(http://www.osundefender.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/tinubu-2.jpg)
Former governor of Lagos State and the national leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN),Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has said that the regional integration programme being proposed in the South West would enhance rapid economic development, sharing of ideas and opportunities in so many areas of economic development of the region.
He gave the hint in Osogbo, the Osun State capital recently, while answering questions from journalists during his visit to the state, to be part of the Cabinet Retreat for the State Executive Council, saying that the integration would also facilitate common goals in the region and encourage the government to keep people first in all the areas of their needs.
According to him, the challenges in the largest part of the region requires the attention of serious governments that are currently calling the shots in the region, adding that with regional integration programme, there would be improvement in the areas of agriculture, food security, skill development and infrastructural development.
Lauding the idea of Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola in bringing the rail system back to life, after it had been killed, Tinubu further noted that with the regional integration project, the mass transit would be made more available and comfortable for the entire people of the region.
He said: "We have similar vegetation, agriculture is important, food security is part of it, skill development, infrastructural development, linking of rail system and mass transit as well as healthcare and school programmes, need collaboration, which must be done.
"What the economic integration promotes is the same cardinal points that are in the programmes of each of the states being controlled by our party. In the area of education, we know that we have to prepare for our children because education is the greatest weapon against poverty. So we are not deviating.
"Rural development is meant to help farmers and the collaboration might bring about commodity exchange development that will guarantee prices to the farmers, so that they can grow more food crops. A great population in Lagos can use the produce from all the other states and that is why the states have to collaborate", he noted.
On the removal of oil subsidy, Tinubu stated that real, factual or imagined, there must be condition precedent before the subsidy could be removed, saying that when what the public believed to be poverty-relief is being removed, there must have been something on ground that would make the people to build confidence in that government.
He noted that in the twelve years of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government, nothing has been achieved on infrastructure among other things.
According to him, "If you remove oil subsidy and there is inflationary impact on poor people, particularly cost of transportation, why don't you consider the fact that you need a mass transit first. Even if you have to borrow domestically to do that, enhance the railway transportation system. Before you remove the subsidy, you need to develop infrastructure.
"Before you remove the subsidy, you must also consider the fact that the school feeding programme is necessary, because you cannot leave our children to be walloping in poverty. How much are you going to set aside to fund tertiary education out of the money realised from the subsidy you remove. All these, have to be spelt out", he added.
He also wondered why the Revenue Allocation Formula was yet to be reviewed despite the provision for it in the constitution, saying that the formula should be reviewed with a view to allowing the states to have the resources to work for the people.
Tinubu further noted that, "remove the blackmail, the Federal Government takes over 52 percent of the total revenue, what do they have to show for it in the last 12 years? The Federal Government is no more spending money on NITEL, PHCN, because they have been privatized. So many other public corporations have been privatized including port operations, those are heavy capital funding requirement that you shared weight. The people that the government wants to serve are in the states and the local government council areas and that is why power must be given to the people".
Osun Defender