IN this interview with BANKOLE MAKINDE, immediate past governor of Ondo State, Dr Olusegun Agagu, speaks on his rise from a professional background to political stardom, among other things. Excerpts:
How was your growing up like?
I can say that there are two legs to my growing up. The first leg was when I was with my parents, Chief and Mrs.Agagu, in Okitipupa where I was seen as a special child who was highly protected. On my maternal grandmother side, I was the only boy in the family. My grandmother only had three surviving daughters as at that time. My mother was the eldest and she had my elder sister before me and the two after me were also girls. So, being the only boy on that side of the family made everybody to dote on me. I, therefore, had a highly-sheltered life until I was 10 years when I left Okitipupa after that to live with my older cousin, late Mr Edward Fagbohun. He was the one who brought me up until I became an adult. Mr Fagbohun worked for Shell Oil and I travelled with him round as he got transferred to Lagos, Ibadan, and Kano. With him I learnt to become mature rapidly. He was single the first few years I was with him, which made me learn chores early.
I would go to Oke-Ado Market in Ibadan, buy foodstuff, go home and cook for the two of us. In December 1959 when I was only 11 years old, my cousin bought two big turkeys for Christmas. I slaughtered the turkeys myself, skinned them, cooked them and I prepared food for all those who came to visit us. Because of the exposure I got during the second leg of my early years, I became a fairly focussed young man. I craved to do well in life and with God’s grace and the discipline that my cousin instilled in me, I was able to chart a good career. I performed well in my primary school days, just like I did for my School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate classes.
I also performed well at the University of Ibadan, where I won three scholarships in one year (Western Region scholarship, University scholarship and Gulf Oil Company scholarship). That made me a fairly comfortable student. I graduated with a Second Class Upper degree in Geology and followed up with Masters and PhD degrees.
You never really stayed in your state while growing up. How did you become so rooted in the politics of the place that you occupied all the available political positions in the state with such relative ease?
As a young lad, I grew up in a fairly political family. My father was a Local Council Chairman in Okitipupa in his days, and he was also the Ojomu of Osoro. Osoro covers the western half of Okitipupa Local Government Area and Ojomu was third in the traditional hierarchy after the Rebuja of Osoro, the paramount ruler. The Ojomu of Osoro was the highest-ranking traditional chief in Iju-Odo.
The present Orofun (Oba) of Iju-Odo was the Ojomu of Osoro, the title of my father. So, in those days, my father held court at home and we grew up watching our parents organizing society. Those early memories as a child have been fueling my desire to want to be part of organising and moving society forward.Of course, the bold hand of God came in to divinely structure this innate feeling into a successful political career. As a lecturer in the University of Ibadan in the 70’s, I enjoyed attending town union meetings in Ibadan. We had the Osoro Development Union, Ikale Progressive Union and so on. Chief M. A. Adegborioye, was the Chairman and I was the Secretary.
Through that, I went to Okitipupa once a month with Chief Adegborioye to attend the bigger Ikale nation leadership meetings of the Ikale Central Organisation (ICO.) Through that, I got to meet with Obas, chiefs and other high networth people at the leadership level in Ikaleland. I did a lot of running around for ICO and through that interaction, I was able to understand more, the needs of my people. Also, my background, training and exposure as a geologist have helped. I can recollect that during one of the meetings, two key issues were discussed as most germane to the Ikale people.
One was the development of the bitumen deposit which occurs abundantly in Ikaleland around Irele, Ode-Aye, Osoro and stretching to Ogun State. People were complaining that though they had huge deposits of bitumen, government was not doing anything about it. The second was that Ode-Irele located on the eastern flank of the Oluwa River was separated fromOkitipupa and the rest of Ikaleland on the western flank by the river, whereas they are the same people, the same clan. For one to go from Okitipupa to Irele, one would have to first of all come to Ore and then go East towards Ode-Irele to avoid the Oluwa River, and that took hours because of the poor road network.
