Integration will change Southwest


Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi spoke with editors of The Nation when he visited the Lagos Corporate Headquarters of Vintage Press Limited on Southwest regional economic integration, the minimum wage debacle, challenge of governance, the proposed constitution amendment and clamour for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC). Excerpts:
Minimum wage
There is no conspiracy against the national minimum wage. It has not received the most necessary critical analysis by the media and politicians. For us in the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), we believe that we should pay the National Minimum Wage. But we are also bound by the agreement of the Governors Forum with the Nigeria Labour Congress that it should be paid in a manner that reflects the realities and peculiarities of the state. I think that is what we are trying to achieve.
There are issues. Fourteen governors were not part of the decision that produced the National Minimum Wage that was announced by the President, because we were not part of the negotiation that culminated into it. That does not mean that government is not a continuum or that we cannot inherit assets and liabilities. N18,000 is not too much; it is not up to a living wage. One hundred and twenty dollars is not a living wage; but payment should reflect the reality in the various states and zones.
The minimum wage principle, which was pioneered by United Kingdom, is to protect the interest of workers that are either not tenured or workers in the lowest cadre. The governirs do not have problem with Level one to six. Where it breaks down is where 100 per cent increment is replicated for Levels Nine  to 17. Labour did not want to compromise that.

Our strategy in Ekiti
In Ekiti, I brought NLC chairman to the Fiscal Allocation Committee meeting to see the financial situation of the state. I exposed the comrade chairman of NLC in Ekiti to the financial books; the IGR, the federal allocation. After two meetings, he refused to come again. He said it was not his job to come to that meeting and that I as the governor should look for the money to pay the minimum wage.
I have done much for workers since I assumed the reins. I have restored car loans, housing loans. I was the first to pay relativity wage in the Southwest. I obliged the demands of medical doctors and health workers.
What exactly constitutes minimum wage? In Ekiti, we have the policy of reducing tuition for students, who are children of workers; teachers, civil servants and others.  Before, they paid N150,000 a tuition in the state-owned university. Some have two children, amounting to N300,000.  They now pay N50,000 for each child, thus saving N200,000. Where should that social benefit be reflected? Is that part of the minimum wage or not? How should we classify that?  That aspect is never included in the debate. We provide free health, free education , social security for the elderly. There is 200 per cent cut from tuition. We need a holistic debate on this issue. It is not that governors do not want to pay.  There is a difference between a case of “won’t pay and can’t pay. I need to do everything to make sure that I make life easier for our workers.
In Ekiti, we had settled for relativity wage, which other states in the Southwest have latched on to. In Ekiti, the minimum wage was N9,000. When we did relativity, it came N13,000. From N9,000 to N18,000, that is hundred percent increase.  At that, the implication is that every month, we will be paying N200 million more. Where it breaks down is where you now ask governors to prorate the senior cadre; from Level Seven to 17 and replicate that 100  per cent increase. That is the problem. It is not that governors are opposed to it. Labour, on the other hand, is fighting for the interest of workers. NLC wants it reflected for all the workers.
But we are also confronted with the campaign promises that we made. It is not a zero sum game and not one against the other. but the reality is that we made those promises and we must fulfill them. Infrastructure development is not cheap. Social service is not cheap. But if I use almost 80 percent of the resources of Ekiti State servicing less that a 100,000 workers, it is not sustainable. Apart from  Lagos and Ogun, which are not borrowing money to pay, in the Southwest, I am the only one that is so affected.
I told workers that I wanted to do integrated bio-metric pay roll system, they were up in arms because they know what will come up at the end of the exercise. The salary bill of Ekiti should not be what it is now. Even, if I pay all the minimum wage, it should not be up to that. Something somewhere must be tackled and you need some level of boldness to do what is not popular, but it has to be tackled.

