Our State Hopes and Strategies
When will our story become this?
From the above pictorials, all it takes is concerted efforts of visionary leaders. Such leaders must shun greed and avarice and must be solely driven by sense of community service and have 100% devotion to the people.
Why we came?
Many have asked why is labour coming up in Oyo state? Cant they join existing party? Are they here for their cut of the treasury? There are unending why’s and why nots, but our intervention is necessary, and it was for love of Oyo state.
Some are of the opinion that current executives of the state are doing well, others feel, we must endure them until another four years, some still feel we can give them a chance to better their performance. What we have come to understand is that the bar has been reduced to barest minimum that paying salaries promptly and patching of roads and a few good statements here and there are commonly seen as good performance.
What are the facts?
- The IGR of Oyo state is still very low.
- Human Capital development index of Oyo state is low.
- GDP of Oyo state at 16Billion USD is very low.
- Oyo state debt to GDP though low but compared to IGR will mean Oyo state will remain poor for a very long time to come.
- Oyo state infrastructural development index is low as many areas in Oyo state are poorly served, under-served or not accessible at all by decent modern road networks.
- Unemployment rate in Oyo state is one of the highest in South West Nigeria with many graduates milling around and waiting for years to secure meaningful employment. Can government employ them? No but Oyo state can be transformed into an industrial state to generate employment.
- Health services in Oyo state are not at the level it ought to be. Primary health care services are so basic outside Ibadan they can hardly meet the needs of the locals. Many of such clinic do not have anti-snake venom to treat immediate snake bite. Ambulance services are almost non-existent outside of Ibadan.
- There has been a decline in production of farm produce since 1997 and has yet to even match the 1997 values to date.
- Most schools are dilapidated, un-attended to and what we call education is not very encouraging. The English levels of a standard six adult is far better than of an HND holder today and certainly his phonetics are far superior. Education had declined so terribly it needs urgent overhauling before it collapses.
- There is hardly any coordination between education and industry since there were very little industries here, so educational curriculum are disjointed and does not pay careful attention to employment dynamics.
The list goes on and on, but you know these things already, what can be done?
This is where we hope to come in. We are a group of young educated, talented, honest and transparent individuals who are not into politics for what we can get but for what we can give. Our target are those who never have voted since democracy began due to frustration. They do not see genuineness in the faces presented on the ballot. Are they wrong? NO! anyone providing funds as incentive to be voted for and those collecting them are one and the same person. If we provide funds so you can vote for us, it means we see your vote as a piece of merchandise up for sale. Once bought as a bankable product, it becomes a key to the treasury. The time spent scheming how to take from your vault robs people of valuable time to plan and work for you. So in effect we hope those who see through all these will be challenged and come out to own the party alongside and contribute from NGN100 to as much as you can afford. The idea is you own the party, you own the folks that are up for elections (and that person can be yourself as the door is wide open). If we put people into positions who didn’t have to bribe us before getting into office and are not paupers beforehand the party will be in a strong position to ensure discipline and enforce our manifesto and direction of governance across board.
We therefore appeal to you to please click on the registration button register your interest and wait for biometrics from April 2022. We will engage with you directly when we get to your LGA to come forward and complete your biometrics. Please have to hand your PVC. You can check online if your card is still active by clicking here
We are working very hard and promise to work even harder when we are in government. We are people that will be in office from 7am to 9pm working tirelessly for you. Ordinary efforts yield ordinary results, extra-ordinary efforts yield extra-ordinary results. We reckon to move Oyo state forward we will need to work twice as hard, improve productivity, expand the frontiers of governance by creating meaningful engagements with the people and importantly providing direction for a common goal. That goal is to up the ante, move Oyo state forward by 10years in four years through increase in productivity.
Productivity Drive
Therefore we are a party of one agenda. That agenda is to drive upwards the productivity of Oyo state. Productivity is the key to prosperity. We believe a people make conscious efforts to prosper through their leadership providing example for them to follow. The opposite is laziness and wastages which you have all seen, wanton laziness. We have never seen in any hard-working society people engaging in treasury waste and depletion of reserves like we have among us. The work of the executive arm is not dressing and changing dresses. It is to work hard and find ways to better the lot of the state. This will mean working extra hard to bring up policies that can engender positive growth. Bring investments and provide motivation in people to do even more. Waiting every month for Abuja to dash us money is in itself demeaning to an Oyo state man (as a pace setter state). Can we do without monthly allocation?
Here are facts of Oyo State
Land Mass: 26,500 sq Km based on NBS but others put Oyo as above 28,000sq km.
Population: 7,840,000 based on last census approximately
GDP: USD16B
So, Oyo compares in size to Israel with little less population by actual census (20,770,000Sq KM) and population of 7,112,00M or so people but with GDP of USD372B. UAE is larger in size but considering the desert chunk of its size and actual population by census (not estimate to date) of 4,106,000 or so people but with GDP of USD647B, we can be better. Ghana and Ivory Coast though larger and more populous compared to Oyo state have more output in terms of cocoa although Oyo state process nearly as much as they were at independence. Ivory Coast depend more on Cocoa with nearly 2m metric tons. Oyo state is only producing about 50,000 metric tons. With a ton at about $2,576. There is massive corruption in the sale of the commodity as farmers are paid a mere NGN3,000 to NGN5,000 due to racketeering of produce buyers. We believe we can change that, increase the yield by creating a value chain from seeding, to production and adding an extra chain to processing plant to come up with cocoa paste for export instead of selling the bean.
