MY TRANSFORMATIONAL AGENDA FOR ODA COMMUNITY WITHIN SEVEN YEARS-OBA JULIUS AJAYI ADEWUMI OMOMO
The newly installed Oba Julius Ajayi Adewumi Omomo , the Olojoda of Oda, Okunbadejo II could best described in the maxim of Suzy Kassem which says:“Nothing exists without a purpose. Every experience you have in this lifetime was written for you to grow into the light you were meant to become”. Oba Adewumi Omomo has been a purposeful man from his youth which took him to various countries of the world where he acquired many experiences and fortunes that made him better fit as the traditional ruler of Oda Town. In this interview with ALABA ALIU of the Democrat News Magazine, Oba Omomo made known his lofty developmental agenda in a well articulated manner and other sundry issues of state and national interest.
Excerpts:
KABIYESI, WE SAY BIG CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ASCENSION ON THE THRONE OF YOUR FATHERS. CAN WE HAVE YOUR FULL NAME SIR?
Thank you very much, my name is Julius Ajayi Adewumi Omomo, the Okunbadejo II, the Olojoda of Oda town.
YOUR ASCENSION ON THE THRONE WAS DESCRIBED AS A WELCOME DEVELOPMENT BY ALL AND SUNDRY IN THIS COMMUNITY, WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE COMMUNITY?
My major agenda is the comfort of the community. As we know you cannot do anything without the State Government, I will work with Ondo State Government in so many ways to bring development to Oda town and the state in general. In area of education, we cannot count three states before you mention Ondo State, I will leverage on this to galvanize lasting development into our community.
If your group states in Nigeria in relation to their wealth Ondo State is not one of them. My motto is ‘the biggest and the best’.
We can compete favourably with Lagos by attracting wealthiest people to come and live at Ore, which is just few kilometers to Lagos. We can put some buses on the road, we cannot construct railway, although Federal Railway passes through Ibadan and Lagos but we are talking about Ore, if you are going to any part of the country you have to pass through Ore.
We have the second largest bitumen in the world here in Ondo State. I don’t see reason why we cannot process crude oil in Ondo State. In this area we can adequately beat Lagos in terms of economy.
In the area of Agriculture, Lagos was able to buy land somewhere else to plant rice. We have expanse of land here in Ondo State for arable plants.
Privately, I got a company that could process bitumen for all the five stages necessary for use on the road, we have enough that can tar the whole West Africa.
I really thank the government of Ondo State under the leadership of Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu over the establishment of Deep Sea Port in the state. It is a welcome development; from there we will attract investors from Lagos and other part of the country to Ondo State.
When I talked about refineries, it doesn’t have to be a gigantic refinery. We can even put up 20 refineries within a year in moderate sizes all over the places.
For my community, Agriculture is the main stay, we have in mind to establish Micro Finance Bank and also to have MoU with banks in Akure to come and establish their branch in my community here. We can guarantee their safety; we have provided land and after the building we will wall it round and provide adequate security.
On security, when I was leaving the country on 30th of October 1960 I left a vibrant NA Police in Akure. They have now disappeared and that is the reason we find it difficult to keep herdsmen at abeyance. With the permission of the State Government and Ondo State House of Assembly I have intention to bring back NA Police in order to protect the weakest areas of our lives and communities.
Now, the question is, how do we fund all these projects? We will not depend solely on government to fund it. For every Oba, we can donate 20 hectares of land and all the Six Stars of Chiefs (Iwara efa mefa) will donate 10 hectares to prosecute the projects- The mechanized farming will be in place in big towns like Oda and some other places.
We don’t have community Palace here in modern Oda Community since we left our ancestral home called Ogbe. Every Oba has been reigning from his own house. This palace is my personal house and by the grace of God I am going to start and complete community Palace within seven years.
What about the commoners, we have intention to change our market here to daily market instead of a five day market where the sellers will be able to leave their goods there and go home and come back to sell the next day because we are going to provide adequate security. The Micro Finance founded by late Tai Solarin was looted under his very nose, we have learnt from this; so in our own Micro Finance Bank, there will be provision daily, weekly, monthly and six months so that any defaulter can easily be identified to avoid much shortage we will not allow annual loan. If you borrow from us the community secretariat will see to it that you pay back at the end of the week, monthly or quarterly and we can increase their capacities to get more funds if they don’t default.
On roads, access road is one of our major challenges not only in this community but across the state. In our community here I have intention to procure bulldozer, pay-loader, grader and compactor to grade our roads regularly so that goods will be easily ferried from farms to market, without waiting for any government to do this for us. Within a year we will be able to cover this community and make it motorable.
God really blessed us with a great commodity called land; this is what we are going to depend on it to finance all these projects including building of community Palace. We have boundary with Idanre at Owode, we even have boundary with Benin-city through river Ogbese at the end of the road, then, through Owo to Akure. The second largest Cocoa plantation in on our land, though it is government owned.
We are going to work with all cocoa farmers to have one big cocoa processing plant as not to export raw cocoa beans any more, if we can ground it here, then, they can take it to any part of the world for finishing, because it is difficult to manufacture chocolate here because of our weather condition and our electricity will be stable.
IN THE AREAS OF HEALTH AND YOUTHS ENGAGEMENT, WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN MIND FOR THE COMMUNITY?
Thank you, we have a dispensary here, our aim is to walk with state government to improve standard of health of mothers and babies. Our dispensary here is limited and we intend to build 20-beds Health Center and procure ambulance then we will call on government to give us a doctor, at first the doctor may not be a permanent doctor, but he will keep coming by way of rotation until we are able to secure a full time doctor here, with this, the health of our children and women even the youths will blossom. If anyone has emergency while in his farm immediately he/she calls ambulance will be there. Every home will be provided mosquito nets and mosquito electrcutor by so doing we eliminate diseases caused by mosquito.
In the same way, we have a lot of children of various ages out of schools, our plans on this is to have secondary school with a boarding facilities and make it completely free for all. The only qualification of being admitted into the school, is if the child is an orphan, or a child of widow or a child of poor parents. We know ourselves in this community and we know those who can benefit from such gesture. In my own property I have set aside enough land for the project and it will be done within seven year by the grace of God.
I have in my data bank, many qualified youths that well read are still in the community, when it is time I will call the community with me to discuss and the ministry and local government to give us approval over our plans to bring back the glory of state in area of agriculture as it were in those days.
TO ACHIEVE THESE LOFTY AGENDA, WHAT SHOULD BE THE ROLE(S) OF ALL ODA SONS AND DAUGHTERS?
Thank you very much for this question. We have various committees facing certain issues. I am still gathering data once we have enough data, we bring reports from all those committee and my executive will sit down and deliberate upon it and type it out, we will make a copy available to Ministry, Local Government and others for necessary amendment and approval before we start execution of those projects.
We will not take laws into our hands once we get support and approval of the state and local government sky is the limit.