Nigeria must shut oil production to develop – Adeyanju

Dr. Dayo Adeyanju is the Commissioner for Health in Ondo State who strongly believes that human development should take centre stage in the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration. In this interview, the former World Bank staff also speaks on why Nigeria must shut down its oil. DGossip247 reports

The reality today is that most states of the federation are broke and Ondo State is not an exception even with its status as an oil-producing state. Is that not an indictment?

It is never an indictment and can never be an indictment.

Here in Ondo, we have prioritised our needs, and unlike other places where workers are owed more than seven months in salary arrears, we only have two months arrears left. Aside that, the complaints haven’t been much in Ondo State because the state is already carrying more than 50 per cent burden of parents including free health services, free education, among others.

For instance, under health alone, we have saved the people more than N12 billion in the last six years when the Mother and Child hospitals started running.

How will you explain the N12 billion claim?

When we came in, all the indices indicated that Ondo had the worst health status with our maternal mortality standing at 745 per 100,000 live births. So, as a responsible government, we decided to launch the Abiye project and built Mother and Child hospitals to reverse the then increasing and totally unacceptable trend. So, between 2009 and 2012, the maternal mortality dropped to 317, and today, we have come down to 187.

These services are completely free and we have done this by partnering the traditional birth attendants and mission homes, where we found out these deaths were occurring.

The Abiye project was followed by Ondo State Routine Immunisation to keep the babies safe even after birth and till age five. And today, we have sustained the state free of polio consistently for the past six years, and what that has earned us is that the two times that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Immunisation Leadership Challenge held in Nigeria in partnership with the Governors’ Forum, Ondo has come first twice across the whole country and the award earned us $500,000 for 2013 and 2014.

We also launched another programme tagged Adolescent Youth Health Programme aimed at ensuring that the children’s given energies are directed towards productive lifestyles. Also, we launched the Ondo State Emergency Medical Services which within the last one year, have rescued more than 213 crashes on our highways and saved more than 578 lives. In our medical village, we have a kidney care centre because we know that kidney diseases have been part of what have been shortening the people’s lives.

We established that with 15-chamber dialyses so that we can take care of the people’s kidneys including another programme we tagged Community Kidney Care. Apart from this, we also have what we call First Aid Support Team (FAST) which is to sensitise the communities on what to do when accidents occur. The Gani Fawehinmi Diagnostics Centre is also aimed at eliminating the guesswork by health workers.

All these have now culminated in the establishment of Nigeria’s pioneer University of Medicine which is aimed at training medical doctors who can sustain these initiatives and to ensure that across the globe, doctors can get trained on our Abiye project, trauma, mother and child hospital, so that they can be replicated across the country.

But with the continued decline of Nigeria’s financial fortunes, do you think all these are sustainable?

In Ondo, the story is different, but let me begin by saying that Nigeria’s problem is mainly our poor orientation and not necessarily the fall in oil prices. In the first instance, how can Nigeria believe that oil is the biggest source of revenue? Let me tell you, Nigeria’s total budget for 2014 was N4.3 trillion based on oil revenue. But do you know that Google alone recorded about N5 trillion as turnover for the same year. Does it mean that Google is richer than Nigeria? In fact, I will suggest Nigeria shuts down its oil so that we can think because for now we are not exploring other avenues. In Ondo alone, we are sitting on the largest bitumen deposit in Africa and in fact, the 4th largest in the world. And below the bitumen is stock fish but we are not really working on its exploration because the Federal Government seems contented with oil.

The political will is a major determinant of the success of any administration. The real thing we are enjoying here now is the political will of our governor.

We have the longest coastal areas in Nigeria but why are ships not berthing here. The distance between Igbokoda and Lekki in Lagos is just 30 minutes through water and same to Delta and other places. This is just an open waterways. If you open that pathway, do you know how much development you will bring to the areas? This is what is obtainable in advanced countries and these leaders go there and they see how things are done there.

So, in spite of the dwindling revenue in the country we have ensured that our Mother and Child hospital must be running, Abiye must not stop and Agbebiye must not stop. They are very critical, because if a child is infected with polio, he will have permanent disability and that will affect the future of the child and the state as a whole.

So, dwindling resources is not an excuse. You cannot go and be building bridges and leave that child to suffer. The next thing is to ensure that the free bus shuttles are up and running and our mega schools are maintained.

If the oil is shut, where will you expect Nigeria to concentrate its efforts?

If am asked for my opinion on what should form the priorities for President Buhari, I will suggest only about three things, which should all focus on human development indices, that is, health and education. A healthy nation is a wealthy nation and that is the way productivity can be increased. As we speak, Nigeria loses more than $2 billion annually to India through medical tourism. You can imagine what would happen if such huge fund is retained in our economy.

So, the president must ground to a halt, medical tourism, and that is our dream in Ondo State which has led us to invest massively in health.

Then the president must improve infrastructure so that economy can thrive.

When we came on board here, World Bank wanted us to increase our health facilities as a way of addressing the then increasing maternal mortality but we told them that the facilities we had on ground was more than enough and that the problem was because there was disconnect between the facilities and the people.

So, we needed a structure to just connect the facilities with the people and that was how the Abiye thing came up and the governor also stood on our point and that if they did not agree they could take their money away.

But they accepted and, of course, we have gotten result. When we presented our Abiye programme in Washington DC, they never believed it would work.

That time, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili was the Vice-President and she said that was the first time they would be having result for their support. So, before we can develop as a nation, we must have bulk of the people in the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). That is why China is developing very rapidly. In a small room, you can have three factories, producing different essential items. We must imbibe that culture but that won’t be possible without restoring power.