SENATOR IFEANYI OKOWA PROMISES TO REFORM AGRICULTURE TO CREATE JOBS FOR YOUTHS

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.