The immediate past Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has revealed the steps he took in restoring all he said the state lost during the tenure of his predecessor, Ayo Fayose.
The Eagle Online recalls that Fayose defeated Fayemi in his bid for reelection in 2014, winning across the whole state.
Fayemi, however, returned to power in a dramatic fashion after Fayose’s first four years in office.
Speaking with select Editors shortly before he handed over to his success and party member, Biodun Oyebanji, on Sunday, Fayemi, who returned to power on the platform of the All Progressives Congress said his major joy was restoring the “Ekiti character” that was destroyed during Fayose’s tenure.
He said: “Well, if you recall, the thrust of my campaign in 2018 was about restoring the values and reclaiming the land for the people and there was a context to it.
“We had been shortchanged and received bad press for atrocities that our people did not commit, simply on account of the way the then governor portrayed himself and portrayed us as the state of stomach infrastructure, of hungry people who were just desperate for anything they can grab and they had no values, no character, no integrity, it was just about whatever crumbs could drop from the table of the master.
“That was the perception.
“I believe it was a wrong image of the Ekiti people.
“I saw my role as that of a brand ambassador dedicated to rebranding Ekiti and putting its image in proper perspective….
“Essentially all these things have happened and they have significantly impacted our people, but I think what has done a lot more for us – to return to the issue of values restoration is the restoration of the known Ekiti character.
“Whilst we are still in the news, we are not in the news for the wrong reasons.
“You could almost say that this has been a scandal-free four years.
“No one could point to anything unethical or untoward that any member of the administration has involved himself or herself in.”
Fayemi was also quick to point to the restoration of the position of the state in education ranking in Nigeria.
He said this was lost during the administration of Fayose.
He said: “When I came in 2018, I had a five-point agenda: Knowledge Economy, Good Governance, Agriculture and Rural Development, Social investment and Infrastructure Industrial development.
“I could say that we’ve reasonably touched all sectors and addressed the challenges that we saw then.
“When we came in in 2018, Ekiti had moved from being the state with the highest enrolment in the country and the lowest out-of-school children when I left in 2014.
“It had moved to the last in the South West.
“So, all the states that we were doing much better than – we were tops in the country – but we had become No. 6 in the South West in terms of school enrolment and number of out-of-school children.
“But the NBS (National Bureau of Statistics) joint survey with UNICEF just came out last month, Ekiti has come back up to No. 1 in the country, tying with Imo as the state with the highest enrolment and lowest out-of-school children of 1 per cent.
“What did we do?
“It is not rocket science.
“When Governor Fayose was here, students were paying an education levy, so they were paying for tuition in primary and secondary schools, they were also paying for their public examinations.
“So, I came back in 2018 and restored all our policies of 2014 and that is what has resulted in this significant outcome.
“Because people who could not afford it, who took their kids out of school and kept them at home, those who would get to senior secondary school and could not afford the N20,000 for WAEC fees, all of that burden was taken off the poor parents.
“The intention was not to encourage parents to abdicate their responsibilities to their wards but to just lighten their burden since they were still getting uniforms and some basics for their wards.
“By taking those critical things out of their limited funds, pupils started returning to schools and then we were even getting a drift from private to public schools because of all the new schools built across the state.
“Then, in public examinations, they were doing very well in the country, ditto for secondary schools and then in our technical colleges – students had even deserted – but now because we had this aggressive drive towards vocational and technical education and we also improved the schools conditions and the learning environment, you can’t force people to go to schools where there aren’t even tools for them to practise what you’re teaching them.
“But if you go to Government Technical College, Ado Ekiti, the equipment there is better than the equipment in some universities.
“Same for Government Technical College Otun or Ijero.
“That’s also one of the advantages of my coming back.”
Fayemi equally said the development partners who fled the state during the Fayose era returned during his tenure.
He said: “All the development partners who either left the State or scaled down their operations when Governor Fayose came, they all returned and within the space of four years I have been in office, this state must have received at least $350 million from development partners such as the World Bank, European Union, AfDB, French Development Agency to name a few in both grants and concessions lending.
“People ask: “How are you able to do some of these things that you are doing?’
“It is basically because whatever I have from Federation Account, I use it to pay salaries, anything you’re seeing here is mostly development support from our partners and our IGR. The roads, the dams that we rehabilitated, the European Union, World Bank, French Development Agency, our Independent Power Project – that was our own public-private partnership, but a number of our initiatives were supported but they wouldn’t support you if they don’t have confidence that you will deliver because it is not a favour, this is still our money, it is just that the money is being lent to us at concessional lending rate.
“Instead of paying 30 per cent at XYZ bank, for a loan, we’re getting it at one per cent with a moratorium of 10 years and total repayment of 30 years, so it is almost like you’re paying zero for these facilities we’ve been able to attract to the state.
“So, we did that.
“In healthcare, it is the same thing, in infrastructure, agriculture, in our Owo Arugbo and similar schemes that we had in my first term, we were able to restore then.”
On what he met on ground on resumption of office for his second term after taking over from Fayose, Fayemi said: “So, coming on board in 2018, first was the general disillusionment among the public servants over backlog of unpaid salaries, also abandoned projects both from Segun Oni’s time that we were unable to complete in my first tenure and even uncompleted projects from Governor Ayo Fayose’s second term.
“If you compare those projects from then to now, you will see what we’ve done, you will see a significant difference.
“However, while bricks and mortar are important and people tend to place a lot of emphasis on bricks and mortar, but if we only see what has changed in terms of bricks and mortar, we would be missing the point.
“I’m not saying that we haven’t done that – we’ve completed, for example, the Obafemi Awolowo Civic Centre, the Central market that Governor Fayose started opposite the King’s Palace here in Ado Ekiti, we’ve completed that and ultra modern markets in the 16 local government headquarters.
“We’ve built several hundreds kilometres of road, built schools and hospitals.
“We’ve revived the Ikun Dairy Farm in partnership with Promasidor.
“We’ve started the Special Agriculture Processing Zone.
“Governor Fayose made a lot of noise about the airport and was keen to do it but clearly there were competing needs over limited resources.
“Now, the airport we started from scratch is almost finished.
“The runway is done.
“The terminal building is ready.
“It will have its first test flight in another few days – even though that was one other project that was on his agenda, so to speak, and even previously on former Governor Segun Oni’s agenda.
“Ironically, I was very sceptical about the airport project in my first term, but I became convinced by superior arguments when I set up a committee headed by Chief Afe Babalola to look into the viability of an airport and they concluded with facts that the state could use it to trigger accelerated economic development.
“We’ve added a new project.
“You can add to that the Ado-Iyin dual carriage way.
“The Agbado Ode Isinbode Omuo road leading to Kogi boundary, which was a totally impassable road before we fixed it.
“Ditto the one to Otun from Oye, which we have done or Ilupeju Ire Igbemo-Ijan road or the Aramoko-Erininyan-Ikogosi new road.
“So, we have put in place all of that.
“The 5MW Independent Power Project, the Knowledge Zone Project, which is aimed at catapulting us to the forefront of the digital economy.
“A lot of that has happened.
“Also, if you go to our hospitals, all of the hospitals have been redone with new equipment there, including the teaching hospital.
“The same thing has happened to Ekiti schools, including eight new model colleges that we started in order to replace the schools that have gone back to their original owners – the missionaries.
“So, we built model colleges named after some of our prominent citizens: Deji Fasuan, Ayo Fasanmi, Banji Akintoye, David Oke and such other distinguished citizens of the state.
“We’ve rebuilt all the water dams in the state, the pipelines for water and also expanded the opportunities in rural communities with the rural roads that we are just starting under the Raamp initiative.”