Regional Integration
One of the things we need to do is to come together. Interestingly, Ekiti became the template that others decided to use. Lagos and Ogun are slightly different. But the four of us came together: Edo, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo; and we compared the figures and we reached a level of understanding. We discovered that our labour leaders always played us against one another. They would go to Ondo and say, Ekiti is already paying this or that. We had to agree on a fixed amount, rather than a prorated percentage amount for the rest of workers from Level Seven to 17. But it became a problem in Osun because Osun has not done relativity before the minimum wage debate. Ekiti had done it. Oyo quickly followed. Osun has now done it. That is part of the peer learning that has to happen to strengthen the workforce.  The public service across the board is poor. There is a high level of de-motivation; there is no interest beyond salary. [b]In Ekiti, one of the first things I started was that nobody should be automatically promoted in the service. The practice is that when you spend three years on level seven, you move to the next stage. Once I said the senior permanent secretaries would take examinations to become the Head of Service, everybody woke up. They knew that I was not going to choose anybody that is politically close to me. So, there was examination for the civil service. I called Prof. Ladipo Adamolekun from the World Bank and requested him to do the exam for the senior permanent secretaries. He did it and the person who came first became the Head of Service. Everybody was shocked. By the time we did the examination for the remaining permanent secretaries, those who failed were asked to leave. It was clear that they were leaving because they did not pass the exams. They were not happy, but it became a standard practice. By the time I got to the school principals, they accepted it a ‘Fayemi’s way’ and that they must do exams before they move to the next level. I believe that, gradually, things are going to improve. You cannot make it a one-way traffic. You cannot say people should do exams, if you don’t provide the right incentive to work with. That is part of what we are doing to change the tone and improve governance, including establishing an Institute of Governance for public servants, similar to what we had in Adebayo Adedeji’s Institute of Public Administration in those days for the training of civil servants. So, that is something we have decided to collectively share. [/b]
There are other aspects that are critical to the peer learning process. We have decided to set up a technical committee to look at the mechanics of working together. We also decided that we must have somebody in charge of regional integration in each of our states. We all have things to share with one another, whether it is Abiye Maternal Programme in Ondo or the infrastructural development in Lagos, or job initiatives in Osun and Ekiti. We have things we can share. We decided at that meeting that, if we need to work together, we had to embrace the entire, original Western Region; from Lagos to Delta, rather than from Lagos to Ekiti. The regional economic integration is more concentrated, apart from the institutional development. Areas of cooperation cover power, integrated development, infrastructural development, and agriculture. We can make faster progress in all of those areas, instead of sticking to governance framework alone, though that will not be excluded.

Education
I don’t agree with the suggestion of dramatic consolidation of our tertiary system. Who would like to associate with the three glorified secondary schools, which we called universities? Not even Lagos, with all its resources, has three universities. Lagos has LASU and it is still struggling. Rivers has  University of Science and Technology. It is still struggling. Ondo state had two, but it has to step down the Science and Technology one that started under Agagu. There is Ambrose Ali University in Edo and DELSU in Abraka (Delta). Ogun has two; Tai Solarin University of Education and Olabisi Onabanjo University. Go and look at what is happening to education in Ogun. I am not suggesting that we cannot have many more universities than we have in Ekiti. But, if we do, it should be a conscious effort to turn Ekiti to the Massachusetts of Nigeria and where we actually export qualitative education and people come there for that purpose. Even in the Massachusetts we are talking about, of the 100 or so universities that are there, only about six are state-owned. others are private. They are doing very well, but they are private universities. And we felt that there was no need of keeping three universities, just in name only. It was not our decision per see. The education summit that we put together came up with that.

Secondary education
We did not just do it at the university level, we also consolidated at the secondary level. We are probably the first state that did that in the country. We put together the junior and senior secondary schools in Ekiti. In my own old school (Christ School), we had four principals and they were fighting one another. It is the first school in Ekiti. They were even fighting over who would collect the rent for social events because they rent out the premises for social events every weekend. The junior school principal would say they were using part of his premises in the same school for social events. It became a major impediment. I asked the Minister of Education, when I visited her why we don’t have this artificial division in federal government colleges. She said ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why they do it in the states too, but I think what you have done is right and I will recommend it to other states’. That has necessitated the reduction in the number of principals in those schools, and “demoting” some of them to vice principal status.
Again, this is not unique. When we were in school in the past, somebody could be a Vice Principal in Christ School and become a principal in Ayede Grammar School. It was the grade of the school that determined what you are and the status you carried as a principal. These are the things we just need to make clear to our people, even if they are unhappy about it. No doubt, a lot of people are not happy about the steps I have taken on this issue, but I am convinced this is the right way to go to have quality education.