The leaders were, therefore, yearning that we should put pressure on the government to build a bridge between Okitipupa and Irele. After everybody poured out their hearts, I asked that I should be allowed to speak. I made them realise that for the bitumen deposit, what was needed was to create more awareness about the deposit for government and prospective investors; that there was the need to do a detailed report on the occurrence, nature of occurrence, and possibly the quantities of deposit. Such a report should be taken to the government, and oil companies who, having seen the potential there, may be encouraged to invest. When they were worrying about how they would pay for such a report, I told them not to worry as it was my specialisation and that I would prepare the report free of charge.
To God be the glory, I prepared and marketed the report extensively. With all sense of modesty, that was partly what encouraged the Federal Government to set up the Bitumen Implementation Office in Akure in 1980’s.
As for the bridging of Oluwa River, I asked that I be taken to where they thought the bridge should be. They took me to the Idepe side of Okitipupa, from where you could see Ilu-Agbo on the other side of the river. Five days later, I came back, hired a speed boat and traversed Agbaje to Igbokoda several times looking out for where the river was narrowest as that would make for a shorter bridge that would reduce cost. By the time I reported back, I was able to brief them that if we were to follow the path they wanted, that is Idepe to Ilu-Agbo, we would need a 1.5 kilometre bridge but that between Araromi-Ayeka and Ebute-Irele, we would have a much shorter span of about 500 metres. This investigation carried out in 1984 led to the construction of the bridge linking Okitipupa with Irele by my administration in 2008.
That was the type of interaction I had with my people long before I joined politics.
During this same period, we had a group of Ondo State lecturers at the University of Ibadan that included myself, Professor Olu Agbi, Dr Olu Agunloye, Dr Eric Fayemi, Dr Oye Oyediran and Dr Olu Akinkoye, who continuously wrote position papers for the late Pa. Adekunle Ajasin when he was governor. We also helped the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) in monitoring and collating elections in 1983 although we were not card-carrying members of the party. This also got me closer to politics. I did not, however, get into politics until 1990. I had earlier prayed to God and made up my mind that anytime I was 40 years old, I would quit paid employment. I retired voluntarily as Acting Head of Geology Department at UI in 1988 and started a geological consultancy and mining business. It coincided with the beginning of General Ibrahim Babagida’s political transition programme and I then decided that if I was going to be in business, it might be useful for me to obtain a party card in case I would need to talk to government officials in the course of my business.That was how I joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and got to meet Evangelist Bamidele Olumilua, who was then contesting to be the governor of the state.
My meeting with him was facilitated by Professor Agbi, who pleaded that I should be writing the kind of papers I was writing for Papa Ajasin for Evangelist Olumilua. When I took some of my writings to him, he liked them and encouraged me to join his campaign group. To my surprise and those of most members of the party, when it was time for him to choose a deputy governor, he insisted that I should be the person. I refused the offer for several weeks because I feared that full time politics would adversely affect my business. But he encouraged me, insisting that there was no business that was as noble as taking care of peoples’ lives. That was how I got dragged into the mainstream of politics virtually crying and yelling. Whereas I was like a reluctant deputy governor when Evangelist Olumilua picked me, after 23 months of serving as deputy governor, I came back home and told my wife that I would want to go fully into politics just to do one thing: to mobilise people to win elections to become governor of the state so that I could go and run government the way I thought it should be run.
From February1994, I started talking to friends and mobilising non-stop until I ran to be governor in 1999. Although I lost, I thanked God because that took me to another phase of my political experience. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo made me a minister in 1999, an exposure that further sharpened my vision about governance. However, my burning desire to make Ondo a successful model of good governance led me to asking President Obasanjo in August 2002 that I be allowed to resign to contest the governorship election again. He said I should drop the idea immediately and look for someone we could jointly support to be governor. It took me almost three months to convince him.
