You have been on this job for quite sometime now, how will you describe the experience?

Let me say that the experience has been challenging. You want to perform as chairman, you want to bring the dividend of democracy to your people and at the same time you still want to do a lot of things to make people happy with you, so, I want to say that it has been very challenging .The most interesting part of it is that there is a challenge for you to do things that will be enduring and I want to thank God who has been helping me as the chairman of  the present administration in this local government and we thank God that we have been doing things to really bring the dividend of democracy to the people of the local government.

You came from a working environment that is a bit different from this present one, as a newcomer then, what are those challenges that confronted you when you joined politics?

Well, the challenge is such that as lecturer, you find out that you are dealing with students and there is this fear that you are a lecturer. There is this air of confidence that you have around you .There is this air of control that you have around you that yes you are in control of the situation and then you expect that people will respect you but in political terrain, it is not like that .You have a set of people who believe that they are the one who put you there and you should fear them rather than them having fear for you. So it is a different ball game all together but one thing is common to the two terrains and the common thing is that you are relating with people and my experience as a lecturer has helped me to understand the psychology of human beings. At least I was a lecture in a tertiary institution not a primary school or secondary school. So, I really understand the psychology of people and that has been helping me in the political terrain.

Do you think your administration has impacted positively on the lives of the people of the local government?

There have been a lot of questions along this line I must confess to you. We have impacted positively on the lives of our people. Many projects have been executed to make life more meaningful to our people. The projects are so numerous that you even forget them easily .The present administration of which I am the chairman has executed projects in almost every area that you can think of. When you talk about works, transport, roads, culvert and drainages, opening up of roads, purchases and all that, education, health, poverty alleviation and youth empowerment and capacity building. I want to say we have done excellently well to provide the exact needs of our people for them and it may be difficult for me to be listing the projects one after the other. At least on a count we have done asphaltic tarring of not less than 11 roads spread round the local government. Two are on-going presently. We have done street lights in four of the major communities except one. In agriculture, we have distributed implements, fertilizer, cassava sticks, chemicals and other things needed to enhance productivity of our farmers. I can go on and on and I want to thank God that honestly we have touched almost every area.

How easy or difficult has it been to finance these projects?

We want to thank the Federal government because all financial commitments come from the federal government especially with the introduction of eco-fund and excess crude oil fund. That is what has been helping the local government to achieve some of its objectives. Unfortunately with the melt-down, it has not been that easy. This year in particular has been very bad. But with the little resources that have accrued to the local government we have been able to achieve a lot. Boluwaduro local government is number 5 from the bottom of the table in terms of statutory monthly allocation we are number 5 from the bottom out of 31, Area Office inclusive so you can see the stress that we have but with one’s vision, with one’s determination, with one’s mission that look I want to achieve something, I want to leave something that when my children and grand children come they will tell them that when your father was the chairman, he was the one who did this and that and I am telling you that is the greatest challenge I have and  I cannot afford to fail. I must leave those positive legacies so I have been managing with the little resources that accrue to the local government

The agitation is on for the resources coming to the local government to be increased but some people are saying that the resources that have gone to the local government have not been judiciously used, how do we reconcile this?

We have been having bad stories like that. Infact there was a period when there was this clamor for the scrapping of local governments in the country I am not going to lend my voice to that. Honestly, the local government is the closest to the grassroot and that is where you need uttermost development so it should not be scrapped. It is most unfortunate that perhaps some local government chairmen are not performing and that has to do with individual so it does mean that all the local government chairmen are not performing. I am sorry to say this but it is fact and truism it is not all the states governors that are also performing very well. Even we have times that people criticize even the president saying the budget has not been implemented properly and this and that. So it doesn’t mean that the issue of non-performance is peculiar to local government alone. There are some local government in the East and the North that receive double of what we receive here especially in the states where they have derivation and Lagos where IGR is even up to the statutory allocation of a local government in Osun state so when you talk in terms of performance there may be some people who may not be doing very well I think it has to do with the orientation of such people. They don’t have the right orientation. If they have the right orientation they will know that your reputation is at stake. People talk about Awolowo now because of the positive legacies he left behind and that is much more than money because when you have money, you spend it but your reputation is from one generation to the other. Awolowo had died now how many years back but his memory still lingers. His children, grand-children, the great-grand-children are enjoying that name. I think if anybody in position sees from that point of view, he or she will want to perform very well. It is quite unfortunate for those people who have not been performing and I think efforts have to be put in place to ensure that they do what the constitution require of them. If you are elected to a post, it is not for you personally but for you to serve the people and if you are not serving the people you are not doing justice. God will even be annoyed with such a person because it is only God that knows how man gets to a position in life.

