Governor Seyi Makinde’s State of the State Address

Being the State of the State Address by His Excellency Seyi Makinde FNSE, the Executive Governor of Oyo State, delivered at the State House of Assembly on Thursday, 13 June 2024.

It has been five years since our administration took over the highest office of governance in Oyo State. From day one, our promise has been to restore the dignity and pride of the good people of Oyo State so that we maintain our mantra as the state of firsts—the Pacesetter State. In all this time, we have prioritised our economy and taken steps that put us ahead of all other States in times of crisis. We have seen crises, and we have overcome them.  This is because we have always had your support as we made people-first decisions.

Some have said we make populist decisions. Well, our decisions are not populist because they are not anti-elite or anti-establishment – I hope Dr Morohunkola Thomas is here; his job of political sensitisation is cut out for him. We are pro-people because we know that the source of our mandate is you. We are here to serve you.

You have shown us that you believe in us, and that is why our Internally Generated Revenue has continued on the path of growth without us increasing taxes. From an average of about N4.2 billion monthly in 2023, we have moved to an average of N4.95 billion for the first quarter of 2024. Let me take the opportunity to thank you, willing taxpayers of Oyo State. Each time we execute a new project, you can proudly say you are a part of this success.

Well, I am here today to deliver the State of the State address. And I must start by acknowledging that it has been a tough year with untold hardships for our people. But as I have always said, our administration was built for times like this. Like the eagle, we rise.

From accelerated development to sustainable development, we have always believed in taking a completely different approach to the economic development of our dear State. This is why when fuel subsidy and the peg on the dollar were removed, while other States were busy distributing palliatives, we were thinking of short-, medium- and long-term solutions.  We came up with SAfER – Sustainable Actions for Economic Recovery. Sustainable actions. SAfER has various components, including a food relief package, transport subsidy, food security measures, provision of health insurance, and support for small and micro enterprises and civil servants.

These interventions have directly impacted the development of our dear State. The food relief package went to 200,000 poorest of the poor households. We used this component to stimulate our economy, as the food items distributed were locally sourced and purchased from our traders in all the zones where distribution was done. Our transport subsidy has so far provided relief for over 20,000 of our people daily as they pay 50% less for the Omituntun Bus Service. We subsidise the cost with N77 million monthly and currently have 64 buses plying intra and intercity routes.

For the health insurance component, we paid 2024 health insurance coverage for 40,000 pensioners and refunded 2023 payments totalling one hundred and forty-five million, nine hundred and one thousand, three hundred and twenty-eight naira (N145,901,328) to our pensioners. About 150,000 students in State-owned tertiary institutions and 84,000 vulnerable persons are also being enrolled into the Oyo State Health Insurance Agency (OYSHIA) scheme under SAfER.

Our food security and business stimulation components were designed as medium to long-term solutions. For example, we disbursed N1 billion as low-interest loans to 3,525 smallholder farmers. This money will be recycled exponentially subject to repayment, as will the N500 million SAfER for Youth Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness Project (YEAP) enterprise support. We would like to thank banks like the First City Monument Bank (FCMB), who have decided that our youths are worth investing in and are providing matching funding to our YEAP beneficiaries. Still supporting our smallholder farmers, we distributed farm inputs to 6,500 of them.

We also gave 2,085 of our small and micro businesses N500 million as low-interest loans.

We have remained focused on the big picture. We knew that if we were to reduce poverty in rural areas significantly, we needed to open up those areas through road interconnectivity. And so, from Omituntun 1.0, we focused on linking all our zones. We completed the 65 km Moniya-Ijaiye-Iseyin Road, and started the 34.85 km Oyo-Iseyin Road and the 76.67 km Iseyin-Fapote-Ogbomoso Road.

