S’West: Moving beyond the euphoria of electoral credibility

Governors of the states in the South-West met recently to strategise on how to move the region forward. FEMI MAKINDE reports that this synergy is a sign of better things to come.

The Old Western Region in Nigeria was once ahead of other regions in terms of infrastructure and human capital development. This continued for some time until poor leadership forced on the people by the military and corrupt politicians stunted the development the region had witnessed.

Although hope was restored again between 1979 and 1983 when the late Chief Awolowo’s party, the Unity Party of Nigeria, was in-charge, the era was truncated by a military coup which was said to have been necessitated by the political crisis in 1983 which resulted from massive rigging.

The region and the entire nation returned to civil rule again in 1999 but apart from Lagos State which has recorded some laudable achievements, not much can be said about other states in the region.

So, it is heart-warming for the people of the region that their governors are now coming together to discuss how to develop the region and impact positively on the lives of the people.

The governors, at a meeting hosted by Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, resolved to pool resources together to ensure rapid socio-economic and infrastructural development of states in the region. To demonstrate their determination to end years of stagnation, the governors after the meeting resolved to constitute a 21-member technical committee to appraise the various issues of development in key sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure, health, education and transport.

This committee is expected to consist of three members from each of these states: Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Edo, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti.

Explaining why Lagos, Edo and Delta states were not present at the meeting, Fayemi said that Governors Babatunde Fashola and Adams Oshiomhole of Lagos and Edo States respectively sent apologies for their inability to attend the meeting.

The governor had in an interview with THE PUNCH explained that Delta State was invited, but the governor did not turn up for the meeting.

Fayemi said the governors were aware of the high expectations of the people but expressed optimism that the challenge was not insurmountable as the people of the region had resolved to move beyond the temporary setback wrecked on them by “interlopers who found their way to power through rigged elections.”

Giving statistics of how bad things have gone in the region, Fayemi said, “In the seven states of Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti and Edo, about 14 per cent of children between the ages of six and 11 are not in school, and of those in primary schools, only 50 per cent even manage to transit to junior secondary schools. The media are awash with bad news that only five per cent of Nigerian children who sat for the NECO terminal test made a credit pass in five subjects including English and Mathematics.

“It is very disheartening to note that the state with the highest percentage credit pass in any five papers recorded just 13.2 per cent while the one with the least percentage score recorded just 1.11 per cent of the students registered for the examination. This happened in Western Region whose main stake in Nigeria used to be her excellence in education.”

Blaming the ‘foray’ of the Peoples Democratic Party into the region in 2003 for the neglect it had suffered, the governor who was a key member of the National Democratic Coalition during the Abacha regime said that the Action Congress of Nigeria was ready to make a difference.

All the governors present at the Ado-Ekiti meeting agreed that it was high time the region started collaboration which could move it forward. They talked about how to make the roads in the region passable, restructure education, create an alternative to the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, and develop tourism and other sectors.

The Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, whose speech was presented by his deputy, Chief Titilayo Laoye-Tomori, stressed the need to use agriculture as a tool to make the region self-sufficient and to tackle the problem of unemployment and poverty.

Aregbesola said, “Lagos is one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the world. With its 18 million population, it is projected to be the third largest city in 2015 behind Bombay and Tokyo. In order to have integrated development in the region, we need to make Lagos the hub of our activities and agenda. Lagos, with its N3.5b daily food market should be our target. Lagos has the market for the goods and services we can produce and we can take maximum advantage of the geographical proximity and the ready access it gives. Our primary target should be the food market, since the economy of the region is largely agrarian with about 65 per cent of our people engaged in agriculture.

“This makes agriculture development an imperative. While not neglecting cash crops, the focus should be on food crops and animal husbandry. On many occasions, there have been threats from sections of the country to withhold the supply of vegetables and fruits to Lagos and the South-West. If these threats were to be carried out, we might find ourselves in an unpleasant situation. Even this year, the portents are bad. Floods have reportedly destroyed vegetable farms in parts of the North, giving the prospect of a poor harvest. We must therefore be able to grow significantly our own food by learning the right lessons of history that food security is an integral part of national security.”

The governors said that the people in the old region were obviously tired of retrogression and that was probably the reason the landslide victory the Action Congress of Nigeria recorded in the South-West and Edo State during the April polls was greeted with wild jubilation.

They said, “The dominant party in the region must rise to the daunting challenges of poverty and dearth of infrastructure and reward the people who stood by them with life transforming projects otherwise they will be forced to go back to the trenches where they just emerged.”

Fayemi noted that having achieved electoral credibility, “it is now time to achieve performance credibility through collective efforts, competence and compassion for our people.”

Though the proposed synergy is a good and faster way to ensure rapid development, analysts express reservation that the plan may suffer a setback when real politics begins, especially in a state like Ondo which is being controlled by the Labour Party.