By Rotimi Ojomoyela

GOVERNOR Biodun Oyebanji has been in the saddle of leadership for close to three years. In this interview, Oyebanji speaks on his plans on agriculture, infrastructure and provision of dividends of democracy to the people of Ekiti State. On the second term endorsements from groups and individuals, he says he does not want to be distracted by the endorsements, noting that he is for now busy working. The state is due for the next governorship in 2026. Oyebanji also speaks on how his state emerged tops in the transparency survey carried out by BudgIT, among other issues. Excerpts:

What are the strategies you put in place to strengthen governance, ensuring transparency and accountability?

When I became the governor, I ensured that all other ministries that were not under the Treasury Single Account (TSA) were forced to get on board.

We also strengthened our audit process because I believe strongly that the hallmark of good governance is transparency and if you are entrusted with public resources, it must be expended in a way and manner that it can be defended. So we automated most of our processes. I changed the headship of the internal revenue agency and we gave them autonomy.

So the agency is being run as a private entity and I gave them the political backing to ensure that every Ministry, Department and Agency (MDA) in the state conforms to a certain standard of transparency and accountability. So, it is not difficult for us to be rated highly because it’s a commitment we made to Ekiti people and it’s the right thing to do. I’m excited about it and we have also made up our mind that this year, we have must ensure that our ranking doesn’t stop being number one. Our procurement process has been applauded as one of the best in the country. You see everything we do is on our website. We upload it there. It’s a lot of transparency. The tender process is so cumbersome and I also ensure that we don’t jump the protocols. So, we put all those processes in place, both at the state and at the local government level. They are inbuilt mechanisms of control and strategies to ensure that public funds are well spent.

Recently, South-West Governors met on regional security, what were your resolutions and what steps are you taking toward implementing those resolutions?

I don’t know how much of the strategies I can divulge here but the only thing I’m going to say is that, as the governors in the South-West, we made up our mind that we have a mandate to defend our people. The first responsibility of any government is to secure the lives of our citizens. We all have our structures across the state; we have a regional command structure where they can share intelligence and information, and also with the help of technology, to ensure that we respond. The summary of what we agreed on is that we will be proactive and that we are not going to be reactive to security issues.




https://www.vanguardngr.com/2025/03/ekiti-airport-remains-a-game-changer-gov-oyebanji/