Leadership, Not For Sale - Alao-Akala

Gov Alao Akala The Governor of Oyo State, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala, in this interview with Asst. Editor, AKIN DURODOLA, speaks on his recent victory at the Election Petitions Tribunal, commitment to developments in the state, the state judiciary, his relationship with his predecessor and other sundry issues. Excerpts:

What did you have to file a cross-appeal, having won at the tribunal? What exactly do you want?
Is it legal? Have you been told that it is legal for me to cross appeal? I am also exercising my constitutional right by appealing, because I felt certain things ought not to have been done that were done during the ruling, and that if those people who failed at the lower tribunal could appeal, we that won too and felt that we were not treated the way I should be treated should be able to appeal. I just exercised my constitutional right to appeal.

What else do I want? I just want to put some records straight, because I was told by my lawyers that what they were given, the way they deducted our votes, evidence did not lead to those deductions. So, why should they now sit down somewhere and start deducting? We felt we were also not treated well and decided to cross- appeal to put the records straight and exercise my constitutional right.

Not that you are afraid of what the outcome of the Appeal Court would be?
Why should I be afraid of what is likely to become of the ruling? I cannot be afraid. In essence, what I’m trying to tell the whole world is that although I have accepted what they said, there is still some fundamental things that have to be challenged; and that is that those votes that were deducted from my total votes ought not to have been deducted. So, why should I be afraid? It is win-win. I don’t have anything to be afraid of.

They have given a very comprehensive and detailed result, but what we are saying is that certain things that were conceded to the petitioner ought not to have been given to them.
It is just simple: to put the records straight and not that we want to rubbish what they have done. We are okay with the judgment, but there are certain things we have to iron out. We want to prove that there was no over-voting and that they did not give evidence regarding over-voting. In the proceedings, where did evidence lead to over-voting? So, why should they say there was over-voting? There are documents to put the records straight. We are not afraid of anybody. Why should I be afraid?

The opposition said the latest move was a diversionary tactic.
I have never been distracted; even when things were very hot, I was not distracted. Is it now that I am really on the seat that I will be distracted? I have my objectives and I am facing my goals. We are moving the way we are supposed to be moving. My critics just have to criticise. I don’t mind constructive criticism, if you can show me the area I have gone wrong. I don’t claim to have a monopoly of knowledge; that is why I asked them to come and join me to move the state forward. If they know anything, they should not just say it for criticising sake; they must be concrete criticisms and must be criticisms that can move the state forward, not one that would hamper the development of the state.

How far have you moved in respect of developing the state in terms of road construction, provision of potable water and so on?
You are not being fair about roads. Look at some roads in Ibadan that have just been rehabilitated. Look at the road from Molete to Dugbe. If you pass through it now, it is very very good. For Iwo Road – Monatan – Olodo, in spite of the fact that we were not very comfortable with the contractor, we did not stop him from doing the job. We are still giving him money to accelerate the construction. Good enough, they have tarred, to a very great extent, some portion of the road. We’ve cleared the whole of Iwo road. We’ve cleaned up all the drainages round that area. We even resurfaced the under the bridge.

Now, go to Alegongo–Exide, we have opened up that road. There was never a road in that place. Go and look at that place. If you want to buy land there, it is very costly now; you must have about N2 million to purchase a plot of land in that place now, because we’ve opened the place up. I never knew that there were beautiful and big buildings there. We opened the place up. Not only that, I remember I did Sepeteri–Oje–Owode road, I have now moved from Sepeteri to Igboho. There is a big dam that they are constructing there. Go there, you will see things.

We’ve rehabilitated the township roads in Oyo. We’ve done that of Ogbomoso too. It was I, Christopher Adebayo, that opened that road up; from Ife-Odan– Ogbomoso, people do not pass through Oyo– Ogbomoso. They pass through Ife-Odan now. I did it. People can now move from Ife-Odan. Somebody, a native of Ife-Odan, sent a letter to me yesterday telling me that with that road I constructed, I had made his dream come true. The Oba of Ife-Odan gave me a chieftaincy title for opening up that place. You can now stop in Ife-Odan and take a vehicle to Kano. All commuters travelling to the Northern part pass through Ife-Odan to Ogbomoso to the North. We’ve opened up that place. If you see commercial activities going on along that road, it is marvellous.

Again, I travelled to Tunisia because of water supply in Ibadan. We are just trying to consolidate on what we have on the ground. They brought all the equipment; it remained fixing, and they said they wanted to stop our loan. So, I travelled all the way to Tunisia to get these things done.