Infrastructure in the universities
At the same time, we are looking at the question of infrastructure. We just advertised the position of the Vice Chancellor in the University of Ekiti now. And I have literarily handed off beyond the subvention we have increased to the university. I was determined to put together a Governing Council worth its name, not just appointing politicians who would go and collect contracts. So, I chose somebody I have a lot of respect for, not just because he is an old boy of my school, but because he knows much about education as the Chairman of the Governing Council, Prof.Jide Osuntokun. Other members are Prof. Pat Utomi, Dr Kole Shetima of the MacArthur Foundation, Prof. Agbede of UNILAG Law Faculty. I know that such people will turn the university around. Even, the university can generate resources, even, with the N50,000 that we reduced the fees to. The first problem is that Ekiti State University does not know the number of students that are in the university. So, how do you plan? I asked the Vice Chancellor: Can you give me the five-year strategic plan for this university? They did not have. This is the university where every money is depleted quickly, but the research fund is never touched because nobody applied for it. So, I believe we really need to do something drastic about it. And that is why we arrived at the  decision to consolidate the university. It will be tough, but with determination, we can turn around the fortune of the university, particularly if we can get a solid academic, not a VC without a CV, into the position of Vice Chancellor to run the place.

Row over federal university
It is one of the impediments resulting from the flawed federalism. The federal government wanted to set up universities in the six zones. They approached the governors to suggest the location. I did not suggest my village as many of my colleagues did. I said, given the spread of educational facilities in the state, it is better to locate it in the northern part of the state, where the largest community is Ikole. That was the town I suggested and that was what the minister, Kenneth Gbagi, took away to the federal government. It was surprising to me to hear that they had taken it to Oye. I refused. I thought it was not just about location,  it was also about the authority of the governor in a federal system. Yes, you can give me a gift, but I should have a say in the way the gift is managed. But this is not a gift. We are also part of this federation. I don’t see it as a gift in that sense. I was put in an invidious situation because where they decided to put the university happens to be my own local government. So, my people felt that I was undermining my local government. I felt one must be fair in whatever he does. At the end of the day, it was resolved that the university, which focuses on agriculture, engineering and bio-technology, should be split between the two communities, Ikole and Oye, in a win-win situation for us in Ekiti.

Local government elections
The question of council poll is a very important one. The election that took place, which they called local government election in Ekiti, ACN did not take part in it in December 2008. We protested. We went to court. We decided that an incohate electoral agency cannot organise a legitimate election. It was also done outside of the time provided for under the electoral law. We won that case eventually. The only reason we have not had local government elections in Ekiti was because we did not have electoral body. Why didn’t we have electoral body? The electoral commission is one of the statutory bodies in the Nigerian constitution. Those who were members of the commission under Mr Oni took me to court, saying that they were statutory appointees and should be allowed to serve out their tenure. There was no way I could have allowed something to be put on nothing. If the person who appointed you had been declared illegal, how can I then concur with the idea that you must stay in office? I would be condoning illegality.   Consequently, there was a decision in their favour and we paid them off for the remaining period they were to remain in office, in order for us to be able to appoint a new set of commissioners. We are in a position to hold the elections within the next couple of months. In fact, the elections won’t be later than January.

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/politics/20143-integration-will-change-southwest.html

I like this dude

. . . . . all that remains is Delta . . . .

I have no problem with Kayode Fayemi. At least not yet.

Fayemi is walking the talk for now. . . I hope other laggards are learning.