Osarenren Derek Izedonmwen is the governorship candidate of African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2024 governorship election in Edo State. A Petroleum Engineering graduate of the University of Benin with postgraduate qualifications in the UK, Izedonmwen has worked in oil and gas service industry, where he rose to the position of Managing Director. He speaks to Acting Editor, Chuks Oluigbo, and Political Correspondents, Tobore Jerome and Okoeguale Adolor, on why he is in the governorship race and his plans for Edo State if given the people’s mandate. Excerpts:
Why are you in the race for the Edo State governorship seat?
Since my return to Nigeria from the UK, I have been mostly in Lagos but I have my aged parents here in Edo State. My dad retired as a principal inspector of education or, if you like, an inspector of schools, and my mum retired as a vice principal. Both of them, thankfully, are still alive. My dad is 95+ and my mum is in her 80s. Since then, being abroad and also in Lagos, I always come around and I have seen the state of things. I knew what things were during the Ambrose Alli days, during the Ogbemudia days. You know, just like when you are far away from a place and you come, you can see the transformation, positively or negatively. But if you are in the place, you are within that space, it’s not so vivid. So, I always come around and I see how things are dilapidated. And as I see that, there has always been this dissonance, this trouble inside me as a patriot to say, this cannot be the best of us. Something has to be different, something needs to be done.
I’m an engineer, but in my past-time I do a lot of study. I tell people I’m an engineer by day and a political economist at night. Self-taught. I didn’t go to any specific school apart from Harvard Kennedy School of Government where I studied public policy on leadership, organization and change. That was just an online course. But I have a love for political economy and the state of things and how states can be developed. With all that knowledge, I was really worried that this cannot be the best of Edo State. I look at my age, I look at where we’re going, I say, ‘Look, this is the best time to come in and contribute my quota’. And the question is, why would I want to come in an executive role? There are many other things I could do. I could set up an NGO, be a commissioner, be in the House of Reps, or the Senate. But the sort of skill sets, competencies, and capacity I have makes me understand clearly that my role belongs in the executive position. Why do I say that? The executive position is a single point in the equation of the polity where the kind of skill sets I have can really be transformational, can change the game for our people much better than what we’ve seen in the past. So, I have looked at everything and I’m here primarily to say there is a type of predatory government that we see all around Nigeria today. It is also here in Edo State. My mission in going into this race is to let the voice of people like me to be heard, number one; to speak up for the youth, number two; but most importantly, to put an end to the type of predatory government that we see today. What do I mean by predatory government? It’s the government of elites, for elites, and by elites, where the very essence of people coming into government, somewhere along the line, the wheels fell off the bus and they forgot it. And the essence is to emancipate the economic lot of our people, to move them from being have-nots to have-a-little-want-mores and have-mores. The haves have been in power, and they’ve pushed the have-a-little-want-mores to become have-nots, and they’ve pushed the have-nots to nothingness. So you have a crop of leaders who are sitting at the top of governance, most of them unelected. They call themselves godfathers, moneybags, wheeler-dealers. They have no name on the ballot, people did not elect them, but they choose who rule us, and they choose who rule us not for the right reasons; they choose who rule us for their own benefit, and they hold those people that they’ve chosen hostage. So when the allocation comes from the federal, the IGR comes, it doesn’t trickle down to the people. It doesn’t translate into economic development. And when you look outside of Nigeria, inside Nigeria, there is a fierce urgency of now that tells me this has to stop. We cannot continue like this. If we have to be China, if we have to be India, if we have to be Singapore, if we have to be America, fresh ideas must come and transform things. That’s where I come in. That’s why I’m pushing to be the governor of Edo State.
Are there specific areas where you feel that things have not been done right? And tell us, if you do become the governor, what are the things you intend to do to make things right?
