The governorship candidate of the People’s
Democratic Party (PDP) in Delta State, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, in an exclusive interview
with Independent Newspapers Limited (INL) team of Charles Okogene (Editor,
Saturday), Kingsley Ighomwenghian (Deputy Editor, Daily), Felix Igbekoyi (Asaba
correspondent) Rose Okafor (Advert Executive) and Goddy Umukoro, (photo journalist)
unfolded his agenda for the people of Delta State.
Senator Okowa noted that a lot is being done
at the moment in terms of infrastructure development. If you go round our
schools you will see things going on; go round our hospitals, a lot is going on
there too but there is really a teething challenge and that is unemployment, which is
what we want to address. Any serious minded government must be thinking of how
to create employment for the youth; and if we are going to create employment
for the youth, I think that we need to be looking in some basic directions.
We have to look at agricultural reforms, how
we can industrialize the State through agro industries. To do that there is
need to sustain peace and security, because a peaceful environment will enable
industries to thrive. As an intervention, we must be looking into how we can
assist the people through equipping approach, how we can raise their standard
of living, raise their income through a micro-credit. All we need to do is to
make that system work effectively and efficiently.
If you
cast your mind back to the 1980s when we had the agricultural development
programme our farmers were happy because they had improved inputs, which gave
rise to improved yield. At those periods even a lot of young people went into
fish farming, some into poultry farming. When we talk of farming some people
just think that you are talking of the cash crops, it goes beyond that. While
we think that we need to help a set of farmers that are into food crops farming
with improved seedlings, we also want to develop mechanization and that
involves cooperative farming. That is when our people are able to come within a
large communal space of land, with that we will be able to help them to mechanize
their farms so that they will not depend solely on hoe and cutlasses. We also
believe that we need to begin to develop aqua-culture because there is lot of water
around us and there is gap in fish supply in this country.
We also need to develop the poultry farming;
there are other forms of farming - piggery and other areas where people can
actually thrive. The critical challenge is how do we get these things to work?
We need to get the Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) to become
functional, what we need to do is to restructure it and in that restructuring
we must ensure that we have an effective agricultural extension service system,
which was fully in existence in the 1980s but has collapsed completely now. It
is a programme were you have persons with technical knowledge who go into the
farms to help farmers on how to improve on various aspects of farming and also
link them up into marketing, proper storage facilities that will help farmers not
to incur losses, then we need to progress into agro processing; so it is a whole
value chain that we are going to look into.
We need to talk about our industries. How can
we get our industries to thrive again? How can we attract new industries to
come in? There are two major challenges when it comes to industrialization -
high cost of funds and poor power supply. And the third one is how can we get a
peaceful environment to run these industries? I believe that because we have
high cost of funds and poor power supply that increases the cost of production
and therefore, people will not want to establish industries because they cannot
compete with the external world.
They cannot even compete with imported
products because they are coming in with cheap prices so if we are able to
develop industrial areas in which we have power source that is steady and which
can be dedicated to the industrial estate/layout and you provide other
appropriate infrastructure that can be shared, it will reduce the cost of
production. Then again, because the industries are likely to come in with
mapped out infrastructure in the place within a defined space, it is also
possible to have a proper link in which in partnership with the State
government, we will be able to link them up with the banks to ensure that with
some level of partnership we are able to reduce the cost of funds. I believe
that once we are able to provide the space with the needed infrastructure like
power, definitely it will attract entrepreneurs. And we must direct more of
these to agro processing industries because they are the ones that will create
the badly needed employment.
On the issue of Micro-credit, I know that a
lot is going on in the State at the moment, but I think we can deepen it. We
will work out the modalities, because there will be a transition committee that
will handle all that. I know that there is an agency at the moment but we are
going to look at that and see how best it works because in making micro credit
effective, you must link it properly with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
You cannot take it away from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. So there
must be a proper linkage, we are going to work out all that. We are going to
look at how effectively we can manage it and ensure that we have the best of
result coming in from there.
On the health sector, health is wealth, they
say. And on that premise we are also going to pay serious attention to the health
sector which is key. Already we are doing well as a State when it comes to the health
sector, because the current administration is doing free maternal healthcare
and to some extent, free under five years healthcare but that is only within
the secondary healthcare sector. Majority of our people are actually attended
to at the primary healthcare sector so we need to look at that challenge. How
do we handle it because it is only a limited percentage of the populace,
probably not more that 20 to 25 percent that attend secondary healthcare sector.
The area that is closest to the people is the primary healthcare sector and so
I believe that is the way to go, to ensure that we start a healthcare policy
for our people.
We also need a health insurance system. We may
not within one, two years be able to engage all in the healthcare policy. I am
talking of the health insurance policy, but we will start off in such a way
that within a short while we will be able to grow even as Ghana has grown. In
today's Ghana over 60 percent of the populace have healthcare policy insurance
because they follow the process consistently and that is what Nigeria is trying
to do under President Goodluck Jonathan, but I think we are still very far from
where we should be because the federal government is doing something but most
of the States have not embraced it.
