AN OVERVIEW OF THE TRANSFORMATION AGENDA: THE EKITI STATE, NIGERIA EXPERIENCE by His Excellency Dr. Kayode FAYEMI Governor, Ekiti State, Nigeria During the Study Tour by Course 35 Of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru

1. AN OVERVIEW OF THE TRANSFORMATION AGENDA:
THE EKITI STATE, NIGERIA EXPERIENCE
by
His Excellency Dr. Kayode FAYEMI
Governor, Ekiti State, Nigeria
During the Study Tour by Course 35 Of the
National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru
Monday, April 29, 2013
INTRODUCTION:
The appropriateness of the theme of your study cannot be more expedient than now
when our dear country is affronted with various challenges and the citizenry are asking many
questions with no convincing answers and they are gradually slipping into self-help, a
situation that has called for a “real” transformational agenda, driven by a selfless
transformational leader. I have accepted the invitation to speak because this platform
provides me an opportunity to contribute some ideas and share my views on the subject
matter with you. It is my firm belief that this will provoke further conversations outside the
confines of this place. I am convinced that this study will expose you to the multi-faceted
problems facing our dear country and also the limitless untapped potentials and
opportunities for advancement that abounds in this part of the country which if properly
aligned can be of immense benefit to all.
Since its creation in 1996, the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru
has served as a major contributor to shaping the direction of policies in the country. The
institute occupies a central space in our national life, with tremendous influence to catalyse
positive and enduring change in our great country. It is my hope that as you return to Kuru,
you will engage in peer learning discussion with your colleagues with a view to sharing
experiences and coming up with solutions and suggestions for our collective benefit.
THE CONTEXT OF ENDURING TRANSFORMATION
One major agreement in the literature on this thesis is that the ultimate goal of any
Transformation Agenda is the institutionalization of good governance that truly serves the
people. In my opinion, Institutional transformation of the scale that Nigeria needs will not

2. be achieved by government rhetoric. It requires willingness to restore values to the front
burner of the discourse on transformation (Fayemi 2013). It requires a willingness to lead by
example, to incarnate the values of the society that we want. In the words of Ghandi, we
must become the change we want to see. Transformation cannot be imposed from above. It
can only be generated by exemplary leadership which not only elicits emulation but inspires
the conviction that the proposed path of change in the right road5
. If the goal of any
transformation agenda is to entrenched good governance, our conceptual construction would
be incomplete without briefly examining the concept of good governance.
Good governance according to Wikipedia is how public institutions conduct public
affairs and manage public resources. The IMF declared in 1996 that “promoting good
governance in all its aspects, including ensuring the rule of law, improving the efficiency and
accountability of the public sector, and tackling corruption, are essential elements of a
framework with which economies can prosper”.6
The United Nations identified eight characteristics of good governance:
Consensus oriented;
Participatory;
Following the Rule of Law;
Effective and Efficient;
Accountable;
Transparent;
Responsive;
Equitable and Inclusive.7
In 1952, the World Bank underlined three aspects of society which they feel will affect the
nature of a country’s governance:
(i) Type of political regime;
(ii) Process by which authority is exercised in the management of the economic and social
resources, with a view to development; and
(iii)Capacity of government to formulate policies and have them effectively implemented.8
Other good governance indicators identified by the World Bank are as follows
(a) The process by which those in authority are selected and replaced (voice and
accountability: political stability and absence of violence);
(b) The capacity of government to formulate and implement policies
(government effectiveness; and regulatory quality); and

3. (c) The respect of citizens and state for institutions that govern interaction
among them (rule of law: control of corruption).
Nevertheless, “there is new empirical evidence that governance matters, in the sense that
there is a strong causal relationship from good governance to better development such as
higher per capita incomes, lower infant mortality rate and higher literacy” On the other hand;
bad governance is responsible for inequality, poverty and undesirable socio-economic
outcomes.9
In this regard, Collier (2007) opined that bad governance is one of the “Four
development traps”. The other four traps are conflict, natural resources, being landlocked with
bad neighbours).
Maseko argued further that with proper institutions of governance and regulatory
frameworks, nation States will be able to improve performance in a number of key areas.
One notable area is the protection and promotion of civil liberties. Good governance is also
about proper stewardship of the country’s resources. Therefore, conceptualization of good
governance as an aspect of stewardship is consistent with the definition of good governance as
a “process referring to the manner in which power is exercised in the management of the affairs of a
nation”.10
There is also a consensus around the world that good governance denotes the “political and
institutional processes and outcomes that are deemed necessary to achieve the goals of development”
(Fayemi 2013).
Conclusively, it is clear that “real” transformational leadership and good governance are
mutually exclusive. The challenge in our country today is how to construct an acceptable
pathway through which the transformational agenda can engendered good governance real
time and translate in tangibles for the benefit of the citizenry. We have to move beyond
sloganeering to constructive and people oriented policies that are real and measurable.
REVISITING INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND THE TRANSFORMATION
AGENDA:
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, the essence of any transformation agenda is
creating the greatest happiness for the greatest number of the citizenry in any society. I have a
strong conviction that for any transformation agenda to serve the need of the majority and
meet their expectations, the importance of regulatory frameworks to nurture and regulates its
functions and processes cannot be over-emphasized. This paper will briefly interrogate the