Our people bought into our new ideas for statewide development, and even before we completed these roads, they gave us an overwhelming mandate to continue in March 2023. Mr Speaker Sir, Honourable Members of the House, I am happy to report that we have delivered the Oyo-Iseyin Road and the Iseyin-Fapote-Ogbomoso Road now renamed Adebayo Alao-Akala Memorial Highway in the last year. We have done more. We have also delivered the 12.5 km Challenge-Odo Ona Elewe-Elebu-Apata Road Dualisation, now renamed Theophilus Akinyele Way, and the dualisation of the 8.2 km Agodi Gate-Old Ife Road-Adegbayi Road, including an underpass at Onipepeye area. In total, we completed 152.92 km of road projects in the first year of Omituntun 2.0. We are currently reconstructing the 48 km Ido-Eruwa Road to link Ibadan and Ibarapa Zones among other road projects.

The real impact of these road constructions is that Oyo State is fast becoming a regional agribusiness industrial hub. At the Fasola Agribusiness Industrial Hub, which is located on the Oyo-Iseyin Road, we are hosting agri-industries such as Friesland Campina WAMCO, who have 200 hectares out there for dairy production, Milkin Barn Agro Services Ltd who have 150 hectares for maize cultivation and dairy production, IITA platform Generative and GOSEED Vegetative Ltd with 100 hectares for cassava value chain development.

We also have E4 Farms with 40 hectares for crop and dairy production, Brownhill Farms with 30 hectares for crop production and greenhouses and Zigma Ltd with 37 hectares for cashew production. We have also attracted processors like African Agricultural Tech Foundation (AATF), Flash Agro farm and Trolil International Ltd. And last but not least, we have Agridrive who are big in farm mechanisation.

Just down the same road, we have Oyo Sugarcane Processors Ltd, producers of brown sugar and molasses. Chief Adepoju Olusola is expanding his operations to include a 20-hectare sugarcane plantation at the Fasola Agribusiness Industrial Hub, gingered by the completion of the Oyo-Iseyin Road and the Adebayo Alao-Akala Memorial Highway. These industries located in Fasola provide jobs for our local population. Our modest estimate is that the operations at Fasola will provide 1,500 direct and indirect new jobs and support to 7,000 smallholder farmers. The current cumulative investment of the private sector in that hub is over N10 billion. This is expected to grow to N20 billion within the next year.

We took a different approach to agricultural development and we continue in this trajectory. Our Oyo State Land Tractorisation Subsidy scheme is designed to reach real farmers. And this is why we enlisted 123 Extension Officers in all 33 LGAs to ensure that our farmers have direct access to the tractors. We are also deploying technology to make the process of requesting and accessing this intervention seamless.

For the distribution of farm inputs, we designed a data-driven distribution system that started with the biometric capture of farmers. It is on record that the World Bank saw our system and decided to adopt it as the NG-CARES model. In the past year, we have distributed farm inputs to 2,573 smallholder farmers in 15 Local Government Areas.

We continue to be first in policy formulation and implementation. So, in October 2023, I signed Executive Order No. 1 of 2023 on the Protection of Mining Communities Against Insecurity and Exploitation in Oyo State into law. This is the first such law anywhere in Nigeria—the first ever. With this executive order in place, mining communities in Oyo State can now better benefit from the responsible exploitation of solid minerals within the State.

We have also used the State SPV, the Pacesetter Mineral Development Corporation (PDMC), to acquire 23 new mineral titles. We are working on acquiring even more through the Oyo State Mineral Development Agency (OYSMIDA). Oyo State will continue to play a huge role in the sale and development of solid minerals in Nigeria. You are aware that the first International Gemstone Market in Nigeria is located here in Oyo State, at Akinyele Local Government Area.

To further support our plans to ensure our State benefits from the huge deposits of solid minerals, we are working on completing the head office for PMDC at Jericho, Ibadan. The structure, which will serve as an operational base for solid mineral mining development in Oyo State, is already 80% complete.

Our fourth focus area for the economic development of our dear State is Tourism. Last April, we hosted the world at an International Tourism Summit, signalling our administration’s readiness to foster partnerships with the private sector. Our plan is to continue working to make Oyo State the destination for heritage, bleisure, and agritourism through direct and indirect investments in the sector. We recently signed an MoU with a private investor to upgrade the Agodi Gardens into an international standard botanical garden. Our soon-to-be-completed Omololu Olunloyo Park will be the first of many such leisure facilities to drive internal tourism in our dear State.