When I come into government, there are priorities from day one. Number one priority is security, number two is agriculture, number three is industrialization, and number four is infrastructure. I want us to run government with the same effectiveness, efficiency and productivity that I’m used to in the private sector. If you look at governance today, they don’t really look at the profitability equation when they make decisions. What do I mean by the profitability equation? This is important because it is the fundamental basis for our emancipation. What is the cost of your input into an endeavour and what is the value of the output you get from it? Now look at government parastatals, look at government-owned companies, they essentially have been run down because that profitability equation is not there. If there’s no profitability, there’s no productivity. Now, when you run a government parastatal or institution without an eye on profitability, you find out that you are bleeding the system. It becomes a cost centre instead of a profit centre, and that drains our resources. Even if it’s a public good, you also want to strive to make some profitability where it is possible.
When I was young, there was a great man who was governor. His name was Brigadier General Samuel Ogbemudia. He instituted Bendel Feeds and Flour Mill, churning out this poundo iyan and other things, feeds in their hundreds of tons. He started the cement factory, Okpella. He started Auchi Polytechnic, University of Benin. He built Ring Road, Ogbe Stadium, Ethiope Publishing, Ethiope Salt, New Nigeria Bank, Bendel Insurance. I can go on and on. These were profit-making organizations. Where are they today? Now, I’m not saying it’s just this government that is responsible. It’s a chain reaction. Of course, this government has also done its own to try and contribute, but they’ve also made significant mistakes. That’s one area of pitfalls of the past.
But specifically in the current state of things where we are, I want to focus on agriculture after we deal with the security situation. Why I want to focus on security first is if you don’t pacify Edo State as it is today, we’re going nowhere. If you want to leave from Benin now to Ekpoma or Auchi at a certain time, even normal time, you’ll be scared that they will capture you and be giving you dry noodles for the next one month. How are you going to preach to people coming with their foreign direct investment to come here and settle down, pitch tent and invest? How can people go to farm? And there’s hunger. There’s no food. So I want to address the twin problems of security and agriculture.
Let’s get into the how. You mentioned four priority areas – security, agriculture, infrastructure, and industrialization. So, how do you intend to tackle these focus areas? What would you do differently from what the current government is doing?
These are subjects that we’ve looked at deeply. Now, if you look at the security situation in Edo State, as the chief security officer of the state, the first thing I will do is to reorganize, restructure, and retrain the Edo Security Network that we currently have. I want to make them in lockstep with the security services, not just the police – the DSS, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, etc. We need very clear intelligence gathering. So, the Edo State Security Network will be retrained, reorganized and restructured so they can be in lockstep. They will have gadgets. Security is sensitive so I don’t want to go into detail, but they’ll have certain gadgets. Information will flow faster than it is today. That’s one, that’s within my control. The second one is the police force. We’re going to sit down and talk. I will set up what I call farm rangers corps in conjunction with the police force, normal police, but brave men who are serious. We will bring certain expertise here to train them on how to storm places of interest. We will invest in technology. With a few thousand dollars today you can get some certain types of drones which these guys can fly to our trouble spots, monitor movement and gather intelligence. They will be equipped with ballistic equipment, special satellite radios, armoured personnel carriers to preserve and protect life, even their own lives, and especially night vision goggles, and they will be motivated with serious insurance on their lives. I’m talking about this special corps because it’s my number one priority. My security vote is going to go in there. They will storm these guys where they are hiding. With thermal imaging cameras today, if they fly that thing above at midnight, you will see even where chickens are hiding because of their body heat. Once we know where they are, we will surprise them and smoke them out. Do that in four or five locations in Edo State and parade either their corpses or their wounded bodies, everybody will take heed. We will send a clear message to everybody in Edo State, all those bad guys in the bush, that a new sheriff is in town.
To the rascals in Edo State killing each other and calling themselves cultists, we would also address that. There are means to address that. I also think that’s an economic problem because if they are engaged, they will not be doing that. They will see reasons why you can have your club and do hallelujah and beating band, but don’t take guns and kill people because when you start killing people, you are sending the wrong message to people outside Edo State that the state is not safe.
