Governor Abiola Ajimobi has steered the ship of Oyo State since 2011. There have been claims and counter-claims on the performance of his administration. In this interview, he speaks on his achievements. But will the achievements enable him to win the March 28 election and be the first governor to govern the state twice in succession?
Looking at the governorship candidates in the forthcoming elections in the state, you have two former governors, you as well as others. Do you think you can break the jinx of being the first governor to govern this state twice?
There is always a first time to everything. There had never been Governor Ajimobi in Oyo State and the first one we have now will be the first to govern the state twice. It will become history that the first Ajimobi did two terms. Two, you said candidates or contestants. The beauty there is that two of the co-contestants had been governors before and we ran election together and I defeated them.
What is the big deal?
We are contesting this election again and I am going to defeat them. Another beauty is the record of all of us. If you look at the bedrock of governance, which is safety and security, which other governor has done that? During their tenures, we witnessed brigandage, violence and other vices and Oyo State was seen as a pariah state. The state nobody outside there wanted to go to. Today, if you compare my tenure with Adebayo Alao-Akala’s and Rashidi Ladoja’s times, who has been able to bring peace to this state?
If that is the only thing we achieved, it is enough because the foundation of growth and development anywhere in the world is peace and tranquility.
Do you want to go back to those dark days when fear, insecurity and uncertainty enveloped the state? Do you not like the way you are sleeping well? Those who want to come back, ask them what they achieved when they were there. We have given more welfare.
People talk of stomach infrastructure, we have done stomach infrastructure more than any other government. During the time of Ladoja and Akala, they drove people away from Elekuro and Aperin , Iwo Road. Did they give them any shop? We are the first government to remove people from the roadsides and under tension wire and built shops for them free of charge.
Let any government challenge me if it had done that. Not only that, we provided money for them to trade at no interest and it is money that is unlikely to be recovered. We spent up to N500m on that. Every other month, we spend close to N2b giving widows and other people food free. We are changing Oyo State.
In terms of development, there was a publication by the Federal Bureau of Statistics. We did not publish it. It was a Federal Government Agency that published it that investment flow into Nigeria grew by almost 200 percent and that investment flow into Oyo State grew by almost 697 per cent with eight big new companies. We have a soya beans manufacturing company. It is the largest in West Africa. We have a company that produces more than 100, 000 chicks everyday.
It is the largest in Africa. We have the largest bread producer here now and largest edible oil factory, largest ICT service provider in Africa, Shoprite. These have the multiplier effect of creating jobs. We have provided 20,000 jobs for youths, we just employed 5,300 teachers. As we do this, we are keeping families together because we did not sit down here and post them from Ibadan. We went to their localities. We are rehabilitating schools. When you quantify what each of us did, I think we have done relatively better. Look pensioners.
It is this government that paid 142 per cent increase to them. No government has done that. The pension problem we are having now is because past governments did not do anything. They paid lip service to everything. Even the immediate past government stole about N6billion from pension fund. But, we came and I paid N2.4billion to pensioners as 142 per cent increase. Ask teachers also. Our teachers are among the highest paid in the South-west. We pay teachers’ salaries before other workers.
Our government is the only one that has paid the 13th month salaries consecutively for three years. No government has done that and we have increased salaries and wages from N2.9 to N5bn. We have done better this is not propaganda; figure for figure. In this election, people will vote for us.