We can increase productivity in the following areas:
Agriculture: Cocoa, Cassava, groundnuts, oil palm, fisheries and peppers. Increased production, extra layer of value chain to processing for export. We are currently taking stock of our assets both private and public and are aware of Ilaju Gari with 5,000 hectares of land, we are looking at other farm settlements (some are now estates) but we can recreate them elsewhere and engage research institute towards distribution of high yield crops. We will seek to cultivate, cause to cultivate, enable to cultivate at least a 100sq Km of land in organised farm settlements in Oyo state in the first year alone. Our target is to have an equivalent of 500sqkm of cultivated lands in new ventures in four years excluding existing farmlands. We will hope to grow income from Agric into a $10B per year income for Oyo state shared across the value chain.
Industries: Cosmetics, Automobiles, Food and Agro-allied-production, Energy, lumber and wood processing. Some we can do immediately other can take a few short years. We must develop industrial capacity to have industries employing upwards of 20-30,000 employees running shifts. It is the only way to reduce unemployment drastically. Take for instance the Agric ministry sale point behind premier hotel that has been locked up and the pond covered with sea-weed. We can turn things around to generate production of fish, same at Eleiyele dam, other dams can also be mobilised to produce as such. We at labour strongly believe our production must go up before we can talk of prosperity. We can easily pay the minimum wage and far exceed labour union expectation.
The existing automobile companies will be enhanced to build capacity, enabling them with loans to expand and tie up with manufacturing companies elsewhere in the world so they can serve as assembly plant for them. The idea is to bring back affordable cars on our roads.
Infrastructures: We hope to develop light rail services for mass transit. It is the only way to decongest inner city roads and move hundreds of thousands of people around cities daily. Most roads will become six lanes to rapidly move people and goods across the state. Ibadan can expand into new industrial centres around two axis; Ido axis, and Iyana-Church. Others can be opened up into Agro-axis/ with educational centres (an agricultural and mechanical University) around Oyo town with mass food production.
Education: We hope to consolidate education into a federated system and develop curriculum at par with the industry. It means Oyo state will have a single University system with campuses across the state. This will absorb existing state-owned institutions. The technical University will be rapidly developed, LAUTECH expanded and adequately funded. In addition we will have a state medical University and a state agricultural and mechanical University. We will develop a business school within the Ibadan metropolis to cater to the needs of commerce and entrepreneurial skills and IT. All of these will award their degrees but all will award a single postgraduate degree of the Oyo state university system. All will share a single senate. We will sync all admissions processes to make it easier to progress from a diploma to a degree. We will cut all racketeering in admission by moving all admissions processing online with cyber-trail in case of abuse.
All public primary and high schools will be refurbished with at least functional classrooms, toilet facilities. All schools will have an IT suite fully furnished with computers that are locally assembled. We will work with the national office of Microsoft corporation to buy licences in bult for education same way they do in other countries. How do you power them? We will provide framework with electricity distribution company to first of all arrange how to pay off Oyo state debts. The debt servicing will be tied to provision of transformers etc and some cash advances. It is not all the time you do not have power supply that there is none at the DP, most times there are supply in at least two of the three points on an average transformer. Due to dilapidations, dereliction of duties, neighbourhoods are left in the dark for days and weeks. We will work to change all these.
Healthcare: Our first target is to woo retired Oyo state citizens elsewhere in the world to come home and help us. Doctors, Pharmacists, Nurses etc who can volunteer three to six months to help us. In cases where we cannot find enough from Oyo state, we will accept similar persons from SW Nigeria (can be expanded if necessary). We will provide return tickets and provide decent accommodation to make their time with us worthwhile. The aim is to revamp our healthcare system and seek to rewrite our policy so as to make it fairer. We currently have a state owned teaching hospital and some general hospitals. We will equip them and provide adequate staffing for them. The state medical University will be organised with these institutions in mind as we seek to have at least two teaching hospitals withing ten years. We will lay the framework in a rolling plan.
It is with this aim that we commend Oyo state labour to you and ask that you please click register and fill in your details. Once done click on donate to Labour party to contribute your token, no amount is too small. We strongly believe in you and hope you will believe in us. Lack of trust in us will mean another year of ENDSARS protest, lack and want and we know you are smarter than that. We strongly have this urge that you feel us as we feel you. Common! people, lets go and do it for Oyo state, for our people. We must remove the dress of poverty, shame, lack and want and put on the apparel of dignity, prosperity and comfort that we must adorn in Oyo state. Very soon, as Nigerians approach our territory, they feel they are in a new world, a different place entirely. We can do it together, let us keep the dream, the realisable dream of our redemption. Hope is coming, freedom is coming, prosperity is coming!
All Best Wishes
Oyo State Labour Strategy Team