The recent special plenary sitting of Oyo state House of Assembly and presentation of state address by Gov Seyi Makinde to the lawmakers showcased the governor and his projects for a modern Oyo state. BAYO AGBOOLA reports.
Gov Makinde at the special sitting reeled out details of the journey so far and what should be expected in the next years including the planned construction of 1,000 rural farm roads across the 33 local government areas to aid farming.
The farm roads are to be constructed under the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project (RAAMP) with the procurement process already completed and mobilisation to sites expected in the coming weeks.
Gov Makinde spells out achievements
Makinde minced no words in saying, “Our template has been very simple. We felt that we should connect all our zones first. If we can go from Zone A to Zone B and to Zone C, then, 50 per cent of our problems would have been solved. After that, we could start fixing the inner road. Of course, now we have started with Ibadan inner roads.”
According to the governor, “From day one, our promise has been to restore the dignity and pride of the good people of Oyo state so that we maintain our mantra as Pacesetter State. In all this time, we have prioritised our economy and taken steps that put us ahead of all other states in times of crisis.
“Well, I am here today and I must start by acknowledging that it has been a tough year with untold hardships for our people. But as I have always said, our administration was built for times like this. Like the eagle, we rise. We came up with SAfER – Sustainable Actions for Economic Recovery. SAfER has various components, including food relief package, transport subsidy, food security measures, provision of health insurance and support for small and micro enterprises and civil servants. These interventions have directly impacted the development of our dear state. The food relief package went to 200,000 poorest of the poor households. We used this component to stimulate our economy as the food items distributed were locally sourced and purchased from our traders in all the zones where distribution was done.”
The governor also informed the lawmakers that, “Our transport subsidy has so far provided relief for over 20,000 of our people daily as they pay 50% less for the Omituntun Bus Service. We subsidised the cost with N77 million monthly and currently have 64 buses plying intra and inter city routes. For the health insurance component, we paid 2024 health insurance coverage for 40,000 pensioners and refunded 2023 payments totalling one hundred and forty-five million, nine hundred and one thousand, three hundred and twenty-eight naira (N145,901,328) to our pensioners.
“About 150,000 students in state-owned tertiary institutions and 84,000 vulnerable persons are also being enrolled into the Oyo State Health Insurance Agency (OYSHIA) scheme under SAfER. Our food security and business stimulation components were designed as medium to long-term solutions. For example, we disbursed N1 billion as low-interest loans to 3,525 smallholder farmers.
“We knew that if we were to reduce poverty in rural areas significantly, we need to open up those areas through road interconnectivity. So, from Omituntun 1.0, we focused on linking all our zones. We completed the 65 km Moniya-Ijaiye-Iseyin road, and started the 34.85 km Oyo-Iseyin road and the 76.67 Iseyin-Fapote-Ogbomoso road. Our people bought into our new ideas for statewide development and even before we completed these roads, they gave us over whelming mandate to continue in March 2023. I am happy to report that we have delivered the Oyo-Iseyin road and the Iseyin-Fapote-Ogbomoso road now renamed Adebayo Alao-Akala Memorial Highway.”
He stated further that, “We have also delivered the 12.5 km Challenge-Odo Ona Elewe-Elebu-Apata road dualisation, now renamed Theophilus Akinyele Way, and the dualisation of the 8.2 km Agodi Gate-Old Ife road-Adegbayi Road, including an underpass at Onipepeye area. In total, we completed 152.92 km of road projects in the first year of Omituntun 2.0. We are currently reconstructing the 48 km Ido-Eruwa road to link Ibadan and Ibarapa Zones. The real impact of these roads construction is that the state is fast becoming a regional agribusiness industrial hub.
At the Fasola Agribusiness Industrial Hub located on the Oyo-Iseyin road, we are hosting agri-industries such as Friesland Campina WAMCO, which has 200 hectares for dairy production, Milkin Barn Agro Services Ltd with 150 hectares for maize cultivation and dairy production, IITA platform Generative and GOSEED Vegetative Ltd with 100 hectares for cassava value chain development.
