaq. He will not put tax burdens on the residents of Kwara.
You were one of a few people that started this revolution before it became a movement with large number of followers. You did this, with little consideration for the risk and danger it might attract to your life and members of your families. Where did the courage come from?
It is because I have a mission, which is the reason I embarked on such adventure. My vision for Kwara is to transform it to an egalitarian society where fairness, equity and justice will prevail. I am a progressive to the core as I earlier said and I strongly believe in democracy as the best form of government against autocratic rule of one man or that of a family or aristocratic rule of a few elite. Democracy allows an ordinary man on the street to participate in determining who constitutes government. It allows common men on the streets to determine the fate of the rulers. Whenever they are not satisfied with the performance of a particular government, they are at liberty to sack such government and replace it with an alternative one. What happened on the 23rd of February and 9th of March in Kwara State was the demonstration of the power of ballot paper. It was a big revolution in which many people participated to liberate the state. This is a mission and vision to which I am committed. I am not afraid of death for this mission because I know that If I am dead, there are many people who believe in the struggle and its idea, and would pick it up from where I stopped and continue with it. What is dearest to me is legacy I wish to bequeath to the coming generations. I am not motivated by the pecuniary gains for which people participate in politics. If that is what motivates me in politics, I would have joined the defeated ruling class for long.What happened in Kwara State on February 23 and March 9, which culminated in the defeat of a ruling party and a political dynasty of four decades, is history. When are you and others going to document this for posterity?
Before August this year, God willing, the book on this event would be out, especially on the struggle and the role the opposition parties played in the struggle. Also at the right time, the past activities of the progressive struggles in Kwara State would be documented right from our pre-independent days and the roles played by the heroes of our past in Kwara State such as late Chief J.S Olawoyin, late Sule Maito of the Talakawa fame, Chief C.O Adebayo, Chief Wole Oke and others. They need to be remembered and celebrated. The younger generations need to know about their past because that was where we were coming from.