Sunday 23 June 2013

'Ladi Adebutu: Labour Party Will Make The Kitchen Too Hot For Amosun


Ladi Adebutu, former chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), former federal legislator in the aborted Third Republic and now member of Labour Party (LP) in Ogun State explains to GBENGA AKINFENWA that the ACN government in two years has retarded economic growth in the state.
What are your grievances against the government in power?
AFTER two years, you cannot tell us exactly what transpired. We have records of the years preceding this government. No Bond was taken. No Bond, underlined, because the mantra this present ACN government preached then was “Bond is bondage.” But this government now, despite that mantra, has received various Bonds and incurred various debts, which they haven’t explained.
The last government had overdraft, which at the end of its tenure, was less than incoming monies from various sources, such as allocations and so on. In fact, this government inherited a positive balance book, but now in two years, we have this issue of N200 Billion that is not addressed and we are told there were fake loans. Where were the fake loans obtained? What are the details of the fake loans? What is the value of the fake loans and what is the fake loan? Because I don’t understand! But the truth of the matter is that these people are simply inept. We have situations where roads are being built into deserts, no destination. The road under construction from the express junction at Iperu end here and going all the way to Sabo in Shagamu; anybody that truly had an understanding of what is being done would know that Ogijo is just five to 10 kilometres from that road. If that road were to go another 10 kilometers, all the border areas we have with Lagos state will now have proper and adequate road network to be part of the community. But when you do that road up to Sabo and leave the rest impassable, the consequence is that that road is costing us a ridiculous amount of N17bn. The roads that were done with similar agreement to that road came in at about N50mn per kilometres; but what we now have is roads being built at N1.5bn per kilometre. Obviously, there are two things about this, that the projects are not well thought of, or they are just a means of siphoning our money because I do not understand that in the period of three years, cost of doing roads have gone up from N50m to N1.5bn in the same community and in the same area. These excesses are unexplainable. In the last few weeks, our children have been out of schools because government is not paying the salaries of teachers. But the truth of the matter is that the 26 so-called Model Schools are being built at N1bn a piece. I see that, as the height of irresponsibility, if a government will not pay its workers and now goes on a spending spree. We have schools here that have defective roofing; we have schools here that don’t have chairs and table for pupils to do proper academic work; we have teachers here that have not been re-trained since the last government left over two years ago, yet, somebody proposes to build 26 of those schools.
Shortly, we will make photographs of those model schools available to you and you will publish them so that the nation can see and help us. Shortly, we’ll publish various road works and the comparative ones that were done at N50m per kilometer vis a viz the ones that were built for N1.5b per kilometer. These are the problems that we have. We have three Free Trade Zones in this state. The solution for Ogun State is industrialisation; those three free trade zones, even people from outside our immediate community have appreciated them. Now, Dangote group is building a refinery, hopefully, to the tune of US$8b in one of those free trade zones. These zones are there for the emancipation of our people from poverty, but see where we are. This government has turned a blind eye to those projects. If one borrows billions to develop projects that have multiplying effect in the lives of our people, we will understand because one of the fundamental criteria that you must acknowledge is that these projects will ultimately be able to pay for themselves. When we have a situation where our resources are being wasted in order to guarantee a method of impoverishing our people, we have to really think very hard. The free trade zones are there, nothing has happened. There was a programme to turn the rubber plantation in Ikenne into an industrial garden, but unfortunately those programmes are on hold.
Similarly we had a programme that will cost the government of Ogun State zero kobo to develop a cargo airport here; nobody is working on that anymore. We have the good fortune of having fine coastlines that have been identified for a deep-sea port to improve the commerce of this area. All this was done by the past administration, but to our surprise, all these projects are now off the shelves. It seems the ability to do good government is now totally lacking. The ideas are just not there. Even, the small enterprises are being choked; the enabling environment is being choked, despite the fact that, hundreds of companies were attracted to Ogun State as a choice location for investment. This was done by the last administration and now this government is acquiring taxes from those concerns but they don’t even have the foresight to expand this programme.