On agriculture, the first 100 days I get into office, I want to have a land resource audit on my desk. And I will bring the best soil scientists anywhere they are in the world, I want them in Edo State. From the south of Edo State all the way to the north, we want to know what is in the soil. Which plants can grow in which location? And what are the deficiencies of that soil? Why do I want to know that? I myself own a farm. I’ve done a pilot. And I tell you, the productivity of your farm starts from the soil. So I will first of all understand what is in that soil. My pilot farm, I have done soil test, and I found out that that soil is heavily acidic. So, we put some lime and some other base materials to neutralize that acidity, simply because we want to grow vegetables there, and the vegetables don’t like acidic soil. Because of that action, along with other actions we’ve taken, the productivity of that land increased for the vegetables. There is tropical wheat that can grow in Edo State. Wheat is a temperate plant, but it grows. They’ve done some modifications to it, not genetic modifications, some hybrid stuff. So, we want to know, where can wheat grow? Where can rice grow? Where can cowpea grow? Where can all these key crops and cash crops grow? Once we know it, then we move into work because we need to know that to be able to be directed at the right things to plant.
Now, in terms of how, as I said earlier, I have done a pilot. What I’ve learned from that is enormous and I will share with my cabinet. The first thing we need to focus on, we need to look at intensive gardening. Forget your industrial farming first. By intensive gardening, you can increase the productivity of a small piece of land by many folds. And it is easy for the average guy to do it one acre at a time with government support. The government is not going to hands off. We are going to encourage and incentivize farming. I, as a governor, will have some of my cabinet meetings on my farm. My commissioners will have their farm. Headmasters will own a farm. Secretary to state government, everybody owns a farm because if we all own a farm, efficient farming, intensive gardening, there won’t be all this food crisis, everybody can feed themselves.
Our clear plan is to de-risk farming for the average Joe on the street to go into farming. First of all, I will set up policy banks in this state, specifically to support agriculture, agro-allied industries and proto-industrial industries, because that’s where we need to invest to be able to create value.
So, in summary, the first one is agriculture. We need to feed ourselves. A hungry man is an angry man. The second one, industrialisation, because to re-energize agriculture and create value from what you farm, you need factories and industries. You can take raw cashew nuts, add value to it in a factory, not in the house, and export and bring that value back in dollars which will fix the balance of payment problem that we have today. We don’t have dollars, so that industry will help us turn raw food to value for export and the money that comes from export will now go into the third leg which is infrastructure. That infrastructure is to create access to farm, irrigate the farms, bring water, bring fertilizer, bring everything that we need to the farm. And also from the farm gate to the factory, you need the right type of road. And then, infrastructure to the factories. You need good power supply, Ossiomo 1, Ossiomo 2, Ossiomo 3. Without those things the factory will not function. You need the right fibre optic cable. These days without data you are joking. So we need to take fibre optic cable, power to the industrial clusters so that Johnbull in Lagos who is scanning the whole of Nigeria on where he should go will be attracted to come to Edo State because he knows that this cluster has been set up, plug-and-play for him. But in the same way they are also scanning the whole country, where is the safest place? This brings me to the fourth pillar which is my own number one: security. By pacifying Lagos State over a 20-year period, Lagos has become an oasis of peace in Nigeria, everybody is running there, even oil companies have left the Niger Delta to go there. And what do they do there? When they set up their headquarters there, they pay tax, they employ people and those people pay PAYE (Pay As You Earn). So, you see the IGR of Lagos has jumped. I want to create a new oasis of peace in Nigeria, in the Niger Delta, using these four pillars.
What are your plans to further grow the IGR of Edo State without inflicting hardship on the people and businesses?
If you want to change the game with regard to IGR, I don’t believe in squeezing the pie. I believe if this pie is grown to double the size, you can get more IGR from that pie. What do I mean by that? I just talked about pacifying Edo State. By that single action alone, making this place a safe haven for businesses, you will see people, businesses coming here. So the first thing I want to do is to incentivize businesses to come here by not overtaxing them. And this is also counterintuitive. People believe that when you tax and tax, then you have IGR. How do you incentivize businesses? Don’t forget, we are competing with 35 other states for a Chinese company to come, for Dangote to come. What do we need to do? We need to make sure, first, that we have the most skilled manpower here at the moment. We will invest in vocational school more than what is going on now. Fix our state universities, our tertiary institutions. Prepare them for the market. Second, look at clever ways of ameliorating the tax regime to encourage and attract businesses, because the more businesses that come to take advantage of that slightly reduced tax and government incentive, you grow the pie. As you grow the pie, you get more money into your coffers.