We are not unmindful of the fact that we have to provide all these utilities for our people, so that they can enjoy the dividends of democracy. We are on course. As we go on, you will see. It is not easy with the limited resources available to us. It is only a fool that will say he wants to satisfy everybody; you can’t satisfy everybody. You just have to do your best. And by the time we finish, people will say Alao-Akala has done very well. My tenure is not one year; I have a four-year tenure. By the time we finish, you will have a lot of good things to say about us.

See what is happening in Ogbomoso – the gigantic teaching hospital that we are building there. Not that we have just started; it is almost completed, and we are building new schools almost everyday, both primary and secondary schools – especially the junior secondary schools where you have more pupils. These are some of the things we have done.

We are trying to make sure that we consolidate on the infrastructure we met on the ground and to make sure that people have access to them infrastructure. That is the best legacy we think we can leave. We are moving and I want to tell you that we are not even slow, because we are releasing money the way we are supposed to release money, and we are monitoring as well.

Go to all our tertiary institutions; they are all enjoying what they should enjoy as higher institutions. Just of recent, LAUTECH won the best estate management award. It is because we are caring and that’s exactly what we are trying to do – to put smiles on the faces of the people of Oyo State. If I cannot make a change, I need not to be here. That is my goal: to make a change, to let people feel our impact as government, to make sure that to the letter, we are able to carry out the manifesto of our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and also to carry out the seven-point agenda of Mr. President, who is the leader of our party. So, that is exactly what we are doing and we are trying to cut our coat according to our cloth, especially given the limited resources available to us.

In a way too, we are not leaving any stone unturned, to make sure that people feel our impact.

Are you not worried about the state of sanitation in the metropolis?
It will be a pity if anyone lives in Ibadan and says he has not seen a change in some sections of Ibadan. In Ojoo, even the military government could not move the trailers in Ojoo. We have cleared the whole place now. The only little work to be done now is just to rehabilitate and reconstruct the road there. You know what havoc that junction end of the express road has caused the people of the area. We’ve been able to clear the road. We make sure we engage the street sweepers. As I am talking to you, you will see some people mounting some refuse vehicles outside here (Government House). That’s what we are going to use to collect refuse all over Ibadan.

These are some of the things we have been doing to make sure that we keep the Ibadan metropolis and other major cities in Oyo State clean. We know that health is wealth, and we are paying particular attention to that. I have instructed sanitary inspectors that none of them should sit in the airconditioned rooms again; they are to supervise the people that are sweeping the roads.

The NJC directive on Justices Lakanmi and Iyabo Yerima, why are you slow to implement it?
What do you mean by NJC directives? You people don’t know what you are saying. There’s no directive from the NJC. NJC cannot give me directives. NJC can only recommend, and they recommended, but I’m not stupid. If they say I should kill somebody and without finding out what the person has done, I just kill, that is not normal and good enough.

Unfortunately for them, I was not around when they brought the letter. I travelled. I just came back and in Lakanmi’s case. What they just told me was that they were not going to pay Lakanmi’s salary. They didn’t tell me I should remove Lakanmi. They said Lakanmi was in court, but they were misinformed. They were not aware that Lakanmi was no more in court. I wrote them a letter that I was not saying that Lakanmi should not be investigated. Investigate him, if he is found guilty, let them do whatever they think we should do with him constitutionally. But you must give him a fair hearing. You must make sure that due process is followed to be able to discipline him. That is exactly what I asked them to do.

What’s my business with judges? If they say they should go if found guilty, they should go; but what I know is that I was part of the system when Lakanmi was removed, and I knew that the NJC wrote us that we had no power to remove him, saying that what we did was wrong. Since they said what we did was wrong, we now decided to right the wrong. So, what is the hullabaloo about? You see, the only thing I don’t like to dabble into is the Bar Association in Ibadan, because it is highly politicised.

It is a pity, it is like that. That is the bane of the judiciary. I don’t want to talk too much about the judiciary because it is an arm of government on its own, and there are checks and balances on how to go about everything that is going on there. As far as I am concerned, NJC has not given me directive that I flouted. NJC should not give directives; they can only recommend to me. The constitution says they should recommend to me, and if you want to recommend, you recommend. One is not bound to take anything, and I don’t think I’m right to be talking about it, because the case is in court.

On the struggle to become a Yoruba leader?
The press people are the people bringing about this issue of Yoruba leader. Who is a leader? A leader emerges; nobody appoints a leader. By the time Chief Obafemi Awolowo became a leader, he emerged as a leader and nobody was able to question his authority as a leader. I had a personal contact with Baba Awolowo. Chief Awolowo, if he knew that you were being called certain nickname, he would join in calling you that nickname. Ask people; they will tell you, that he would like to bring himself down to the level of young ones. That’s how to be a leader. A leader would relate with a segment of the society, not a particular people; not the rich people alone, not the most influential people alone, but all segments of the society. A leader emerges; nobody appoints a leader.