I told him that through my tenure as deputy governor and my touring of the state since 1994, I had seen the plight of my people and I thought I had ideas as to how to change their fortunes; that I would want my state to be in the forefront of development in the country; that the potential were there, but we had not put together a team that could identify these potential and efficiently develop them for the rapid socio-economic emancipation of the state. A number of eminent citizens of the state such as late Chief Rufus Giwa, Admiral Akin Aduwo (retd), Chief Bayo Akinnola and others had to intervene on my behalf. He eventually agreed and to God be the glory, I contested and won. I, therefore, went to the state with a purpose which many people may not know or understand. We brought a completely different kind of governance to Ondo, characterised with a focused vision,commitment, transparency, efficiency and prudence. Our prayer is that people will soon appreciate and understand this legacy and go back to that platform, that unique drawing board that we had established in the state.
You described former governor of the old Ondo State, Evangelist Bamidele Olumilua, as the one who encouraged you to go into partisan politics. Today, he is in the progressive camp, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). Why did you abandon him and pitch your tent with PDP?
This word ‘progressive’ that is being bandied around by some people, to me, is a design of mentally-lazy politicians who can’t sit down to understand what is good for their people and work hard to bring progress to them. Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s politics, you certainly can define as progressive. He tried to cater for the generality of his people through his programmes. He wanted education for all our children.
That is progressive thinking. He wanted good health care delivery to reach as many people as possible. That is progressive thinking. He wanted to expand the economy, to create job and wealth for as many people as possible. That is progressive thinking. But above all, he diligently matched his word with his performance in government. There is none of these governors, who today say they are progressives, that built as many school blocks as I built when I was governor. I built 600 model six classroom blocks and I had 200 under construction by the time I was leaving. We established 200 standard basic health centres, one for each ward in the state.
Water supply was 4.4 per cent coverage which meant that only four people in a hundred had access to potable water in 2003. By the time I was leaving in 2009, it was 52 per cent. When we got into government, farmers hardly accessed support from government. We established farm service centres in every one of the 18 Local Government Areas of the state so that farmers could buy subsidised chemicals, fertilizers and seedlings near their farms. We established 102 youth farms spread round the state. Every year, we raised one million seedlings of cocoa that we shared to our farmers. Every year, we raised one million seedlings of teak that we shared to our farmers. We established a most robust poverty alleviation programme for youths that was acclaimed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
We built one functional skill acquisition centre for youths in every local government in the state. We had a mobile entrepreneurship training programme that went round every local government. We trained over 9,600 young and old people and helped them through low interest loans to start their businesses. We established, by law, a micro-credit agency, endowed it with over N3.2 billion to give credit to our farmers, workers and entrepreneurs. We tarred over 1000 kilometres of roads. Between 1976 and 2003 before I became governor, that was a period of 27 years, 13 governors were there in the state and in all the 27 years, all of them put together tarred 592 kilometers of roads compared to our 1000 km in five years. I can go on and on. The facts are there speaking for themselves. So, who is more progressive?
The Action Group (AG) of Chief Awolowo was very different from Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) because Awolowo was totally in charge of the Western Region during the AG days. But although Awolowo was the head of UPN during the Second Republic, he was not in charge of government in those UPN states. And if the truth must be told, we didn’t have the kind of advancement, focus and quality of governance which we had during Awolowo’s AG during UPN times. Further down the road, the very serious-minded governance we had during the Awolowo AG time was totally lacking during the time of the Alliance for Democracy (AD). Let any AD or ACN governor come out and list the things he has done for his people and compare such with what we did for our people during the PDP administration in Ondo between 2003 and 2009. We should let the people say who has impacted more positively on their lives. It is the amount of positive impact you have on your people that determines whether you are progressive or not. There is no policy of Chief Awolowo which we did not espouse and develop well when we were in charge in Ondo. We built schools like Awolowo built schools, we built hospitals like Awolowo built hospitals, we provided water like Awolowo provided water, we built roads like Awolowo built roads and we tried to create employment for our people through our poverty alleviation programme and through our industrialisation programme. How many of these Awo-cap-wearing governors and politicians can honestly list their achievements in real terms? It is not the label that matters, it is how much Awo that is in you.
With these laudable achievements you reeled out as executed by your party while in office, why then do you think the appreciative people of Ondo State refused to vote you for a second term of office?
