Let us start with the students. We met a condition when we came in that students were given a bursary of N3,000 and they would not even get the bursary on time and it was full of scam. They brought it to me to sign and I said why do I have to sign N3,000 for anybody? It is best if we don’t give this bursary or we give it meaningfully. We raised the bursary to N10,000 flat. For medical and law students it is N20, 000 while our indigenes in Law school get N100,000.

The school authorities give the money to our students in their system. I don’t see how such students will hate us in the majority, I can’t see it. Whoever now hates us has something else against us not for the fact that we have not done the needful. The increase wasn’t solicited; we did it out of our own understanding of the reality of what the students were going through.

When I get to campaign grounds, I say our roads have tribal marks. We now have special roads which when we complete some of them, they will be tourism attraction on their own. The road we are building in Gbogan, people will be coming to look at it because it is not an ordinary road. It is a road that took me time to conceive and design and we are taking our time to develop it. So, when people talk about the cost of our roads, I just laugh because it is not good to be talking to people who don’t know what they are saying.
How were you able to pay up until December 2013?

My people (Ijesha) are called Osomalo (I will stoop here till you pay your debt to me). They are very deft in the management of money and I took this from them. I had been saving through the Omoluabi Conservation Fund in which 10 per cent of all allocations must just go and rest. So I had money in and this was a build up of money that we used to augment payment of salaries till the over N5 billion was finished.

Whereas my income fell to N2.6 billion at the lowest and N3.4 billion at the highest for a month, my statutory expenditures which are expenditures that I have no control on once we have agreed on it, for instance salary, pension and they are N3.6 billion every month, I have no power over it. I can’t say no, am not paying.

Our teachers in the state are now very well motivated such that you cannot distinguish between them and bank workers. Our teachers now appear corporate and well-motivated. It is not that there won’t be some of them who for whatever reason don’t like us but they are in the minority. Don’t buy the talk that you hear that teachers don’t like him, I don’t believe that. You need to see how people respond to us everywhere, people just swarm around me. I have never been in a place where my presence does not generate euphoria. You don’t get such reception if people have problem with you.

I don’t really believe I have any problem with any critical sector. There is nothing that they have done to deride us. There is no household in this state that does not feel our impact.

We are the first government in Nigeria to give free uniform to all students. The first government that will say that you don’t need to buy textbooks for your children in the high school, Opon Imo, and it’s targeted at 150,000 students. One of the attractions is that it reduces the cost of book. With that number and with what it cost us to procure the e-book, N200m for 53 books.

If you divide N200 million by 53, you will get the cost of per book on that basis. If you now divide the outcome with 150,000, do you know that the cost of the book will be N2? Opon Imo should be celebrated by all because it reduces the capital outlay on books.

Tell me any government anywhere in the world that can provide eight textbooks free of charge to students. How many parents can buy all books required by their children, but we have changed this by putting into the hands of all our students in high school a library of 53 textbooks. Our students here keep it with them, go home with them, and sleep with them for as long as they are in school. That was why I said that we have saved our state N8 billion to procure these books for the students. Immediately they heard that I said we have saved the state of N8 billion naira, they said Aregbesola has stolen N8 billion. That was the genesis of the money they said my son took from Opon Imo. Let’s ask them where the N8 billion is?

There is this belief that stomach infrastructure contributed to the loss of APC in Ekiti State. What is your perception of the term, stomach infrastructure?

To those people who are elites and are therefore separated from the people, this term may make a new meaning to them.

I am a product of the popular forces, the people, and I am part and parcel of them. I emanated from them and am a product of their struggles. What is now known as stomach infrastructure is what we know as interaction, engagement, living with the people and meeting their aspirations and needs. That is what we have been doing from the very beginning of this administration. I feed their children every day.

Even akara seller knows that I feed her child every day. I identify with them on a daily basis in their struggle to live and they understand that everything we do is to make life easy for them. My administration does not suffer alienation from the people; it is one and the same with the people and that is the basis of our confidence in their ever ready support at all times.

– This interview was first published in our 28 July 2014 edition.