Makinde:It’sTimeforYouthstoTakeoverLeadership
The governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party in the 2015 election in Oyo State, Mr. Oluseyi Abiodun Makinde, was last week a guest at the 2015 Press Week of the Correspondent Chapel of the Oyo State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists
What is your view on the problem of leadership in Nigeria? Unless the youth of this country become active forces in the different political parties, the issue of seeking political offices would remain a mirage.
Besides serving as a platform for contesting elections, political parties also play the role of policy and agenda setting for national development. So, if the youth must have any influence in the process of national development, we must be active forces in the political arena.
In early days of Nigeria’s independence, the country’s political terrain was dominated by the youth, including the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, late Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the late Chief Anthony Enahoro, Mrs. Margaret Ekpo among others.
Some of them did not have as much education or access to information as we have today, they were not invited to the decision making table by the British, they simply saw a cause and they seized the opportunity, since the beginning of the fourth republic, the political space had recorded a narrowing of opportunities for the young people .
With the definition which put the youth between the ages of 18 to 35years, we can conclusively say that no youth has ever been the President of Nigeria since 1999. President Olusegun Obasanjo, late President Umar Yar’ Adua, President Goodluck Jonathan and now President Mohammadu Buhari have, between them, a mean age of 61 years as at the day they took office.
We should remove the mental shackle of helplessness and tell ourselves that If Nigeria must deliver human development dividends to present and future population and take its rightful place among the comity of nations, you and I must play an active role.
Secondly, let us get involved in political sensitisation of our spheres of influence, let us form political cell groups, let us engage in constant policy dialogues among ourselves; let us network with young people in different parts of the country based on common values.
We are seeking some high sounding ideological rallying point, we simply want to contribute positively to governance in our country, if we are agreed on this point, then we have a cause”, that politicians should emulate late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and late Chief Bola Ige by mentoring the youth to enable them to take over in the nearest future.
Back to politics, why did you defect from the PDP to the SDP? Well, it is an open secret how the primaries in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), went. The party would not obey its own guideline and it wouldn’t also honour a court order regarding the delegates to elect the party’s flag bearer. So, when they wouldn’t do that and our people insisted that they were waiting for us, that they want us to have a platform for them where the hope of the generality of the people of Oyo would be realized, we then decided to move to the SDP to give that hope to our people. Well, there is concept of Omoluabi in Yorubaland. And that is who we are and that is how we were brought up. Democracy is not about the positions you have occupied in the past. It is about the people. It is about the majority of the people and that is where we are going. We have listened to our people. We have heard them. We have given to them our programmes and our manifestos.
I believe that politics of Oyo State will be turned around from these so called heavyweights, I think they are going to be shocked at the end of the day. This is because the decision of the people is going to be final.
How did you popularize the relatively unknown SDP? It is not all that easy. It is about educating our people. They know already what we stand for. I am not just coming into the political arena. I have contested in the past and we have been engaged with our people all these years. We are doing a lot to introduce the party. And of course the SDP was used as a political party in 1993. So, it is not something totally new. And people also recognize the fact that the freest and fairest election ever conducted in this country was won by the SDP. I will probably say, we have turned a full circle. The reality is that the youth at these days are not really concerned about the party but about the candidate. So, once we have a large following from Omititun as a structure and they follow Seyi Makinde as a person, then all is well.
What is your strength? Our strength is the people, those who have done it before, people have seen their limitation. And for us, we haven’t done it before, but we have done certain things that people have been able to see. And you can fool our people some of the time, you cannot fool them all the time. They are convinced where we are coming from.They know what we have done privately. They know precisely our engagement with them. They know precisely that over the years, we listened to some of the issues within our communities.
What would you have done differently if you are the governor? Well, we have our manifesto and our campaign theme which we term ‘Operation HEAP. We are talking about Health care delivery. We are talking of making agriculture positive business in Oyo State and also weaning the state from over dependence on oil by projecting agriculture.
We have education. We all see the level of decay the infrastructure in Oyo State. We see students and pupils learning under a very difficult and unsafe condition. Dilapidated buildings here and there, non provision of material for the teachers.
And if you look at the WAEC result, Oyo State came last behind all the states in the South-West. If you go to Total Garden they made a fountain there which never works and to me, that is a half-hearted way of doing things. We will get all we have into doing all those things.
I am the person in the race that does not come with a political baggage and that he is actually the kind of person Oyo State needs at this time.
What is your intention of setting up the award of bursary to Oyo State students in tertiary institutions across the country? The institution of the scheme which dates back to some years ago was not for political reason. The scheme was instituted in 2001, so we are not just starting the scheme because of the governorship race.
Instead my passion for education as the gateway to breakthrough informed my decision.
My concern about the coming generation was not about my desire to become the state governor, but to pay the dues I owes his society to leave it better than I met it, when I become the governor, the figure of beneficiaries will increase but not at the expense of the state government, rather, it will still be undertaken from my personal purse. If we do what is right in our society by giving our younger generation quality education to compete with anybody from across the globe, there is no time that our people will not become the controller of the much talked-about resources because the people with the natural resources will need people with knowledge.