In almost four years in office, we have over 500,000 beneficiaries of the free health mission. For sustainability, we tie it to a community health insurance scheme that will make it sustainable over a long time. In addition to this, we have also what we call medical fund for people dealing with ailments that are complicated, that require maybe a kidney transplant or dialysis or a major surgery sometimes abroad and the indigent that can’t afford to benefit from such treatment, government sponsor them and take care of such bill. We are becoming a modern society and there are life threatening diseases that have started crippling into our environment: hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetics, cancer and in this regard, we found ourselves in a situation where we felt we needed to turn our adversity to an opportunity for our people.

When I lost my deputy to cancer, we decided that, one of the legacies that we can bequeath to her for the work that she did as my partner in the struggle to rebuild Ekiti was to dedicate a place to her that will help us in early detection of female-related cancers – cervical cancer, breast cancer and all the rest. We built a diagnostic and awareness centre which we named after her. It is functioning now.

Many women now go to use Mrs. Olayinka Diagnostic Centre located within the teaching hospital. And once we are able to detect that there is early stage of cancer, we can then take the necessary steps to help avert this leading to death, which was the loss we suffered in Mrs. Olayinka’s case. We have other initiatives that we have put in place: an ambulance service now very professionally run, new accident and emergency centres at the teaching hospital, new surgery ward and a whole range of things which make healthcare situation in Ekiti one of the best. So, it is no accident that we now have the high life expectancy in the country, it is no accident that we have one of the lowest maternal and child mortality rate in the country, it is not accident that we have the lowest HIV prevalence in the country.

All these are associated with our quality approach to healthcare. If you go to agriculture which is the main thrust of our government, we wanted to take advantage of an area that is very dear to our people. We are an agrarian society. This was what our forebears did throughout their lives. But because we went to school we are now saddled with an ageing population on the farm that has not been replaced by the children who have earned degrees and moved out into the city. So we needed a mechanism to entice such young people back to agriculture.

And we know we are not going to get them back on the hoe and cutlass type of farming that we needed to move to the next level of agric business that will really attract them. This is what informed the initiative popularly known as Youth in Commercial Agriculture Development, Y-CAD. And Y-CAD has been a generator of employment significantly now and we know that by the time, by God grace, we come back and we start our free meal in primary school initiative, you will see a synergy between what our father produced, what the market women or the food vendor cook and what the children in school eat. And a new economy and expanded economy is going to grow around the work that has already been done by Y-CAD.

In addition to that, is the work that will help us achieve the full value change in not just planting but also processing and marketing. Now we have Ekiti rice courtesy of Y-CAD and other farmers, we have the highest yield in cassava production in the entire country now, our cocoa is growing again and there are lots of our young farmers working on aqua culture, of poultry all over the place in the state.

These are signs of progress as far as agric is concerned and we are still going to be building on it for the future. Of course everybody talks about Ikogosi and what we have been able to achieve with our hob strategy in Ikogosi. So, all of these can’t be fully developed until we link it to the wider chart.

That is why we have come up with tourism master plan which doesn’t just focus on Ikogosi but helps to develop all our sites of tourism in the state. In addition to linking it to other investments, I talked earlier about the coming of an airport because we know that this is going to ultimately have an impact on the tourism industry, we also know that it will have impact on education industry, our knowledge zone and we know it have an impact on the agric process because things can then just leave from here to a market outside of Nigeria but it is not just Lagos or Abuja, Lagos is a big target for us and within our regional framework, that is something that we are seriously looking at. But it will also necessitate rail network here.

It is not just about an airport. In our regional initiative, we are already talking about our partners in the other states to extend the rail network from Osogbo to here and then out of here to other potential destinations. When you look at this long term economic strategy, you can see where the state is heading. We have used the better part of this four years to have master plan for energy, water, tourism, urban town planning and not all of them have been fully implemented, we just started but the implementation will be rapid because it is tied to the growing hob in tourism, in agriculture, infrastructure, education, healthcare but they are all integrated. But it also recognizes our limitation as a small state. We must cooperate with others in other to get the full value of all of what we are doing.

The state has recorded too much violence during this electioneering campaign. Is there anything you are doing to curb violence?

I think it is unfortunate really. I am appalled. Enough! I am a manager of violence by training. Maybe because of my training, I know that violence doesn’t bear good fruit. When this campaign started on 23 March 2014, I made a state-wide broadcast imploring all candidates to focus on what they want to do to make a difference in the life of people. So, I have consistently insisted that this is the way we should conduct this campaign. Sadly a lot of that fell on deaf ear. But I have also gone ahead to engage not just the security agencies but also critical stakeholders in the state, the clergy, the elders, the politicians themselves.

And I have enlisted one of these institutions to get across to the candidates; for example, the council of traditional rulers, to call on all of us to a session, which they did. I was the first to get to the venue, one or two others of the candidates also showed up. Igbimo Omo Ekiti, headed by Prince Julius Adeluyi, former honourable minister and president of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, also embarked on this peace initiative aimed at getting all the candidates sign up a code of ethics.

What I see unfortunately, is a situation in which some are hell-bent to cause mayhem and brigandage that would stop this election from holding or if it holds, for it to be inconclusive. I believe Ekiti people have a duty to call all of us to order. As a chief security officer, I have never shied away from bringing together all the players. I was the first to say, let us sign up to a code of conduct. I have insisted that the police and other security agencies should do their jobs also because I think there have been gaps in the conduct of the law enforcement agencies. And this is not to even suggest that they are compromised.

I don’t believe the hierarchy, the police commissioner, the director of SSS, the brigade commander compromised but they have elements within their institutions that may be paddling to the whims and caprice of individual politicians and they need to check that so that they will not throw Ekiti into avoidable violence. The violence to me is unacceptable. Why destroy billboards? Today, some even have the temerity to destroy billboards in front of the government house. How does that advance your cause with the people if you resort to unbridled and unacceptable violence? If anything, it diminishes you with the populace and it demonstrates that you don’t have anything to sell. That is why you are resorting to violence. And when you check the track records or the antecedents of all the people perpetrating this violence, it is what they have been known for.

As I said, all of us owe a duty to our conscience and to Ekiti people not to allow this electioneering to degenerate into an uncontrolled orgy of violence. I hope others will listen to this. I hope once they don’t do what they ought to do, the maximum and full weight of the law would be brought to bear on anyone find culpable regardless of any position they hold. This must stop. Issues must be the driver of this campaign. Tell Ekiti people what the ruling party has not done that you can do better. Tell it to the people what you have in stock for them. Sadly, this campaign has only been fought on issues by the ruling government. Others are not interested sadly, except they are reacting to or rehashing what is already happening. Like somebody saying he wants to revive the Ire Brick Factory or he wants to pay pensioners, things that have already happened. Those that are benefitting from the social security know the source of social security whether you say you started it 10 years ago. People are not stupid. I hope my co-contestants would respond in a profitable manner because we don’t need violence here.