You just spoke about IGR, what are you doing to ensure that you generate more money to augment the dwindling resources coming from the central government?

Well there have been a lot of hues and cries about the issue of increasing our Internally Generated Revenue and in our local government here you can see that it is not too urban. It is still towards the local grassroot of a thing and then 90% of our people are farmers. But despite this we are looking for ways to increase our IGR. One way we are looking at now is agriculture .Unfortunately agriculture is not something that can bring dividend quickly unlike oil. What we are trying to do is to leave a legacy whereby we will have something for the coming administration to boost their IGR. One of the areas we are looking at is to plant 5,000 stands of teak. Teak is a very useful tree .Though we know the gain coming from this will pass our administration but the incoming administration by the time they fell these trees and sell, it will bring money for them. We have a fish pond that is stock with about 5,000 fingerlings we crop them and sell and it brings money for us .There is also a plan to jump-start an Agro-Allied Processing Industry whereby a lot of our people who cultivate cassava we will get the produce from them process it when the industry fully come on stream and sell a lot of things then we will be able to make a lot of money .Apart from all other means of generating income like licenses ,building plans ,wedding ceremonies, identification letters and all that. Unfortunately, people are not too well educated so to say around this place so we have this Community Development Service Charge which is just N100 but how people are paying it? And this is something everybody is supposed to pay.

Boluwaduro has population of over 70,000 people, if 30,000 people pay this levy then we have N3, 000,000 but how many of our people are ready to pay this money? If you erect a signboard you are suppose to pay but how many of our people are doing this, if you build house, you are suppose to pay tenement rate. All these things are normal in a civilized setting but how many people pay here and when you go to meet them, it becomes something else .What we are trying to do right now is to engage the services of a consultant who will do the job. The duty of the consultant will be to go round, get all the money and with that we hope we will be able to generate something but the fact needs to be told here without assistance from the federal government can we see any local government that can survive on IGR? The answer is no. How much is this IGR even in a year. It is not like what we have in Lagos where IGR is even more than the statutory allocation here. It is very low here how much can you generate in a year? if you want to do a road now of 200 meters it will run to millions it can not be less than N5, 000,000 or N8, 000,000.So when you now calculate how much IGR you raised in a year may be N5, 000,000 that money will not be able to do one road so how many road are going to do in how many years. Unless we want to deceive ourselves the idea of IGR is good .You struggle to generate IGR but without assistance from the federal government, we are just deceiving ourselves.

Otan-Aiyegbaju, the headquarters of your local government owing to its topography is facing very serious environmental challenges like erosion. What are you doing to see to this?

We have been liaising with the state government especially in construction of drainages. It is quite unfortunate here that there is nothing we can do but to create drainages. The reason is that all the houses are close unlike where you have  because of the terrain where we have free flow of water except you have large drainages and the state government has been helping us as regards that and except we want to go into tree planting there is little or nothing that we can do. The state government has actually been assisting us in the area of drainages and I believe we are handling the situation well and the battle against erosion in Otan-Aiyegbaju is gradually being won.

It was heard some months ago that the legislative arm of this local government was at loggerhead with the executive arm. It was also said that your official car was stolen as a fall-out of the crisis; can you shed light on what actually happened?         

