Back in his home state Ekiti, having garnered wealth of experience working under three governors in Lagos, Dr. John Moyo Ekundayo, now Special Adviser/Director-General, Office of Transformation and Service Delivery (OTSD), in the Ekiti State Government, speaks with Gboyega Alaka on Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji’s two years focused and accelerated impact, the role of his office, which has seen him get denigrated and praised, and an ongoing mind-shifting mission to re-orientate the public service workers for better productivity.
You are Special Adviser/Director-General, Office of Transformation and Service Delivery, in the Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji administration in Ekiti State. Tell us about it. Is it a new creation or an already existing office?
No, the position, Special Adviser/Director General Office of Transformation and Service Delivery, OTSD, is not a new creation. It was created in 2012 during the first term of the former Governor John Kayode Fayemi. It came about as a result of a reform recommended by the DFID (Department for International Development) of the United Kingdom. They did a lot of introspection into the civil service and came up with the idea of having an office that will coordinate the policies, strategies, programmes and projects of government, so that there would be service delivery. In essence, it was to oversee all what the ministries, departments, agencies of government were doing to contribute to the execution of the strategic trust of the government in power. The Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji (BOA) administration came up with six strategic actionable pillars, which I’m sure we will be talking about in the course of this interview. Our office is to oversee how well things are going, what are the milestones? What are the targets; what do we need to do? What are we not doing right? What are we doing right that we should intensify efforts on?
How is this office different from the one you occupied in Lagos until recently?
Yes, I was Director, Monitoring and Evaluation in Lagos State under the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget (MEPB). I became the head of that department, which will have to prepare what is called pre-payment certification, without which no payment can be made, and it doesn’t matter who you know. I oversaw that department, working under Govs. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), Akinwunmi Ambode and the incumbent, Babajide Sanwo-Olu for six years before retiring in January 2021. Basically, that department monitors the programmes/projects of the government, evaluates them, reports back to the government, looking at certain indices and milestones, and then recommends for payment. Hitherto before the inception of that department, there were agencies of government that were not actually executing their projects who wanted payment and were getting payments. But since that department came up in Lagos, hardly will you see any of the projects being abandoned in the state. The pace may be slow, maybe due to the contractor not measuring up, but that could also lead to him being blacklisted.
What then are the responsibilities of OSTD in Ekiti?
What I was doing in Lagos is a subset of what I am doing in Ekiti now. Monitoring and Evaluation is just one component of what we do in the Office of Transformation and Service Delivery. Our main mandate is to oversee the policy trust of the government, and especially the six strategic agenda or pillars of the administration. We are to monitor, track, evaluate the progress of the processes of achieving these strategic agenda – what works, what doesn’t work, why it doesn’t work; and make a report. Already, we have carried out two evaluations, evaluating the appointees, the special advisers, the commissioners; prior to the evaluation, we set out on what is called pre-evaluation interface or parley, where we met with them and let them know the metrics with which we would be evaluating them. In the end, some of them complained that ‘hey, you don’t even know the condition under which we’re working, yet you’re asking for results.’ And we capped it up by saying ‘don’t worry, we will visit you’, and we did. We visited 52 MDAs, all of which were not in one place like we have at the Lagos State Secretariat. In fact, after the whole exercise, three of my staff members broke down.
I imagine that this role would put you at loggerheads with other appointees and top officers; how have you managed that?
(Laughs) You are not far from the truth. I remember Mr. Governor telling me at the outset that I ‘Dr. Ekundayo, you will step on toes, but the success of this administration depends on you’. And though I wondered within myself if I was the Head of Service, Chief of Staff or SSG,’ I took the bull by the horns. Of course we were called names – EFCC, ICPC, policemen…; but we were also called some nice names like coach, class captain… But we didn’t allow that to distract, discourage or denigrate us. We focused on the assignment. And I was glad when we met with the governor, because my team actually requested to meet with Mr. Governor, which he graciously granted, and he said to us: ‘You have surpassed my expectation.’ That really encouraged me. But that does not mean that we’re resting on our oars. As far as I am concerned me, we have only scratched the surface.
How would you describe working with Governor Oyebanji?
I will say it has been pleasant working with him, and that is taking cognisance of the challenges. He is a listening governor; he is assessable, friendly, but firm. That he is friendly does not mean he suffers fools gladly. He listens, but then, you have to be sure of your point. Let me also tell you that coming with my experience in Lagos, working in Ekiti is a different ballgame. True it is still a civil service, but different context. There are certain mentalities that we discovered that made us introduce what we call ‘Mind shift’. We discovered that people had fixed mindset, which was against growth or expansion, and which frustrates empowerment, equipping and everything development. So I realised we needed to first sensitise the people; so we called the different levels, including political appointees at different times, and told them it was going to be in series, starting with Mind Shift Series 1.
Speaking of ‘mind shift’, are the people not accusing you of bringing Lagos ‘wahala’ to Ekiti?
