- Ilaje deserves commission’s headquarters
The Ondo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission, OSOPADEC, created to wipe the tears of the oil producing communities, has lived most of its life as a visitor in a strange land. Take it or not, this no doubt, is antithetical to common sense and global best practices.
From its head office in Oba-Ile, Akure North Local Government Area, OSOPADEC takes decisions for Ilaje and Ese-Odo, people, but it does not live with the consequences of those decisions. And that is the tragedy.
There is a wisdom our elders in Ilaje have always held close: *“ojune lowo ne, obon Atijere.”* , meaning that what is in your hand is what you care for most.
Anyone who had lived under the direct care of one’s parents and under guardians will know the difference in terms of attention to one’s needs. The difference is clear and wide. It is akin to the one between white and black. It is the difference between presence and absence, between urgency and excuses. No one can nurse a wound they cannot see, and no one can develop a community they only visit on paper.
Today, the men and women who run OSOPADEC wake up to power in Akure, drink clean water in Oba-Ile, drive on tarred roads, and send their children to functioning schools. Their salaries, drawn from the 40% derivation meant exclusively for Ilaje and Ese-Odo Local government areas circulate in Akure markets, pay rent to Akure landlords, and grow Akure’s economy every single month. Hundreds of staff, with hundreds of dependents, have made another man’s land prosperous while the mandate communities remain in darkness, want and abject poverty becomes their second nature.
If the Commission had been sited in the heart of the oil-bearing communities, things would be different. Government and Board members would have no choice but to demand light for their own homes. They would insist on portable water for their own children. They would fix the rivers, the roads, the hospitals, and the schools as a priority and not out of charity, but out of necessity. Self-interest and public interest would finally meet. That is how development is forced to happen.
This is not a wild idea. It is global best practice. The Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, sits in Port Harcourt, Rivers State Capital, in the middle of the creeks it serves. It cannot pretend not to know the pain of the Niger Delta people and residents because it lives inside it.
The Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, and NIMASA are both in Lagos, on the coast, where ships dock and where their mandate breathes. No one is asking NDDC to move to Abuja. No one is asking NIMASA to move to Jos. So why should OSOPADEC, an agency created solely for Ilaje and Ese-Odo, the two major riverine local government areas continue to operate 200 kilometers, away from the people it was created to serve?
*”The cost is not only economic. It is cultural and emotional”* Because the headquarters is outside Ilajeland, we have slowly normalized living outside Ilajeland. We spend our weekends in other people’s towns. We celebrate our holidays elsewhere. Our children are growing up barely knowing their hometowns.
*”And with the office in Akure, the head office staff strength is now nearly 50 percent non- indigenes”* The location itself invites the encroachment. A Commission in Igbokoda would naturally reflect the faces, the language, and the struggles of the people it was created for.
It is even more painful that we once tried. Chief Adewale Omojuwa of blessed memory who initiated and awarded massive staff quarters at Igbokoda. Today those buildings stand abandoned, uncompleted, and decaying. Not because the money was not there, but because there was no urgent need to use them. When your office is comfortable elsewhere, charity at home can always wait till tomorrow.
Government presence is what every community fights for. But for no altruistic reason saves politics some people are likely to make excuses why our own intervention agency should remain a guest in another man’s house.
The solution is simple and urgent. OSOPADEC must be relocated to Ilaje Local Government Area, to the heart of its mandate areas. Igbokoda, as the political and commercial capital of Ilajeland, is the natural home. The abandoned staff quarters must be completed to make the move possible. And recruitment must prioritize the sons and daughters who understand the terrain, who speak the language, and who feel the pain.
Let OSOPADEC come home. Let the salaries stay home. Let the infrastructure follow the people. Let the Commission that was created to develop us finally live among us.
Only then will the oil that flows from our land also bring development to our land long abandon and neglected by successful administrations. This administration of Dr Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa being led by an indigene of ilaje local government isWHY the threshold of history to make a great difference in the life of the People of the riverine communities. The Commission provides the veritable development platform to make that happen. Where there is a will. There is a way. Over to you mr Governor
* Omooba Moboluwade Diesel Ajijo, mnipr, a journalist and Public Relations specialist writes from Akure.
