Otunba Bamidele Akingboye (OBA) is an Ondo state governorship aspirant under the Peoples Democratic Party. He bares his mind on how he would transform the state if elected as the next governor of Ondo State. MYKE UZENDU was there for The AUTHORITY.
If you become the next governor, what will you do differently from what the incumbent is doing?
I have been an entrepreneur for 35yrs now doing my own business and one thing I believe about a business man is that if you are not a good politician, then you cannot survive in your business.
Being an entrepreneur, I know what it takes to engage in commerce and Ondo state is known as a civil servant state which I am going to industrialize and bring the dividend if democracy back to that state by teaching them how to fish, how to create wealth and to use our mineral resources to the maximum. So what I am going to bring into Ondo state is going to be a lot as a business man. I know what it takes to put the right peg in the right hole.
Sometimes I feel ashamed to see state governors calling out the people and the media to celebrate a mere 10km road construction. Do you think the people should celebrate a state CEO for sinking a bore hole or building a road?
Any governor that knows what he is doing should not take what we call the necessities of life – light, water and road for granted. This is what a governor should do without the people asking. If you want to do your road or your light or your water, these are things you can do normally, it is not something you should celebrate. Without being a governor even some philanthropists are doing these things in the state.
Why should a state governor now do a road of 10km and they are celebrating it? To me I don’t succumb to it. If you industrialize your state, they should appraise it and applaud you. If you create employment for your people they should applaud you for that but not by doing the necessities of life.
What agenda would you vigorously pursue within your 100 days in office?
I want to create wealth in Ondo state, I want to teach them how to fish. Thousands of Ondo state indigenes will have jobs. Of course we all know that there are no jobs in Ondo state but i will create employment for them.
I will also create some youths in Ondo state across the 18 local governments, I will make them millionaires and it is very simple. There will be an intervention fund for these young ones, for them to do jobs that are needed in the local government. I will make sure that this money do not get to them just like that, you have to learn something.
From one of our polytechnics I will set up an SME department for them to learn how to do soap, how to do shoe, how to tie head gears so that they can invest this money into the system, immediately they get in, they will get their profit and with this, they can create more jobs.
This is wealth creation in the state. This is part of what I am going to do to create more millionaires and young entrepreneurs in the state.
Ondo state has a large deposit of bitumen. What are going to do in this area to ensure that it is tapped?
During the regime of former President Obasanjo, my company Clog Oil Systems Ltd. was the only company they gave a pilot project in one of the blocks in Ondo state and about four years ago my company has signed a pact with a consortium in China of over $3 billion for them to come and work on bitumen. It is something I have been working on but if I don’t have the status of a governor, it will be difficult for me to go and secure a loan of $3 billion to do a work in Ondo state so that I won’t go and run at a loss. So we are working on that seriously and we have a team that is working on that.
Ondo is an oil producing state. How will you rate infrastructure development of the past administration in relation to the huge revenue that accrue to the state from oil?
They did not use the money wisely, as far as I am concerned I don’t even know where they put the money. But that is not the question I am going to ask them because they have tried their best but the truth is that you can’t offer what you don’t know.
They had this money and wasted it but as an entrepreneur, as a businessman, I know where to put it. I know that building infrastructure is what we need in that state. We will develop our infrastructure to a first class standard and put an enabling environment for investors to come in. We can even attract people from Aba to come and work in Ondo state. I keep saying that as a businessman, I know what to do to move the state forward.
Are you satisfied with the state of security in Ondo and what will be your policy on security?
We are going to have zero tolerance on insecurity and as I said earlier, creating an enabling environment will attract a lot of investment into that state. We are going to invest a lot in security and even the Amotekun they are talking about, we are going to back it and see also other means of creating a good security system in the state and work closely with all the security outfits both the police, the army and others for us to give our people in the state good security.
