As a politician, Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa, governor ofDelta State, has paid his dues to merit his present position. Before hiselection in 2015 as governor of the oil-rich state, Okowa, a medicaldoctor-turned-politician, had a four-year stint from May 29, 2011 as senatorrepresenting his Delta North senatorial district in the National Assembly. Hewas however, neither an accidental politician nor an opportunistic one who, outof sheer inordinate ambition, would climb the political ladder from the top atthe risk of either failing to achieve his goal, or going into oblivion soonafter the office. The Ika-born politician began his political journey from thelowest rung of the political ladder, and at the grassroots level as acouncillor and Secretary to the Ika Local Government council. Taking one stepat a time, he later served at various times as chairman of Ika North-east localgovernment council, and as commissioner for agriculture and natural resources,water resources development, and health in the administration of the thengovernor, James Onanefe Ibori. In June 2007, he became secretary to the stategovernment in the administration of his predecessor, Emmanuel Eweta Uduaghan, afterwhich he proceeded to the National Assembly as senator. Surviving all odds andpolitical intrigues, Okowa emerged the flag-bearer of his party, the PeoplesDemocratic Party, PDP, December 8, 2014, and went ahead to win the April 2015governorship election. Today, Okowa is into his second term in office and hesays all the exposure, influence, and experiences he had garnered in his pastpositions “helped to build me for much better governance”. In this interviewwith the TELL team of Dejo Oyawale, chief operating officer, Adekunbi Ero, executive editor, and Tony Manuaka, deputy general editor,Okowa who was the mid-wife of the National Health Act, boasts that as at today,Delta State has over 500,000 enrolees on its NHIS, the highest in the country.Telling his success story in peace building and provision of infrastructure,the soft-spoken governor who turns 60 this July 8, said though oil productionhad increased in the state from October 2017 till date leading to increasedrevenue for the state, he believes “we can produce more oil if illegal oilbunkering taking place now is reduced to the barest minimum”. He also spokeabout the herdsmen/farmers conflict, local government economy and his developmentprogrammes.
You are in your second term in office and we know youcame into office with a five-point agenda with the acronym SMART. How far wereyou able to realize these goals in your first term?
In the first instance, I want to score us high and the reason is because when we first came in, we met a very difficult situation because beyond what we met on ground, Nigeria was largely in a state where our economy was really, really very bad; and shortly afterward, we went into recession, so you understand that it wasn’t quite easy. You’ll recall at the initial time, up to as many as 34 states of the nation could not even pay salaries of which Delta State was one of them. I’ll give you an instance. When I came in, the first Monday, I was in the office, and I was given the financial situation; I knew that I had a big challenge in my hands because while I have a salary burden of N7.4 billion, I had a balance at the end of the month after they had deducted the monies that are being paid to the bank which was to be on a regular basis, of N5.2 billion. I had only N2.8 billion left, and I had a salary bill of N7.4b. So, projecting into the future, it was a situation that one could say was quite confusing what I ought to do. But by God’s grace, we were able to go through that, managed the situation, working with the public service, working with the labour unions, and we got ourselves through all that, and things started to improve two years after. So, going down the road and looking at what we have been able to achieve, that’s why I thought that we could score ourselves high.
Interms of jobs and wealth creation, which was the first on our agenda, a lot hasbeen done. We’ve been able to build confidence in our youths. There’s still alot to be done; a lot of youths are still unengaged, unemployed out there. Butthe fact that you are able to take out a lot of them, several thousands of themfrom the unemployment market, we’re beginning to see hope; and life is allabout hope. Once you are able to see hope, you find that you are able to striveto be a success story going forward. Through our wealth creation programmes, wehad to start up what we call a skills training entrepreneurship programme, andthe youths agriculture entrepreneurship programme through which we train a fewthousands of youths. And we also, through legislation, brought in the technicalvocation education board; it was within the first few weeks and months that webrought this in. And through our vocational system, we have trained severalthousands of our youths in various vocational centres.
Andwe have paid special attention to technical education. Yes, we have sixtechnical colleges in the state at the moment; the six of them were in very badstate. Because of our attention to technical education, we have actuallyrevamped the six technical colleges and gotten accreditation from the relevantboard for all our courses. In fact, when they came in, I met them in Kwale whenthey were actually going round the various colleges and they asked what themagic was, and I told them there was no magic. It was just that we felt thattechnical education was good for our people because when you are able to toolthe kids with skills along with their normal studies, it helps to improve theirfunctionality. And we’re hoping too that many of them would move into thepolytechnics and continue their entrepreneurial studies with an entrepreneurialmind; and they are likely going to come out a success story in the future. So,we’re doing that very reasonably and we think we’ve had a success story.
We have had a lot of programmes for our farmers, reaching out to them in their various farms, and providing them with support services. We’re also part of the anchor programme of the Federal government, working with them; and that has helped. Then we have paid particular attention to oil-palm development and aquaculture development; and in these two areas, we have had success stories both with the youths and with the more elderly farmers. It’s helped to impact the people because in whatever you do in governance, if there is no inclusiveness of the people, then you’re going wrong. The oil economy generally, is good. Yes, we’re an oil-rich state; but if you are not able to farm out development in such a way that it gets to impact on the lives of the ordinary Deltan, you will not have brought the impact of the oil economy to the people.