Well, as regards my relationship with the legislative arm of government you see in democracy there is balance of political power, there is executive power and there is legislative power. The legislative arm is to check the excess of the executive. Of course there are times when you have disagreement and honestly I have had disagreement with my legislative arm but you see we have been able to resolve our issues because it is still a family matter. When the executive and legislative arms of the local government are not working together the people will suffer so the disagreement we had, we have had time to sit down and resolve issues ourselves. When it comes to business, we do business, when it comes to play we play. We have had times to disagree but we have been able to still come together to dialogue again in love and oneness.

And the stolen vehicle?

Well, you know the situation in Nigeria now; robbers are everywhere, we only thank God that ones life was not stolen but the situation in Nigeria now call for urgent attention of the security operatives. The federal government will need to declare a state of emergency in the area of security in this country. The government has been making a lot of noise on re-branding there is nothing bad in re-branding but like some people say you can’t re-brand a bad product. You have to make the product good to make it sellable. So my car was stolen. The robbers followed me where I was going and then snatched the car .They also snatched the car of my colleague, the Chairman Ifedayo local government. We only thank God they didn’t snatch our lives. Of course the insurance company is already making moves to see that we get new cars because we have insurance cover for those cars and they have put machinery in motion to ensure that they get us new ones.

And there was no nexus between the fight with the councilors and the incident of stolen car?

No there was no connection not at all. The quarrel that I have with the legislative arm is not to that extent. You see we can disagree on issues and later sit down together and resolve these issues. It is not connected to the theft incident at all.

Your party PDP in a couple of days will be involved in two re-run elections in Osogbo state constituency and Ife/Ijesa Senatorial District, how will you rate the chances of your party?

I rate the chances very high. The party is already putting machinery in motion to ensure that we are successful in the election and I believe we will have big success by the grace of God. We have been trying our best the party is trying its best through the efforts of the state governor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola. He has been doing a lot of welfarist programmes even Senator Omisore of recent distributed a lot of items in order to alleviate poverty and he started also recently I think about N250 million micro-credit loan scheme which he gave to people to empower them. I think he has been doing very well and I think that will surely rub-off positively on the image of the party which will eventually earn us success at the poll.

Another election year is approaching talking about 2011, your party is still in court over the last gubernatorial election, do you see PDP wining 2011 election with landslide in Osun state?

By the grace of God I see us wining. Like I said, the governor has been doing well. It may not be possible to score 100% because every human being is fallible. Even if we have AC government in Osun state, they cannot score 100%. A person can only do his best and leave the rest since governance is a continuous process but in the sectors like education, construction of roads, tourism, starting off of the free- trade zone, the governor has done well and that is what the people want. Once you bring the dividend of democracy to them, then next you ask for their votes they give the votes to you. The AC has been playing opposition which is normal, it is very normal to have opposition in democracy. The only problem I have with them is that they have been playing their opposition wrongly in the area of sending wrong signals and lies. When you want to play opposition it doesn’t mean that you will not see anything good in the government .Where you see good you will say fine he has done well here where you the government performs poorly, you criticize constructively that is opposition and not that you will not see anything good at all in this government that is not opposition. Their own opposition has been done with lies, falsehood and forgery which is criminal and you cannot through that take over government it is not possible .To take over government you need people they have their own supporters too. By 2011 by the grace of God Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola will be handing over to another PDP man as the state governor by the grace of God. That is not to say that we do not have our areas of problem yes we do of course when you have a large party like PDP you must surely have problems but the party knows how to solve its problems. It is not as if we have done everything right. There are still areas where we have problems but I am very sure that when such occasion arises, we call ourselves together and solve our problems and will go ahead. By the grace of God PDP will come out victorious in 2011 by the special grace of God.

Today you call the shot as the chairman of Boluwaduro local government, in the next dispensation where do you see yourself?

I see myself where God sees me. In the first place I never knew I was going to come here. I have been on lecturing job for close to 15 years. I had the vision then and God answered my prayers and it came to pass. Of course I have made advancement for the House of Representatives to represent my federal constituency in the lower chamber of the National Assembly. I believe young people like us can make a difference in the scheme of things if given a chance to show the stuff we are made of. I am praying and hoping that God will do the best for me at the end of the day.