Ogun State is in a serious dilemma and if we don’t arrest this, it is going to get worse. The Labour Party, I can assure you, is the only way forward to sort out this perpetual issue of youth unemployment and worker discontent and I can tell you, it is the only vehicle that can take Nigeria out of an impending disaster.
For the first time, the local government workers went on strike. In the history of Ogun State, it has never happened and these people have gone on strike because their aspirations have not been met. I brought up these issues because there is a danger looming. If a government is becoming so unconcerned about the wellbeing of its people, if wages are not paid and pensions are just not paid and no investment in the development of the human resources, then we are in a big mess. There is a need, as was done in the past, to engage the unemployed to look at agriculture, a labour-intensive industry, to get these children off the roads. But it is a big pity that what we are seeing here is a strong desire to loot and just make away with our wealth. If you remember the last local government elections, there was an abject rape of democracy and the only reason why the will of the people was not allowed to flourish in those elections was a determination to keep control of those 20 local governments in the hands of the governor. No local government has received its due allocation from day one of the inception of this administration. If you look around the three, four local governments that are in the immediate vicinity of Abeokuta, not one project has been done. In some cases, you found that not even salaries have been paid. That was the reason why council elections were bastardised, so that all of them have to fall under one umbrella of the ACN and the looting could be done harmoniously.
And I call on all well-meaning Nigerians to actually come to the rescue of Ogun State by being part of this Labour Party process, to genuinely and constitutionally remove government from the hands of ravenous, rapacious, greedy people and hand this government to people that are competent.
What difference do you think Labour can make, when all the parties are more of the same?
By the very nature of the Labour Party, it is a party of compassion for the average man; it is a party that has to work. The culture of work for profit is understood, that is a fundamental tenet of the labour movement – value for work done. On a wider scope, the personalities involved in the labour movement today are people that have aptitude, that actually know what they are doing, they have come from various sections of the community to form a united front to save our state. Aptitude, ability to reason before actions are taken is a very intrinsic part of government. Nine times out of ten, this government actually acts before thinking. It is the only government that has demolished before thinking of compensation. I would have thought that in accordance with the laws of the land, you sit down and put a financial face on what you are about to do, you would consult, you make sure the money is available, then you’ll arrange compensation and alternatives for people; then you’ll go on and do the process. But what we have seen here is, you actually demolished first; after you have demolished and people are in trauma, you now start thinking whether they should be compensated or how much should they be compensated? That is the clear nature of this government. These various investors that came into Ogun State over the last two years, virtually all have been molested. But interestingly, none has been sent away and interestingly, you are taking taxes from every single one of them. But you have continually created a disabling environment; the environment in which these people came is now different. But once you harassed investors and you realise you are making taxes from them, your tone changes. Anybody with common sense would have realised that if you did not harass these investors, you would still get these taxes and even get more investors. The rate of coming of these investors has declined nearly to zero over the last two years.
What happened to the cargo airport project?
The agreement with the investor for that project was that Ogun State would provide the land, resettlement of whoever could have been affected by loss of land and also provide access roads to that airport. The access roads would come anyway, a good government would provide this anyway. Part of that programme of industrialising that area is the dualisation of the road from Sagamu to Ikenne. There would have been an industry in that rubber plantation, that road would now have come back all the way to Ilishan and there would have been an expansion of those roads. From all intent and purpose, all that was required had been done already. But do you know fate now smiled on us; the Federal Government now took a decision to develop five cargo airports. Because Ogun State was ongoing already, the Federal Government actually offered Ogun State that whatever difficulty you might even have, as a federal government we want to come in and be part of this process, so that you can develop this cargo airport as an alternative to what we have in Lagos.
The Ibikunle Amosun government said they have no interest in airport. For me, that is the height of irresponsibility. Whether that airport is in Egba or Remo, it is in Nigeria and it is for the people of Nigeria and the people of Ogun State. But for whatever small mindedness, a sitting governor refused the help of the federal government to build an airport

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