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    Saturday, July 20, 2013

    Governor Amosun In Government Is A Disaster -Sina Kawonise


    Sina Kawonise was Information and Orientation Commissioner in Ogun State during the administration of Otunba Gbenga Daniel. He is bidding for the governorship of the state in 2015.
    In this interview with YINKA FABOWALE, he spoke of his aspirations and political situation in the gateway state, pronouncing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) dead. He described the administration of incumbent Governor Ibikunle Amosun as anti-people.
    Excerpts:

    What is your reaction on suspension of Otunba Gbenga Daniel by PDP?
    I know that only the living can punish the living. We have not heard anywhere that the dead also punish the living. The news of PDP in Ogun State suspending Otunba Gbenga Daniel (OGD) approximates that the dead is suspending the living.
    It doesn’t make sense and it is not rational. And why do I say so? Our expectation was that it is a common knowledge that PDP is dead in Ogun State, even though you may say that PDP at the national level is still the party to beat. It doesn’t live again in Ogun State. So, some people coming together to say that they have suspended OGD from the party is the joke of the year.

    But, the party used to be an electoral winning machine for at least eight years. How could you say it is dead?
    Even our people, the Yoruba have a saying that the “river that forgets its source will dry up.” PDP became an election-winning machine because of one person, because of one factor, which is OGD. PDP had always existed in Ogun State – 1999-2003 and they didn’t win the elections.
    Even the president at that time didn’t win at home, despite the fact that he flew the flag of PDP. The man that changed the fortunes of PDP was Otunba Gbenga Daniel. He brought his industry into the party. He brought his resources into the party. He won an election against a sitting governor, an incumbent when it was very rare to do so. It was only now that the elections are now counting.
    As at that time, it was extremely difficult to defeat an incumbent, but Otunba Gbenga Daniel did. He ran a good government for eight years and of course, because of the politics of succession, crisis was simulated within the party. Some miscreants took over. The ‘Mai guards’ now became the ‘landlords’. That is what has happened.

    How do you think the PDP problem in the state can be resolved?
    We have very good people in PDP.
    It is the people that make a party and not a party that makes the people. Our Lord Jesus Christ said in the Bible that ‘Law was made for man and not man made for law’. In the same order, a political party has its value on the basis of its people. PDP in Ogun State has been emptied of important people and now in the hands of political wayfarers and profiteers. We don’t need to mention them.
    You said you have a party in Ogun State and Otunba Gbenga Daniel is not there. Senator Jubril Martins Kuye, the only Ijebu man who was Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria two times is not there. Hon. Sarafa Tunji Ishola is not there. People like Chief (Mrs.) Iyabo Apampa, Kola Ogunjobi, and Elder Yemi Akinwunmi are not there.
    And these are the political juggernauts in Ogun State. Senator Okegbola is not there as well as Chief Osifade.
    And you are still saying that you have a PDP. What is left of PDP is an empty shell. An empty shell cannot be making noise that it has suspended a shell with snail in it. It doesn’t work that way. PDP has thrown away its own treasure. The pearls in PDP have been thrown out and what is now left is for the pigs to run what is not theirs. So that is just the reality of PDP in Ogun State to me.

    What is motivating you to run for governorship in 2015?
    I confirm that I am already in the governorship race of Ogun State come 2015. The election is next year and we are already at the stage of consulting our leaders and key political stakeholders across the state concerning this aspiration.
    For close to three decades of my life, I have criticised anything called government. The impression was that no ‘Omoluwabi’ (Good person) could be a politician. My impression until recently was that a friend in government was a friend lost. To put it very tacitly, anybody that was in government must be a thief and nobody should have a relationship with him. That was before I got the privilege of serving under the government of Otunba Gbenga Daniel, where I saw integrity, talent, commitment and hard work. I saw business-unusual.
    That changed my perspective of the public service, that those of us who have endowment in this country, those of us who have the privilege in this country, those of us who have acquired some knowledge, especially in the inner recesses of government have a responsibility to provide leadership. It is not well with our people, poverty all over the place.
    Education is being run by quacks. Those that did not have education are the ones determining the processes and the substance of education in Nigeria. We need to intervene very vigorously and reverse the trend. We do not want to talk about poverty because it’s what confronts us everywhere.
    Somebody said: “The poor couldn’t sleep because they are hungry. The rich cannot also sleep because the poor is awake”. So now we must do something to arrest that situation not just because we so much love the people, but in terms of our own enlightened self-interest. It is getting to a point that you are threatened for driving a nice car. And remember what happened with the fuel subsidy problem of January 2012. I know of a woman who went to the market and thought that it was just a little thing.  They didn’t even see the car she was driving just because the people were hungry and angry, they beat her up because she rode a nice car.
    So the question is not about whether you have made your own money legitimately or not, so far as you have some resources that millions don’t have. I will do that to reverse that trend. And we have discovered that what our people are asking for is not much. It is very minimal and why can’t we provide that. So, in this way we’ll make a difference by the grace of God.