Of course, that is expected. I have heard side comments like, ‘this is not Lagos,’ but you know what? After some time, some people started saying, why did this man stay in Lagos for so long? Because we facilitated a lot of positives, such that it is the agencies that are now inviting our people to come and take them on ‘Mind Shift sessions. And I allow them to fly, because they already have the training and part of my PhD thesis is to empower people. Servant leaders empower followers.
Lets’s look at the six pillars.
The six strategic pillars of the Governor Biodun Abayomi administration are: Youth Development and Job Creation – because the bulk of our people are youths and women; the second is Human Capital Development, which is about Education, Health, Social Investment to alleviate poverty in Ekiti; the third is Agriculture and Rural Development; to this effect we have farms up to about 2000 acres through our ‘Bring Back the Youth into Agric’ programme. I was part of the governor’s entourage on Independence Day, when we visited Iyemero, Oke-ako, Gede, Emure Eporo, Ikere, Aramoko Erio, even my own town Ido Ekiti, where we have cluster farming. So the days of Awolowo farm settlement are back in Ekiti, and it is for real. Any journalist can come over to see for themselves. The fourth pillar is Infrastructure and Industrialisation; many roads are being constructed, some have been completed, some are due for commissioning this week and next. We have the ring road being constructed that will round Ado-Ekiti; the phase 1 is ongoing; phase 2 will take off later. Then we have power connections. Many people do not know that there are communities that are not collected to the national grid and have not had power for over ten years, like in Ekiti E, Ayekire, Gbanyin area, and some other local governments. In the course of this second anniversary celebration, the one of Igbara Odo, Ijero will be commissioned, with transformers to communities. Also we have Ero dam, Egbe dam, Oreje dam are all connected to the national grid during this administration. There is also Arts, Culture and Tourism. Our troupe, Ekiti Troup, recently won an award in Brazil as the best. They performed at the Olojo Festival in Ile-Ife recently and the Ooni of Ife was so impressed that he decided to take them to Brazil. In tourism, we are doing well. Ikogosi is not just about the warm spring, it is Ikogosi Warm Resort and we have five star accommodations, international cuisine; and the roads are good now, wherever you’re coming from. Lastly, we have Governance, which is the foundation for everything. Pensioners, under the incumbent governor, are having the best of time. Two months back, he gave out N1billion to pay gratuities; and in the last three days, to mark the administration’s 2nd anniversary, he released N3.5bilion in one day to pensioners, and they were all just happy. Other benefits such as car loans, housing loans have been restored and a lot more are coming to make life better for the people. In all, I give this government a pass mark.
But all this requires huge financing, Ekiti is not among the highest earning states, whether in federal allocation or IGR, how does the government manage?
That is a very salient question; in fact our budget is the least among the 36 states and the FCT. The good thing, however, is that our overall budget performance was 91 percent for budget 2023. Regarding funding, our governor was criticised earlier in this administration for shuttling between Ekiti and Abuja, but thankfully that has begun yielding dividends. Some government agencies like the Fashion and Garment hub from the office of the Vice President, the ICT centre through that same office, have come to Ekiti. Mr. President has been so supportive of the state and this has really helped us in delivering in the area of infrastructure other areas of governance. I also need to mention that when the incumbent governor came in, the IGR of Ekiti was about 600 million naira; but as we speak, we are N1.5 billion per month, and we have not taken off with our Land Use Charge. We already have the law and the governor has sensitised the stakeholders, so it can only get better. Kudos to the Executive Chairman of the Ekiti Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Olaniran Olatona; he was headhunted by Mr. Governor himself, who also gave him autonomy.
Is Ekiti looking at producing just food crops for food security or exploring cash crops to earn foreign currency and make farming worth the while of the young farmers?
It’s both. We are also targeting tree crops. We have an investor, already the Governor and the Commissioner of Agric is aware, who wants to invest in oil palm massively. And Mr. Governor is saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll give you land. That’s part of the appeal he made to the traditional rulers during the budget stakeholders engagement in Aramoko, Ifaki and Ilawe, where he told them ‘please give us land’. So the government is ready to clear free of charge, give seedling and also off take. Prior to this time, some people would come from Ibadan, Ilorin, and other places and give our farmers stipends, because they know they had difficulties accessing credit. Thank God we have cooperatives in Ekiti now, where there is funding, so farmers only need to join cooperatives to access capital. We also have investors who are interested in big time farming – tree crops such as cashew, oil palm, cocoa. Rice farming is also on. Our rice is what they carry to other areas and call ofada rice. We have low land rice, we have upland rice in Ekiti; all these are things we want to rejig. The governor has promised to build houses, complete with all amenities and infrastructure like solar light, satellite dish, so that they can feel at home. We want our people looking for jobs in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, who are looking for miserable 100,000 naira white collar jobs, to come home and invest in intelligent farming, where they can invest 500,000 naira and make N3million in four months. Do you know that carrot grows in Ekiti, even ginger?