I believe that Delta State will be one of the
first States to key into it. For those in the formal and informal sectors I
believe that it is the right way to go. The people should not pay for health
services out of their pocket anymore; we will encourage our people to pay some
premium and government will be supportive of those premiums as we will pay some
percentage of those premiums on behalf of the people. These things will be
worked out in details in a short while. I am already talking with the Nigerian
Health Insurance Scheme in this light because it is the best way to go and to
that extent we will not be running just a free maternal and under five
healthcare, because when you have a health insurance policy that covers you to
a particular age it means everybody is brought on board and we have a more
efficient and effective healthcare system beyond the fact that you also create
a pool of funds that will enable the healthcare sector to develop.
In the education sector, we will continue to
upgrade the infrastructures and retrain the personnel both academic and non-academic
ones. I also believe that we need to restructure and bring technical education
to the fore. People should be able to learn skills and learning skills does not
mean that you have to go for training for one month or two weeks and jump out.
That is not it. At technical schools we need to refocus our youths and back
them with teaching skills beyond acquiring secondary education. I am very much
interested in that because a lot of countries are going in that direction.
We will also set up a team to study the
curriculum of our polytechnics because I believe that polytechnics should be
more proactive and efficient to produce persons who are able to stand on their
own when they leave school not when you have 100 persons coming out of school
and all of them are looking for white collar jobs. I don't think that is the
direction that polytechnics should go. I know that as of today, we have about
four polytechnics with school of physical education and we need to be able to
direct them to areas of specialization, because that is what polytechnics are
made for but it is not exactly so at the moment and we need to go back and
rework it in such a manner that you are able to go to a particular polytechnic
and know what knowledge you are acquiring. If you are a graduate of a
particular polytechnic, people will know that you are sound enough to be able
to handle some aspects of technical job. That was the initial intention of
founding fathers of the polytechnics and we will go back to that vision.
On the environment and urban renewal
especially the flooding that occurs in the State capital and the illegal
structures in Warri. I believe too that we need to engage ourselves in urban
renewal and improvement of the environment. We have mapped out programmes for
all that but at this stage the more important thing is how do we create jobs?
And in going into that we must talk about housing. In talking about housing,
the critical point is how we are able to partner with the private sector to utilize
the opportunities available from the mortgage banks to see how we can build
more houses for our people; first to reduce the gap in terms of housing supply
and again, in the cause of building you will discover that you are creating a
lot of jobs. Those are areas we need to look into in our desire to create jobs
for our youths.
In all of this finance is a key issue,
especially now that the price of crude oil, which our budget depends on currently,
is at $57 per barrel. The price of crude oil is an issue, which is quite a
challenge for this country and of course our State. There is no doubt about
that. It is a major challenge that the price has fallen below the budget
benchmark and why it is a big problem is because the current revenue, to a
large extent, remains constant. You must pay salaries. Yes, you can cut down on
overhead cost but much of the revenue is spent on salary payment and therefore
is a challenge for all the States and challenge for this country.
However, what it also means is that we must
begin to find ways of improving on our internally generated revenue (IGR) and
other sources of revenue. I believe that in this State, we can generate much
more money than we are generating at the moment, until you fall into this kind
of challenge, you may not bring out your best in terms of IGR generation. Though
many of the populace are very poor and there is a limit to which they can be
taxed, I also believe that there are a lot of persons who pay taxes far below
what they should pay and many persons don't even pay at all.
It is for us to look at the gaps, look at the
loopholes and block them. I am still optimistic that the oil prices will not
remain as it is right now. It will spring up again but it is a lesson for
Nigeria that we actually need to diversify our economy. We cannot continue to
depend and trust on international oil price. It has made us lazy because since
we started producing oil at the level we have gone, what you see now is that
people just wait for the end of the month to go to Abuja with their caps in
hand asking for money and I think we need to have a rethink because this is not
the first time.
On the challenge of uncompleted projects
littering the State, when I have an inventory about those projects and I have a
situation report which normally will be in the handover notes I will know what
to do; luckily we are finishing the elections early so I am sure that we will
be able to have a 60-day transition committee put in place to understudy all of
that. By then we will get a situation report on those projects if any; the
level of funding, commitment and so on. With the information we will be able to
re-strategize and come up with timeline for each project. Definitely, we will
need to prioritize some of the projects and know which to fund quickly to bring
to completion. We will be looking at their economic advantage or importance.
But as the same PDP government, the onus is on
us to complete all ongoing projects because government is a continuum. Those
that are critical will be funded quickly and we will look at how to finance the
rest. They are projects that have been started and it is our duty to complete
them. Any abandoned project is a disservice to the people and I am not aware
that there is a project that will not be useful to the people so it is a
question of having our priorities right.
On the process that led my emergence as PDP
standard bearer against all odds. All I can say is that my victory is the
Lord's doing. That is much I can say about that for now.
On the controversy about emergence, what is
happening is not unusual after an election. We are Deltans and we have our ways
of sorting things out and we are doing that already. I crave your indulgence
for us not to talk much about that.
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