    But the administration in place seems to be doing well
    The administration that is in place is doing well by doing the wrong thing. It is really very bad that Ogun State could fall into such a hand. Governor Amosun in government is a disaster. The processes and the decision of government had been compromised.
    Now in Ogun State, the people are saying that this a government based on lies and it is not for the people. Every promise Governor Ibikunle Amosun made before he became governor has not been fulfilled. Is there free education? There is nothing like that in Ogun State. The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) issued a paper last week saying that there was no free medical service in Ogun State.
    Even when you have your money public hospitals cannot procure aid, where scan cannot be done, where x-ray cannot be done. The ones he met he did not maintain them. For instance, the power stations that we acquired 47 mega watts he refused to install them. So he’s leaving the state worse off. Yes, he is doing a few kilometers of road in his homestead, Owu Totoro, roads that lead to nowhere, expensive bridge. For the first time, a kilometer of road in Ogun State is constructed in excess of N1.1billion.  Talk of township road, thousands of houses have been demolished, hope demolished and the peoples’ livelihood taken away and no compensation.
    So that government isn’t doing well. Had it not been that we know the people running this government, their homes, their background, we would have said that Ogun State is witnessing an invasion by a foreign army, an enemy force, because it has never happened that way.

    So how do you hope to redress this?
    Putting the people first. I have just mentioned the issue of poverty and that was caused because people did not have what to do. The biggest cause of poverty in our environment is unemployment. I was told 32 years ago that the total number of people who were unemployed in Nigeria was put at 2 to 3 million. Now we would be lucky if it hasn’t reached 30 million. We have 36 states in Nigeria and there is no way that at least 500,000 of these would not be in Ogun State.
    So, the security challenges we have are due to this issue of unemployment. Like I said, you cannot even move freely just because we have an army of unemployed people. So the first thing we are going to focus on is how do we lift our people out of poverty? And we’ll do this in two ways.
    When Amosun was coming he promised 10, 000 jobs that he didn’t fulfill and even the over 1,000 employed eventually went into the civil service. That is illiterate economics. We have a civil service that is already over-bloated and you’re putting more people there. You are spending the larger part of our resources on recurrent and you are still putting people there. We are not going to do that.
    The 10 per cent of IGR, which is currently put at N4 billion, would be devoted to micro-credit. You’ll find out that rather than the formal sector, you can create a whole lot of jobs beyond your imagination from the informal sector. And you don’t need to give individuals N1 million, N2 million or N10 million to do that. What they need is N20,000, N50,000. The plumber, mechanic, sewing mistress, hairdressers – all their capital need to set up when they’ve acquired the skills is not more than N30,000 to N50,000.
    Now the mechanic when he wants to set up needs to buy all these tools. He has learnt the work between two and five years ago, but still cannot do what they call “Freedom”, because he hasn’t got that money. All he needs is spanners and other tools, which he can buy for N50, 0000.
    Now he goes to a cooperative society, because the money will be put in through the cooperative societies in Ogun State and we are not going to `set up our own bank. We are not going to set up any administrative structure. It will be through banks that we will now disburse to cooperative societies, which have their own ways and they do not default. It is when they see the hand of government directly in any of those kinds of things that they regard it as national cake.
    But once we disburse these funds through these means they comply. In fact, payment is almost 100 percent. So we put the funds through the banks. N400 million every month, which is 10 per cent of the IGR that gives us N19.2 billion in four years.

    How does it work?
    That person got N50,000, with which he pays N1,500 every month from the money he makes in a day. He pays back for about 36 months without even a feeling that he pays anything. We do that for the mechanics, vulcanizers and farmers. The fish farmer for instance, if he can mill his own feed it will reduce his cost by 20 to 30 per cent. He can buy that meal from the market and grind it as the machine to do that is about N200, 000 and he doesn’t have the money to do that.
    By the time he cuts his cost by 30 per cent, the profit improves by not less than 30 per cent. So our people already have the jobs. When we say job creation, it is just to enhance and we are creating new ones because we also suppose to have vocational skills and all of that.
    The mechanic who has been provided with the tools to work will employ one or two because he cannot do the work alone. He will have apprentices learning jobs with him. We have 236 wards in Ogun State and there is no way each one will not be able to create 1, 000 jobs. So the jobs that we are talking about is something that will happen in hundreds of thousands and this thing is 10 percent of our IGR and not 10 per cent of what is coming from Abuja, because that money is the one you and I contributed as taxes, levies, number plates and so on. So, it is just the little percentage of what the people themselves contributed. So it doesn’t have anything to do with the oil money coming from Abuja.


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