17/11/2022
Verbatim of Social Democratic Party (SDP) Governorship Candidate in Kwara State, Hakeem Oladimeji Lawal during Media Interactive Session on Wednesday, November 16, 2022 held at Admiralty Villa, Ilorin
Barrack Obama became President of United States at 48, the prime Minister of Canada became Prime Minister at the age of 36, the Prime Minister of France became prime minister at 38 and many of these people were considered younger when they are getting to the position. So that’s why I said it’s not about age but what we want to do.
Where we are in Nigeria today and leadership we get I’m sorry to use the word obsolete they cannot relate with the current times. The Asian tigers became asian tigers because the didn't go about developing their nation by go through what Britain and America went through even Industrial era they have opportunity to move on, many of them instead of creating, polluting large industries they went on creating small industries that are more efficient and with that they're able to change the system.
Now today, technology is driving everything, many of this people cannot relate with what is driving in. It means that we must bring people who can take and adapt to what is current..it takes us to education.
If we want to adapt to what is current we must think to adapt to resetting our education. It's good for us to develop infrastructure but our education policy must be focused on something, what will it be in Kwara? What do we have? We have human resources and agriculture. Now in terms of human resources how do we get the best out of it? It comes from our education. The target of it must be driven by the policy we have. I (Hakeem Lawal) would be focusing on developing right education policy. I would be focusing on turning the education policy round to technical and science schools, so that we can prepare a new crop of young people who wil be technically able to challenge and compete in the world.
There are a lot of other things that we should be focusing, now a lot unemployment among the youth then how do we solve that problem? The only way we can use is agriculture but many made the mistake by saying go to far. Many of them will go to farm but a lot of our elder people farming and what are they getting out of it? They are getting basic cost upon their harvest but nobody is pushing them towards the processing industry. Therefore, if we are saying go to farm, we are not just saying go to farm,we are saying we want to farm and we want to develop an industry out of agriculture and for us to do that and improve the income of our people; we must then focus on first stage processing if you looking at coco for instance or let say you looking at rice, if we plant rice many of the people selling Lake rice in Kebbi, they come here to buy, process, repack and bring it to us why because we have not create an enabling environment for us to produce. But if we are going to do that we must not make mistake of the past where we will have Ajaokuta steel but the iron rod is in Ipake. We must begin to put it where they are. It’s easy for people to come and source for finished product because they need it but getting the raw materials and transport it is more expensive and the people at the source of it don't get benefits. We must begin to think about how we want to do thing. We will be encouraging creation of cluster farms. Cluster farms that will enable community to leverage on area where they have comparative advantage. For instance we are saying Patigi and Edu local government areas, we want them to focus specifically on Sugarcane production and rice. Out of that we going to concentrate on bringing rice mill and sugarcane processing plants. We know that companies that are going to surround that area will require those raw materials to grow. For instance, if you have 10, 000 irrigable land for rice. Along that area we must be able to create an industrial hub, then we cater for the factories for business that’ll move on. But I will not be labour with these because time to discuss it is long.
In Kwara our infrastructure is down, I travelled to Patigi on Saturday, a journey that should be taken me two hours took me five and half hours. I’ve being going through that route since 2014, every successful election period, I go there I found out that the road is worse and yet we say we have a system; we have a government. Many will tell you it’s a federal government road, Yes! It’s a federal government road but we must begin to reorientate the way we do things. If it's a federal government road and we are not getting resources. We have to a way to do it to alleviate suffering of our people. This is another reason for the state to be buoyant financially. If we are saying the state must be independent, then we must make the local government to be more independent because they are the one that would take governance of development to the grassroots. Alot of challenges are facing us! As we were going to Patigi, there are mining activities going on in that axis but none of the revenue is coming to the state. Why? and how? Today, everybody is talking about electric car and solar system but we have raw materials. Nobody is utilizing them effectively but people are packing. Tomorrow, we will be faced with health challenges because nobody is monitoring them to give correct apparatus to mine. That's challenge we need to fix.
Our health system is down, many of those people in villages cannot get basic access to health facility. Most of the cottage hospitals and health centres are down. We must look for how to do this. We are proposing the use of Cuba model. Cuba model is a system where there is small hospital in every community with nurses and at least have visit Medical Doctors to attend to the people. This will decongest our General hospitals. We can transfer what they can not handle to Cottage or General hospitals. This is the essence of having small ambulances.
Thank you very much for listening to me and I hope we do more of this.