4. synergy between these frameworks as it affects the transformation agenda taking into
cognizance the earlier identified TRAs with a view to identifying areas of strains and stresses
and also elaborate on the Transformation in Ekiti State since my assumption of office for
your consideration.
Regulatory framework in this context refers to significant rule, whether legislated or freely
adopted, as well as standards, specifications, best practices that effectively influence conduct
within a system or State.12
For the purpose of this lecture, I shall divide regulatory frameworks to both formal and Quasi
formal. The formal regulatory institutions in a democracy include but not limited to the
Legislature, Executive and the Judiciary, while the Quasi-formal regulators are the electorates,
civil society, trade unions, traditional/religious institutions, the Armed Forces and the Press.
The Parliament is an important link in the chain of accountability between government and
the people, 13
if and when the parliament plays an effective role it can lead to what is referred
to as the three interlocking dimensions of humane governance that ensures the health of the
whole. One critical area where the Parliament can be an effective regulator is in the area of
parliamentary oversight which refers to the legislative surveillance of the executive arm of
government. This power is largely exercised through the committee system. It also occurs in
a wide range of legislative activities and contexts. These include authorization, appropriation,
investigative and legislative hearings by standing committees14
. Legislative oversight authority
is derived from the implied powers in the constitution, public laws and extant rules of the
legislature. It is therefore an integral part of the doctrine of check and balances. In
recognition of the import of this very important function and to strengthened the capacity of
members of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, our government has consistently support their
exposure to both local and international capacity building and parliamentary support
programmes. This is exemplified in the relationship between the Ekiti State House of
Assembly and the Gauteng Parliament in South Africa. Another novel initiative introduced
is the regular Executive/Legislative parley which provides the platform for regular
conversation between the Executive, Legislature and members of the National Assembly to
share ideas and build consensus on major government policies and programmes.
The Judiciary is also an important regulator. The function of this very important arm of
government is stated in Chapter VII of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria. To be able to perform this regulatory function, the Judiciary must be truly
independent. Judicial Independence as a concept is defined as a system of keeping the

5. judiciary from undue influence by other arms and branches of government15
. The principle
of judicial independence is one of the cores of the justice system. Their values include
fairness and justice, efficiency of the judicial process, access of justice, public confidence in
the courts and financial autonomy, for the Judiciary to be truly independent, a combination
of institutional reforms of the processes of appointing Judicial Officers, their discipline and
promotion coupled with a sincere attempt on the part of government to enhance their safety
and condition of service driven by political will on the part of the political leadership are
imperative and germane. In Ekiti State, we have embarked on various judicial reforms to
properly position the judiciary to meet the challenges of our time. We have also put the
issues of capacity training, welfare and humane working environment on the front burner. It
will interest this gathering that for the first time since the creation of this State, our Judges
just returned from a capacity enhancement tour of South Africa and we intend to pursue this
with vigour in the years ahead.
As you are aware, I head the executive arm of the government which is the hub of policy
formulation and implementation. There is an adage from this part of the country that a fish
gets rots from the head. The nature and character of the leadership of the executive will
determine the place of such government in history and its impact on the people. I shall
explain the Ekiti Transformational Agenda to you in due course but it is suffice to state that
on assumption of office myself and my late Deputy without any prompting publicly declared
our assets and I make bold to say that there is no political appointee in this state that has not
done same. We have also signed into law the Fiscal Responsibility Law and Freedom of
Information Law and put in place a robust procurement system. This is to make government
accountable, responsive and responsible. Members of my government are constantly
subjected to periodic assessment through the Office of Transformation, Strategy and Delivery;
we shall come to that later.
As opined earlier, other equally important regulatory frameworks in a democracy are the
electorates through periodic election, civil society, trade/labour unions, traditional and
religious institutions, the Armed Forces and the Press. These critical bodies if well structure
could at any point in time galvanize and mobilize public opinion for or against any public
policy. A critical example is India, where the armed forces in spite of the frequency of regime
change continue to defend their constitutional democracy. In Nigeria too, labour/trade
unions have played a very active role in the moulding of public opinion against obnoxious
government policies.