Your behaviour, the way you treat your fellow human being, the way you relate with people around you, will show whether or not you are a leader, not for you to be struggling that you want to be a leader. With you not knowing, it will just be happening. You would have become a reference point; you will be revered if you have the total traits of a leader; if you possess those leadership qualities.

Anybody trying to be a leader should not be a selfish man. It was the activities, involvement in the participation of Yoruba nation in those days that brought Awolowo to the limelight. How many of the so-called Awoists have emulated Baba Awolowo in that direction? You don’t need to run down anybody to be up.

You people should not allow these people to flex their muscles. That you have money does not mean that you are a leader. By the time Chief Awolowo emerged as Yoruba leader, he was not the richest Yoruba man. People now think because they have money, they can throw money around. No. It has to be done with humility. You will have to be seen to be in line with everybody. Even Chief Awolowo during that time he was doing good, he was trying to make sure that if you cried to his house that time, he would make sure that he put a little smile on your face before you left his house. God will give us a leader, and I want to agree with you that we usually need a leader. But we ourselves have not allowed a leader to emerge because we are running ourselves down. If we continue to do that, we will find it difficult to get a voice that will speak and we shall all follow as a Yoruba nation. Let us give ourselves a breathing space and allow the leader to emerge.

Can you explain your visit to Tunisia?
I don’t want to put a blame on anybody, it is unfortunate that I was part of the immediate past government; so I will look stupid if I try to say I don’t know what’s happening then. We left certain things undone because we did not, after awarding the contract of rehabilitation of Ibadan water project, pay what we were supposed to pay to enable them start work on time. So, the thing was delayed. It was a loan from the African Development Bank (ADB).

What happened was that because of the delay in payment, they stopped the loan, saying that it had lapsed and that they would not be able to give us more money to complete the job. That’s why I went to Tunisia to beg them that it was possible for somebody to have an intention of building a three-storey building with money borrowed from somewhere; with a view of making profit perhaps out of that building. And in a way, it got to the second floor and it now stopped without going to the third floor. It will not be in our own interest for them to stop this thing now because it will be an abandoned project and it is not good for the people of Oyo State.

Luckily for me, they were just doing something about water sanitation in Tunisia when I got there, so I was able to use that as an avenue or as a reference point to what I went there to do. And they were able to answer us. They gave us hope that they would redeem their pledge to give us more money, and that we should package other things, so that we could complete the project on our own too. We are not relenting. Every equipment has been imported, and they are at the Eleyele Water Works.

State of security in Oyo State.
Just about four days ago, I called an emergency meeting of security council; that we had to do something about the security in the state, especially Ibadan. I agree with you. But what is happening now is just a spill-over of what is happening in Lagos; but we are prepared. Oyo and Ogun states have common boundaries. We are very prone to being attacked by these hoodlums; but unfortunately, it is not Oyo State alone that is having this kind of thing. It is a pity. People felt they are jobless while some are over-displaying their affluence. People felt if this man can buy this type of vehicle, why can’t I also buy it? These are some of the things that are happening, and we want to see if we can see what we can do to stop the problem.

The thing again is this, we Nigerians, are not our brothers’ keepers, because security is everybody’s business. It is not for the police alone. In developed countries, when something happens to your neighbour, you will phone the police; but here, they would watch and not do anything. Security is everybody’s business.

Again, these thieves, hoodlums and miscreants are among us. People don’t ask questions about some people not doing anything but coming in with cars, making merriment everyday and throwing parties. Nobody questions such people. Not only that; if you see a man’s car being vandalised, you won’t think of how you can help that man so as to stop the robbers from taking the vehicle away. You will also be running for your own dear life; you don’t know whether you will be the next victim.

In essence, we should be our brothers’ keepers. I’m concerned about what is happening. We have been trying to mobilise our people on what we can do. I have told all the security agents to buckle up and make sure that their priority is in protection of lives and property.

As a governor of the state, and chief security officer, I’m not leaving any stone unturned to make sure that people’s property and lives are safe in Oyo State. That is the most important, because it is only in a peace atmosphere that we can develop Oyo State. We are trying our best and very soon, we are going to have a joint patrol of both the military and the police under the governor’s office, to be supervised by the police. We will soon establish that, so that they can attend to distress calls. We have also placed order for more patrol vehicles for the state, which will soon arrive. You know my primary constituency is about security; so I know what it takes to tackle it.

