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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