6. OVERVIEW OF EKITI STATE TRANSFORMATION AGENDA:
I have earlier argued that far before we were elected into office. I and my team understudied
the Ekiti situation and came up with our own solutions based on the information available to
us at that time. This resulted in our road map to Ekiti Recovery. The 8-Point Agenda which
is our own antidote to poverty reduction because our study revealed that poverty is endemic
and must be confronted for meaningful development to take place. I shall explain in due
course our modest achievements in the pursuant of the 8-Point Agenda.
To provide a launching pad for our affront on poverty, we embarked on a holistic reform of
the institution for policy formulation and implementation in the State. To ensure prompt
service delivery across the State, we established the Office of Transformation, Strategy and
Delivery (OTSD) with the aim of re-shaping how government functions, re-engineering its
processes and systems in order to ensure the implementation of government’s developmental
programmes in a more effective and efficient manner. The Office focuses on quick-win
actions that ensure the delivery of the agenda of the administration, and long term visioning
and strategic thinking of various developments alternatives that guarantee sustainable and
accelerated improvement in the lives of the people.
This office also assists in breaking down bureaucratic barriers impeding policy
implementation and also embarks on a quarterly assessment of MDAs in respect of their work
plans and Key Performance Indications. We also created the Ministry of Budget, Economic
Planning and Service Delivery from the erstwhile Ministry of Finance, Budget and Economic
Development with a view to transforming the budgeting process and put the people on the
front burner of policy formulation. For the first time in the history of Ekiti State, the
Governor on a yearly basis convokes village square meetings before budget preparation to ask
the people what their needs are. Budgetary options since I became governor largerly are
reflections of the outcomes of such conversations. This is a radical departure from the usual
top bottom approach where government officials allocate resources to the citizenry without
their inputs. Our budgetary processes are driven by MTEF with fiscal projection of revenue
using macro-economic assumptions at three levels of likelihood. Namely:
(i) Baseline revenue with up to 95% confidence level.
(ii) Plausible revenue with up to 60 -75% confidence level.
(iii) Optimistic revenue with up to 30 – 40% confidence level.
The levels of revenue then guided the prioritization of capital projects. Another initiative
embedded in the budget was the adoption of a result based budgeting method as against the

7. historical incremental approach, by this method MDAs actually justified their revenue and
expenditure proposals to ensure efficient allocation of public fund to priority sectors. We
have also created the Ministry of Rural Development and Community Empowerment to
address the needs of the people of the grassroot levels.
Let me provide a few concrete examples of what we have been able to achieve through our
transformation agenda in the last two years.
In the area of governance, our goal was to enhance participatory governance and
accountability, thus motivating the citizens with ideas for better productivity, and creating an
intellectual bank for policy formulation and implementation. In this bid, we have taken a
number of crucial steps and recorded important achievements.
For example, for the first time in the history of the state we established a regime of legislations
to guarantee a predictable environment of good governance and promote transparency and
accountability. We domesticated the Freedom of Information Law, therefore, in our state,
citizens have the right of access to government documents which are not classified – the first
state to so do and we also enacted into law a Fiscal Responsibility bill, a Public Procurement
Legislation, a Public Private Partnership Law and a Gender Based Violence Prohibition Law
amongst forty new legislations passed into law. For the first time in the 16 year history of the
state, which was created out of the old Ondo State in 1996, we have replaced the Edicts and
Laws of the old Ondo State with the laws of Ekiti State.
Second, we adopted a merit-based system of appointment and promotion of civil servants,
including at the highest levels of the bureaucracy. The chief bureaucrats, including the Head
of Service, Permanent Secretaries, and the Accountant-General, were all selected through an
open and competitive process. In an environment which had been dominated by
patrimonialism and clientelism, this was a transformative step and it has led to the
rejuvenation of the civil service, such that we now have civil servants who are capable of
driving the people-focused policies and programmes of the government. We also focused on
increasing the revenue base of the State by reducing our dependence on what comes from the
Federation Account.
We also instituted a social security benefit scheme – the first of its type in any state in Nigeria.
This is backed by law so as to ensure continuity. It is therefore now a scheme of the
Government of Ekiti State and not merely the policy of my administration. Based on this
scheme, we give monthly stipends to indigent citizens over the age of 65 years. We currently
cater for over 20,000 senior citizens in the State. This is in addition to our Free and