What are the concrete steps you have taken to create employment?
We are trying to encourage people not to look for white collar jobs. We are trying to see how people can employ themselves or they can be employers of labour. We’ve done something of recent by establishing 33 micro-finance banks in all the 33 local governments. The government has no hand in it. We are just facilitating it. We are not going to run it. Our technical partner is Intercontinental Bank. They have the wherewithal to run it. We want people who have learnt trades and who have no money to go there to borrow money; to buy tools they can use for their job.

A person can walk in to the bank without stressing himself to get collateral to access some loans to buy the tools for his job. We are trying to encourage that. Also, we are trying to see if we can encourage people to bring more industries to Oyo State, and we can do that by sharing a steady power supply. We are also trying to bring IPP to Oyo State, so that we will encourage people to have more industries here in Oyo State. For a free trade zone, we have acquired a land, and things are already at advance stage.

Still on employment, when will the list of successful applicants for last year’s interview be released?
There is what we call ‘consequential vacancies’; consequential vacancy in the sense that when we look at the people that are to go, we will now look at the way we can bring in those who are standing by. Those of them that did very well, will soon have their employment confirmed. But that is not enough. We are trying to bring some people into the system so that we dominate the system with new blood. They are already on standby. We will soon call them to come and start work.

How soon?
How soon depends on how soon we can get the vacancy on the approved book estimate for the year 2008

On the IPP, we are interested in that.
We have earmarked two companies – one a Canadian company and the other an indigenous company. We will soon come out with what we want to do about it. We have reached an advanced stage. There is a committee headed by the Commissioner for Commerce looking into this. Power supply, if we can just liberalise it the way we did to telecommunication, it will go a long way to help the people.

I happened to have stayed in a place called Jos in the Northern part of Nigeria. In the late 60s and early 70s, we had what we called NESCO (National Electric Supply Company). Those were the people supplying us electricity. If they had to take our electricity for three hours, they would have to circulate letters to all of us. Not only that; they would make radio announcements that the light would be off on a certain date and for certain reasons. But the fact is that there was a steady supply of electricity then. No sooner that they joined than the so-called national grid started having this problem. If we can do away with national grid and every state tries to have their own power, it will go a long way to solve the problem of energy in Nigeria and that is exactly what we are trying to do now.

What do you have to say on the Oyo State government’s shares being allegedly sold by the immediate past government?
The law enforcement agencies that we reported the case to, the EFCC to be precise, have been able to recover some money; but we are not satisfied with the amount of money they recovered, because it was very far below what was fraudulently taken from the government’s proceeds of shares.

The total amount of money involved was about N1.9 billion and what we are getting is still less than N1 billion. We are not yet satisfied. And I know the law enforcement agents are trying their best to get to the root of the matter. One funny thing is that one of the companies that were used to siphon this money took us to court, asking for injunction that the EFCC should not arrest or intimidate them. But the court in its wisdom has dismissed the injunction just last Friday. I’m glad to tell you that the man was caught yesterday morning and he is back in police net now. They are investigating it.

How would you describe your relationship with Ibadan Elders?
I have a cordial relationship with them. I think some of them at the beginning did not know what it entailed. You don’t need to be seen to be parochial. They should be seen to be above that, especially those of them called Ibadan elite. You don’t do that kind of a thing in a place like Ibadan. Oyo State belongs to all of us. We should show ourselves as brothers and sisters. The unfortunate aspect of it is that (with due respect to other Yoruba people) we the Oyo people are the Yoruba of the Yoruba; so we should be seen to be one.

As far as I’m concerned, we are one and we should be seen to be one. It is not that we should be looking down on a person and be asking ‘Who is this man? Where is he coming from?’ Just see how you can call him to perform. It is when he cannot perform that you start condemning him; but when you have not allowed him to perform, it is not good enough.

At what point did you reconcile?
I don’t need to reconcile with anybody; it is just natural when you want to finish your critics. The only thing you need to do is just to perform, and I am going to use performance to kill all of them; to silence all of them. I don’t need response from anybody. The only response I get from them now is silence.

Are you on speaking terms with your former boss?
I’m not on speaking terms with him. I’ve not seen him. If I see him, I will greet him. He is older than I. But we have not been able to meet one-to-one. I will greet him as an elderly person. The only thing is that I cannot relate with him politically again. Before now, we were together, it is not politics that brought us together. I can even claim (and I stand to be corrected) that even before he came into politics, some people in Ibadan, they did not know him and I had known him before he came into politics. The relationship is beyond politics. We can have other relationships; it may not be political. We don’t have any quarrel other than politics, and is not something we cannot manage. Since I have once served under him, he will continue to be my boss.