One other clever thing we want to do is to explore the blue ocean strategy. Leave the bloody ocean where there’s too much competition, create the market. Because when you create a new vista, you create money. What is a new vista? For example, I talked about farming. That’s priority, but there are other peripheral things we can do. In Lagos today, I have seen people who are earning in dollars sitting in their bedroom, working for Microsoft, working for Google, providing business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing services in Lagos – $200, $300 a day depending on your expertise. And it’s also connected with my youth empowerment initiative. I want to create a small knowledge services hub, just like we used to have ICE here, Institute of Continuing Education. Just a cluster like a campus where anybody from around the world, but most specifically our youths, can be trained in three months.
So, we’ll create a hub. Ossiomo will send 24-hour power to that hub. It’s a small campus, people will carry their backpack. Young boys, instead of doing Yahoo, they’ll be working in the IT services sector, taking phone calls, doing IT service support in America, in the UK, in Germany, everywhere around the world empowered by us. But to do that, you need a solid fibre optic service, power, the right knowledge and training in that cluster. This is how we are going to take the youths off the streets easily. We can take up to a thousand people to be working in that place and train more people. So, there are clever ways. This is a new area that has not been talked about.
Some of the things that you are projecting to do, if you look into the past seven and a half years of the Obaseki government, you would see that some of them are already here. So my question would be, are you going to reinvent the wheel, or are you going to build on what is already on ground?
I come from the political school of thought that believes in progressivism and accretion. You build on the past, you stand on the shoulders of giants. You don’t come and say destroy, except you have extremely cogent reasons. Let’s be honest, this current regime has laid some good foundations. I’m not the type that will come into politics and criticize everything that belongs in the past. Ossiomo is a good initiative, but we need to replicate it. My drive is, it’s too slow and there are a lot of allegations of crony capitalism inside there. We need to break that and do it differently, have Ossiomo 2, 3, 4. Edo State sits on one of the highest gas reserves per capita in Nigeria. We can’t afford to be doing one Ossiomo in how many years. We should be doing three Ossiomos, and if you ask me how, there are enough ideas on how to do it. The same PPP. There are ways we can do it. I am not overly just criticizing. I’ve looked at what they are doing, and I’ve seen the loopholes. We need to do more.
And I also believe that from my own experience in studying political economy and developmental states, we have to be heavy on exports. We are too slow. We need to focus on export. If there’s anything you take away from this interview today, I am laser-focused, apart from security, on export led industrialization because our dollar, our balance of payment problem is killing us.
There are three heavyweights in this election – Asue Ighodalo of the PDP, Monday Okpebholo of the APC, and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party. How do you intend to manoeuvre your way and emerge victorious in this election in the face of these formidable opponents?
It’s a tall order, make no mistake. It’s a David versus Goliath fight. I suffer no illusions about the calibre of these people – both an incumbent governor backing somebody, or an incumbent president backing somebody, or, a party, such as Labour, which has a hero, Obi. I supported him during the last elections, by the way, so I know the pedigree he brings behind Akpata. These are formidable opponents, but I do know that the Edo people are very wise. If I doubted that, I would not be here talking. If you look at our political history, there’s always the rebellious vote coming from Edo State. They know, they can read between the lines. You sitting here, if you go to the quietness of your room and hear what I’ve said today, read between the lines, listen to other people, you will know who is ready for this job.
It’s about two months to the election. Assuming you were addressing the Edo electorate directly at this point, what would you tell them?
I would say to them, people of Edo State, look at me. There is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in every generation, where people are prepared to take you from point A to where you should be. This is the time not to miss that opportunity. This is the time not to fall for accidental leaders. What I bring is simple. I bring a deep understanding of how to transform this state. If other people come to you, please ask them, how? If you’ve not had a child as a woman, no disrespect to our sisters, if you’ve not had a child for 10 years and a doctor comes to you and tells you in a few months or weeks you will conceive, I am sure any rational thinking person, the first question they will ask is, how? Let them ask how. In that how, the Edo State people will know who is prepared and who understands deeply how to transform this state. So my message is very clear: Ask how and don’t fall for the pitfalls of the past.