8. Compulsory Education programme up to senior secondary schools and our free health
programme with focuses on the vulnerable segments of our population – children, the elderly,
pregnant women and those with physical disabilities.
In terms of Infrastructural Development, our goal is to establish optimum communities that
will improve the lives of citizens and attract investment. Our target is to ensure that every
part of the state is accessible by major roads by the end of our first term – which is in two
years. This has never happened in the history of the state. We are also making water dams in
the state functional so as to increase water supply by eighty per cent (80%), while using the
public-private partnership to increase generation and supply of electricity. In the last two
years, we have focused on urban renewal through many projects. We have embarked on
massive road construction and expansion, rural electrification project in communities that
previously had no electricity; we have established a State Ambulance Service unit which is
able to respond to emergencies; we have provided portable water and water treatment plants
to many communities.
Agriculture employs about seventy-five (75%) of our population. Therefore, agriculture is at
the centre of our programmes. Nigeria used to be a world leader in cocoa production up to
the early 1970s. In fact, the enlightenment project re-started by the late colonial era
indigenous government in our area of Nigeria was partly based on the economic resources
derived from the sale of cocoa. Ekitiland in south-western Nigeria was an important part of
cocoa production. That ended from the late 1970s. We are now reviving cocoa plantation to
make Ekiti a world leader again in this area of production. This will generate employment for
tens of thousands of our citizens, particularly the youth and also focusing on cassava, rice and
oil-palm. We project that 20,000 of our youths would have been trained and employed in
mechanized agriculture by the end of our first term in office. We also project that agriculture
will contribute fifty per cent (50%) of our internally-generated revenue. To achieve this, we
have improved the conditions of or farming in the state, thus guaranteeing effective
cultivation, harvesting and processing of agro produce.
We want agro-business to thrive in our state and change the fortunes of the state as well as
those of our citizens. Towards this end, 15,000 farmers have been assisted through the supply
of agro-chemicals and fertilizers. This has led to the cultivation of several thousands of
hectares of land. We have funded overseas training for agro-workers in cocoa rehabilitation
in Indonesia and China; we have refurbished the Orin-Ekiti cassava processing plant and
upgraded the plant output from 10 tonnes to 60 tonnes per day under a private-public
partnership with Vegefresh Agro-Allied Company. We have also rehabilitated and

9. constructed many kilometers of farm access roads; cultivated and supplies 500,000 cocoa
seedlings and 60,000 oil palm seedlings to farmers at highly subsidized rates, and collaborated
with British America Tobacco Nigerian Foundation and FADAMA III project in the
construction of a $1 million cassava cottage industry which has created jobs for about 3,000
women and more than 1000 youths.
In the area of education and human development, out target is to put a computer on the desk
of every secondary student by 2014, while providing free and compulsory education up to
senior secondary school level, including special initiatives for the physically-challenged
students. We have delivered 17,512 computers to teachers and 33,000 Samsung solar laptops
through the Ekiti State E-School Project. We have invested vast resources in the last two years
on knowledge acquisition and skill development to enable our citizens to work effectively in a
rapidly changing and complex global environment. Our investments in human capital
represent our most critical intervention in the process of state reconstruction in Ekiti State.
Other accomplishments include the complete refurbishment of all the public secondary
schools in the state; procurement and distribution of furniture as well as science and sports
equipment to all public secondary schools across the state. We have also sought to improve
teacher quality whilst successfully merging the State’s three universities into a better funded
single state university. Other initiatives focus on skills based technical and vocational
education in the State. (There are several other initiatives that I can discuss during the
question and answer session).
Human development is not sustainable without massive investment in healthcare delivery,
which include capacity building and infrastructure and staff welfare and disease control.
Therefore, in the area of Health Care Services, we have been providing, in the last two years,
free medical services for children, pregnant women, the physically – challenged and senior
citizens. We have also established health centres in all localities, while increasing
immunization coverage. This year, we have embarked on our ‘Operation Renovate all Health
Centres and Hospitals. More crucially, we have embarked upon a strategic re-development of
health management information systems while embarking upon the rehabilitation of health
training institutions. We have greatly improved maternal healthcare, disease control, while
also making the regulation of private health institutions more effective. Through our
investment in medical school achieved a 90% success rate in the national Nursing
Examination. We have constructed a new Accident and Emergency wing in the Ekiti State
University Teaching Hospital, while also creating a State Health Data Bank. We have
renovated and extended the secondary healthcare facilities in the State, and enacted the