What happened should be obvious to people by now. We went to elections in 2007 and to the best of my knowledge; the agency of government that is accredited to conduct elections is the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The commission conducted the elections and they released the results and we won in 11 out of the 18 local government areas of the state and declared PDP the winner of the governorship election with 349,228 votes, compared to LP’s 226,021 votes. And then came this phoney court judgment which said that elections in seven local government areas where Labour Party won were free and fair and that those in the 11 Local Government Areas where PDP won the election were not free and fair and that there was ballot snatching and so on. So, INEC took angels to the seven local government areas where LP won and took crooks to the 11 local government areas where PDP won. That fraudulent exercise thereby cancelled 220,619 PDP votes and only 27,752 LP votes and declared LP the winner. If you thought the election was flawed in 11 out of 18 local government areas, should you not have ordered a rerun? How could you have cancelled in11 and used seven to declare results.
Does that make any sense? The judges said that their judgement was based on security reports tendered by the Labour Party, whereas the State Security Service (SSS) clearly said in court that no such report emanated from them. So who is fooling who? I have since written a petition to President Goodluck Jonathan about the judgment, not because I want to go back to office as governor but for the protection of our democracy from crooks. The SSS headquarters has since conducted an inquiry into the matter and came out with a clear verdict that those reports were not from the agency. Like the old labour parlance says, ‘Aluta continua.’
Now, I go to the state and I receive louder ovation than when I was there as governor.The LP government has been there for more than three years now and at the right time, the people will be able to assess who impacted on their lives more. I came to the state based on my desire to help my people. I had the opportunity to serve for about five and a half years and I am very contented with what happened during my tenure. I worked for about 18 hours every day and even the people who are there now, that is Dr Olusegun Mimiko, who was my Secretary to the State Government (SSG), and Alhaji Ali Olanusi, who was the PDP state chairman, would tell you, in their sober moments, that Oga was a great performer.
They have said it several times and the evidence is there. I am, therefore, happy and I feel much fulfilled. It is the people of the state who have been short-changed that I pity. Governance is not a child’s play or surface dressing as they are presently doing in the state. It is serious business. By the first week after my election, I already had a policy planning and implementation document of more than 1,000 pages which was put together by the best of brains in the state. It covered education, healthcare delivery, water supply, road construction, agriculture, poverty alleviation, industrialisation, youth development, environment,civil service and social welfare. From that, we developed a policy document for all the sectors in the state to guide how we would govern. After designing the policy document, we prepared a Road Map on what we would do on a yearly basis for four years tenure and later eight years. People who were in Ondo at that time will tell you that we implemented the roadmaps almost to the letter.
At what point did you fall apart with Mimiko, as speculations are rife that it was because you refused to honour a supposed agreement between the two of you?
The incumbent governor didn’t join PDP until 14 days to the election in 2003. This is a project that I had been on since 1994. My path and that of Dr Mimiko never crossed from 1994 to 2003 when that governorship election took place. So, is it in those 14 days that he came from AD to join PDP that I had an agreement with him? It is all lies. I never sat with anybody to say that I would only spend four years and after four years I would hand over to you him or her. If anybody tells you that, please tell him he is a liar.
While we were in government, there were three members of my cabinet that were beginning to show that they would want to run: Otunba Omolade Oluwateru (then the deputy governor), Chief Tayo Alsoadura (Commissioner for Finance) and Dr Mimiko. When I observed that the way they were going about their ambition was going to divide government, I called them, sometime in 2005 or early 2006 and said gentlemen, I could see what was going on and that for two reasons, I think I would want to run again. First, I said if I left the party in the hands of the three of them, they would scatter it the way they were going about their ambition and we would lose the next election and the state would be the loser for it. Second, I said I could see opportunities opening up more and more for our state adding that although I was not a soloist, most of the programmes and projects being executed then were ideas that came through me. I said they should allow me to push the projects a little bit further until we reached a comfortable bend, then other people could take over. Otunba Oluwateru immediately got up and said: ‘Oga, if you still want to stay to push this path of progress, I will drop my ambition’.