“We also have E4 Farms with 40 hectares for crop and dairy production, Brownhill Farms with 30 hectares for crop production and Greenhouses and Zigma Ltd with 37 hectares for cashew production. We have also attracted processors like African Agricultural Tech Foundation (AATF), Flash Agro Farm and Trolil International Ltd. And last but not least, we have Agridrive who are big in farm mechanisation. Just down the same road, we have Oyo Sugarcane Processors Ltd, producers of brown sugar and molasses.
“Our modest estimate is that the operations at Fasola will provide 1,500 direct and indirect new jobs and support to 7,000 smallholder farmers. The current cumulative investment of the private sector in that hub is over N10 billion. This is expected to grow to N20 billion within the next year.
“We took a different approach to agricultural development and we continue in this trajectory. Our Oyo State Land Tractorisation Subsidy scheme is designed to reach real farmers.
This is why we enlisted 123 extension officers in all 33 LGAs to ensure that our farmers have direct access to the tractors. We are also deploying technology to make the process of requesting and accessing this intervention seamless. For the distribution of farm inputs, we designed a data-driven distribution system that started with the biometric capture of farmers. It is on record that the World Bank saw our system and decided to adopt it as the NG-CARES model. In the past year, we have distributed farm inputs to 2,573 smallholder farmers in 15 local government areas.”
Impact on healthcare
In healthcare, Makinde said, “We have continued to demonstrate that we deserve the best. Just over a week ago, I was privileged to commission the first Solarised Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) oxygen plant at Jericho Specialist Hospital. This project, facilitated by UNICEF, CHAI, NACA, HIS Towers and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with Canadian and Norwegian governments aims to reduce morbidity and mortality rate due to hypoxaemia by addressing key barriers which limit access to high-quality diagnostics and medical oxygen delivery systems in health facilities.
“In the first year of Omituntun 2.0, we completed the upgrade of General Hospital Aremo, Ibadan and equipped 264 primary healthcare centres, including the ones upgraded under Omituntun1.0. We are in the process of recruiting 232 doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and medical laboratory scientists and replacement of health workers who left from 2021 till date. This ensures that our public healthcare services are not incapacitated by lack of personnel.
APC picks hole in scorecard
However, the Oyo state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in its reaction to all these faulted the governor for what they said was his alleged failure to come up with concrete actions capable of assisting the state to fully explore its potentials in agriculture and other key sector of the economy. The party especially faulted the claims that his government had lifted 20,000 households from poverty, saying all those claims amounted to a futile attempt to mislead the whole world.
A statement by its state publicity secretary Comrade, Wale Sadare said, “Oyo has the largest land mass in the whole of Southern Nigeria, but we cannot boast of being the largest producer of a single farm produce or livestock; yet, the state government is always in the media space misleading the public with fake stories of interventions, policies and programmes in the agricultural sector. Gov Makinde got a loan of N7.6billion in 2019 ostensibly to revamp the Farm Settlements in Akufo and Eruwa but up till now, nothing has happened in those facilities”
“It is obvious that with a governor like Engr Seyi Makinde whose only interventions in agriculture and other key sectors of the economy could only be felt in the media space, Nigeria would need a miracle to be able to feed its citizens in the nearest future because in the last five years of the PDP administration, the state government cannot bring out a single visible achievement which has a direct effect on food security or promotion of agriculture. The same governor claimed to have sponsored dozens of youth on a modern farming skill acquisition course in Nasarawa state about five years ago but none of the supposed beneficiaries could be seen in any part of the state engaging in one agricultural practice or another even though the purported training tour cost the state government a fortune.
“We are using this medium to challenge Gov Makinde to show the world what he has done with the large expanse of land belonging to Fashola Farm in Oyo. It is a big shame that Oyo is not exempted from the list of southern states which depend on the north to get their food supplies on daily basis.
“Ordinarily, the good people of the Pacesetter State should have no business lamenting the high cost of pepper, onions, yams, livestock and other food items if we had a focused and responsive government in place.”