10. Primary Healthcare Development Agency Act. Our health sector indices vis-avis the national
average bear testimony to the significant steps being taken in the health sector. Ekiti has one
of the lowest maternal and child mortality rates in the country, the lowest HIV prevalence
and the highest life expectancy in Nigeria.
To be able to generate employment, development and empower the citizens to pay taxes, we
have been providing the enabling atmosphere for industrial development. To jumpstart this,
we have create technology and industrial parks for small and medium scale enterprises,
established micro-credit facilities for promising entrepreneurs, while also promoting agro-
allied and solid minerals sectors. We also plan to make Ekiti State a most attractive
destination for relaxation and holidays by developing the Efon, Okemesi, Ikogosi and Ipole-
Iloro tourism corridor, a heliport, and world class hotel and accommodation facilities. We
are incredibly blessed by nature in Ekiti State. For instance, we have the Ikogosi spring where
both natural warm and cold water flow from the hills to the valley. I encourage you to visit
Ikogosi to enjoy this most fascinating and unusual blessing of nature.
Our administration is just concluding the re-development of the first phase of the Ikogosi
Warm Spring & Resort as the flagship of the tourism industry in the State. About 116
hectares of land was acquired for this new Resort, with plans for theme parts, spas, high-
attitude sports academy, resourcecentre for women, golf course, entertainment centres, and
sports academy. The hotel part of the Resort will be a 150-room branded international three-
star hotel. We plan to spend N1.5 billion in creating a mini-paradise in the Ikogosi Warm
Spring & Resort. No doubt, it is now a place that the world will come to and enjoy the
beauty of nature. Electric power is very central to jump-starting the local economy, especially
in the area of agro-processing which is our focus and we are working on the development of
independent hydro and solar power generation in the State.
Finally, in the area of gender equity and empowerment, we are committed to promoting
gender equality and empowering women to maximize their potentials. In this context, we
reserve no less than one third of all appointments and promotions for women, while
mobilizing resources to attend to issues of concern for women from maternal health and child
care to employment and freedom from abuse. Specifically, I signed into law, the Gender-
Based Violence (Prohibition) Bill in November 2011, making Ekiti State, the first state to
domesticate this law in Nigeria. We also domesticated the national Gender Policy, while
providing skills acquisition programme for out-of-school girls, supporting girl-child education
and inaugurating the Family Court for the implementation and administration of children
and family matters.

11. CONCLUSION:
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, having spent the last eight years in partisan politics and
participating in grassroots organizing and state reconstruction, my belief in the need to take
politics beyond political parties is more reinforced. Our immediate challenge is to concentrate
on how to rescue our people from bad governance. Unless the critical mass of our people
cutting across age, gender, zones and party affiliations adopt the same positions, with a more
clearly defined collective agenda, the current transformation efforts will not suffice. There is
an urgent need to build coalitions and permanent platform in the public sphere that is
beyond party and personalities, but all embracing enough to those who subscribe to the core
value of integrity, honesty and dedication to transformation in Nigeria.16
This all embracing platform could address a variety of issues, but none is more urgent than
the question of the structure of the Nigeria State.17
In spite of all the challenges, I am hopeful in Nigeria future. I strongly believe that we can
revive the Nigerian State in a qualitative manner and make democracy more meaningful to
our people, provide jobs for the jobless, improve healthcare, modernize agriculture and
reclaim our young people from a future of violence decadence and despair by linking social
enterprise, civil society activism to politics and not draw artificial divisions in our promotion
of value-driven leadership. We need leaders who have a clear vision of the future, well
prepared, who see character as destiny, who advocate value-driven orientation, who do not
just mouth transformation. We must move away from transactional to politics to
transformative leadership.18
This is our covenant with the people of Ekiti State and we are
pursuing this with all vigor. I am proud to say that in Ekiti State, we are running a
government that is participatory, transparent, consensus-oriented, inclusive, responsive,
efficient, effective, accountable and one based on the rule of law. Many independent bodies
continue to attest to this and the latest is the Special Report on Africa in the Economist
Magazine of London, which states as follows about Ekiti:
“Better governance is creeping beyond the metropolis.
When your correspondent emails the governor of Ekiti
State in impoverished central Nigeria, he gets a reply
within minutes, with the entire cabinet copied in … Cabinet
members are highly motivated and have private sector
experience. A new employed agency sends out job
advertisement by text message. All secondary school
pupils are getting free laptops with solar panels. All civil

12. servants, including teachers are tested annually; those who
foils stand to lose their job… To be sure, sort
government of governance is still an exception
(The Economist, March 2nd
, 2013).
I thank you for listening.
Dr. KayodeFayemi
Governor