Chief Alasoadura got up and said: ‘Sir, what you have said is fine by me, but I will only beg you to allow me to hold one more meeting with my group to brief them properly on what you have said and that will be the end of my campaign’. But Dr Mimiko said: ‘We will have to talk sir’ and I said: ‘Okay, find any time convenient and come so that we can discuss on the issue’. But up till today, he has not come back about the issue. Of course, he has talked in the court. He is there now as governor and I have no problem with that at all. I now have more time for my life and I am moving on. I am a professional and I am back into my business. Let Dr Mimiko face his job and get on with the process of improving the lives of the people of the state. When he finishes, either in four years or eight years or even if he asks for a third term and goes 12 years, one day, he will stop being governor and people would say when Agagu was there, this is what he did and when Mimiko was there, this is what he did.
But was his ambition to contest against you the reason why you whittled down his powers when he was Secretary to the Government?
There is God between me and him. I am not a saint but the only drive I had in my mind while in government was how to make the state better. The powers of Dr Mimiko when he was Secretary from the first day was never reduced but even got bigger by the time he left. I deliberately tried in council to continuously empower him because most of the people in PDP were unhappy with me because of Dr Mimiko. They complained that after only 14 days of crossing over to work with us, I made him the Secretary to Government. So, he didn’t command the kind of respect he should command at council, but I forced cabinet members to accept him. Most of the programmes we were running were in committees and I would say that for industrialisation, for example, a committee comprising the Commissioner for Industry or Special Adviser on Investment, should be led by SSG to negotiate for government. If he searches his mind, he would know that I did my best for him. I am sure that he knows that. That is the truth. So, this whole thing about me whittling down his powers never arose. Which powers was I whittling down? He was a member of the Tenders Board, I was never a member.
They were the people who awarded contracts. Dr Mimiko was also in charge of the civil service, while the deputy governor was in charge of the Local Governments. I never whittled down Dr Mimiko’s powers and anybody who says so is committing a sin against God. He had his own agenda and he should be truthful to tell the truth.
When Mrs Mobolaji Osomo was removed as minister, President Obasanjo asked me to nominate a replacement and I nominated Prince Adetokunbo Kayode. But it was found out that he had some problems with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) at that time. I begged baba (Obasanjo) to allow me to nominate another person to which he acceded. I nominated Ambassador Bayo Yusuf, but he had problems during the Senate screening.
Then Baba Obasanjo again said I should try to nominate somebody else and eventually, we nominated Dr Olu Agunloye and his name went through security and President Obasanjo was happy about it. I then traveled out on my annual vacation and by the time I came back, some people had gone to tell lies about Dr Agunloye to President Obasanjo that he was a security risk. I came back on a Friday and I was confronted with this story by the president. By the time I reached Dr Agunloye, it was confirmed that the story was false. Unfortunately, that was three days later because of poor network. Ironically, a few minutes after I confirmed the truth, I went downstairs in the Governor’s Lodge only to see Dr Mimiko waiting. I immediately took him to the study, thinking he had an official business to discuss. As soon as we got to the study, he prostrated and said the presidency had asked him to bring his CV to Abuja and that I should support and not block him because he knew that if I wanted to block him, I could. I, of course, politely told him that I had never blocked anybody in life and that if the president wanted to make him a minister, so be it. I shook his hands and he left. That was the last time I ever sat with Dr Mimiko, and the rest is history.
Let us talk about Prince Adetokunbo Kayode, the immediate past Defence Minister. He used to be your political ally. What went awry between you?
I have no problem with Prince Tokunbo Kayode. He is still my friend and I still called him this morning. In politics, there would be occasions when there would be disagreements but over time, you get over the disagreements. We were together at Abeokuta for the birthday celebration of former President Obasanjo. I have no problems with him anymore. I am a human being too, and I also can do things that other people won’t like. What I ask for every time is that if you think that I have wronged you, tell me and I would either explain and if I don’t have any reasonable explanation, I will apologise. That to me is the way life should be. I will never go out to hurt anybody because God has been so kind to me. I have no problem with either Prince Kayode or Dr Mimiko at all.