The other three pillars upon which our Roadmap for Sustainable Development 2023-2027 is built have not been left out. In Education, we completed the College of Agricultural Sciences and Renewable Natural Resources campus, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) Iseyin. We have also approved the recruitment of 7,000 teachers into Oyo State public primary schools and 100 caregivers for special needs schools. Just two days ago, I also approved the recruitment of an additional 7,000 teachers by TESCOM for our public secondary schools. This is the highest number of recruitments by any administration in Oyo State at any given time. 

With your approval, Mr Speaker, Honourable Members of the House, I appointed a Special Adviser on Education Intervention. He has been mandated to conduct needs assessments in public primary and secondary schools in the State to identify schools for infrastructural interventions. You will also recall that starting with the 2024 Budget, we allocated fifteen billion naira (N15,000,000,000.00) annually for infrastructural renewal (classrooms and basic infrastructure) in public primary and secondary Schools in Oyo State. This, along with consistent payment of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) counterpart funds, will help us significantly reduce the infrastructural deficit in our public schools. We will start with renovating 70 schools during the upcoming long holiday so that our children in those schools return to classes with no infrastructural deficit.

In healthcare, we have continued to demonstrate that we deserve to remain the State of firsts. Just over a week ago, I was privileged to commission the first Solarised Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) Oxygen Plant at Jericho Specialist Hospital and State Hospital Oyo. This project, facilitated by UNICEF, CHAI, NACA, HIS Towers, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in collaboration with the Canadian and Norwegian governments, will reduce morbidity and mortality due to hypoxaemia in Oyo State by addressing the key barriers which limit access to high-quality diagnostics and medical oxygen delivery systems in health facilities. In the first year of Omituntun 2.0, we completed the upgrade of General Hospital Aremo, Ibadan and equipped 264 primary healthcare centres, including the ones upgraded under Omituntun 1.0.

We are in the process of recruiting 232 doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and medical laboratory scientists and the exit replacement of health workers who left the service from 2021 till date. This ensures that our public healthcare service does not continue to be incapacitated by a lack of personnel.

Also, speaking of firsts, our administration was able to attract the first gas supply and distribution infrastructure in the State, which will deliver gas to industrial and commercial users. The final investment agreement for this $100 million project has been signed, and its completion date is Q4 2025.

Indeed, Oyo State is fostering an industrial revolution through deliberate plans and strategic action. Earlier in the year, we were in Morrocco and returned with a multi-million-dollar deal. Africorp, a multinational with diverse business interests in agro-industries, mining, education, mattress production, wood carpentry, and PET recycling, will set up its factory here in Ibadan.

Next week, we are off to Asia.

We know that the only way to get our people out of poverty and into prosperity is by increasing productivity. We must attract big businesses into our State and enable them to set up shop not just in one zone but all the zones of our dear State.

The 2022 report on multidimensional poverty in Nigeria, the first such report ever produced, stated that 5 out of every ten people in Oyo State are living in poverty. We are determined that the next time such a report is produced, Oyo State will have taken a huge leap forward and lifted millions more out of poverty. This is our promise. This is our pledge.

Mr Speaker Sir, Honourable Members of the House, economic prosperity would mean nothing in an insecure environment. We have continued to prioritise the safety of our people. In the first year of Omituntun 2.0, we supported the security agencies with the resources they need to continue to keep our dear State safe and secure. We procured and handed over 135 additional operational vehicles fully equipped with modern communication gadgets.

One year down, three more to go.

By the grace of God, we will continue to build strong institutions in our dear State. I call them institutions for posterity. We now have the Oyo State Mobilisation Agency for Socio-Economic Development (OYMASED), the Oyo State Project Monitoring Agency, the Oyo State Rule of Law Authority, the Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency (OYSADA), the Oyo State Anti-Corruption Agency (OYACA) and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. We are also strategising to position the Water Corporation of Oyo State for sustainable growth. These are the institutions of the future. These institutions will play pivotal roles in the engineering of a modern Oyo State, working with existing ministries, departments, and agencies.

Thank you, and God bless you.

Seyi Makinde

13 June 2023