The desire by governors to forcefully run for a second term of office seems to be one of the problems of Ondo politics. Can’t a governor perform in just one term and allow others to have their own shot too?
The constitution allows those who are interested to run two terms. If a governor does four years and his record shows that he has done well and his vision shows that we will benefit from him over the next four years, why can’t he do eight years? I have never been part of the people saying one man, one term because that is a bad generalisation. If someone is doing well, let him continue and if he is not doing well, you can even end his tenure before four years by impeaching him. If the people of the state think that the path LP is taking them through is good by building more markets and more town halls, then, let them continue for another four years to build more markets and town halls. It is a common Yoruba saying that a farmer that plants only 20 heaps of yams, but lies that he had planted 200 heaps should be left alone. By harvest time, after harvesting 20 yams, he will harvest 180 lies.
So, which senatorial district should produce the next governor since all the zones had produced governor?
We need the next governor from where you have a good manor woman that can do a good job. This is not a matter of where he comes from.We need people that can put structures and processes in place on which people’s lives can hang on. All these sentiments about he is from the North, South or Central has nothing to do with governance, more so now that all the three senatorial zones have had a bite at it. So, let us look for people who are knowledgeable and committed. Let us look for a party that has a track record, that has men and women who you think can secure your fortunes and your future.
And you think PDP in the state as it stands today has such people that can dislodge LP?
There are a number of people who have been showing interest of being governor in PDP. There are also some that I know who are interested, but they have not been saying it. At the appropriate time, we will sit down and look at people who are marketable, those who can win elections and who we think when they get there, will be able to do a good job in the office. After that silly court judgment, I took a retrospective look at our tenure and felt fulfilled that I have gone there and have done a good job. The people of the state should sit down and look for people who can take off from where we left.
But why didn’t you groom a successor while you were there?
Everybody who worked with me that has commitment to his people could be my successor. The documents on how to govern the state were prepared in the state executive council chambers and not in my house. So, I expect that anybody who was a member of that team and who is imbued with a clean heart, should be able to do it. I didn’t go to any school to learn politics. It is more about one’s concern that society should progress. Once you have that commitment, you will read, learn and commit yourself to the service of your people. I am a geologist and not a student of political science.
How far have you gone with the reconciliation effort in Ondo State PDP?
We are moving. In politics, you will always have agreements and disagreements because it is a power game. When we were conducting our congresses, there were about six people who wanted to be the state chairman, but we can only have one state chairman of the party. We have picked one person and the other five might be aggrieved. We have to look at how to reconcile them. It happens from time to time. There will be no day when everybody in the top echelon of the party will be kissing themselves like lovers. What is important is for a majority of the people in the leadership cadre to be moving in the same direction.
People are knowing themselves more and I expect that the core of the leadership will appreciate the challenge before us, which is winning back the state. Everybody should contribute towards that. What is important is for there to be a core of people in PDP that can market the party. You don’t need one million members in PDP to achieve that objective. All we need is a core of committed members who would go and sell the party programmes to the people.
Source: Tribune
Ondo State News
Barely five months to the governorship election in Ondo state, the ruling Labour Party in the state has continued to wax stronger with the influx of thousands of members from the opposition parties.
Ondo State Governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko said on Thursday that his resignation as minister of Housing in the cabinet of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s without a specific political party was to make positive impact in the lives of the people of the State.
The International Lions Club of Nigeria is set to honour Ondo State Governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko with the Melvin Jones award, which is the highest form of recognition of the club.
As part of its effort to further improve and strengthen its workforce for quality service delivery, the Ondo State Government has organized a five-day seminar for its newly appointed Permanent Secretaries and Tutors-General at the Lagos Business School.
The National President of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Alhaji Najim Yasin has stated that nothing can stop the Ondo state governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko from returning to office for the second term.
The second term bid of the Ondo State Governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko has received yet another boost as non-indigenes in the state under the aegis of Non-Indigene Alliance; an umbrella body of all non-indigent residents in the State have thrown their weight behind the governor’s re-election.
