The population of Lagos, which is projected to be the 3rd largest mega city by 2015 next to Bombay and Tokyo, its critical location, a fantastic harbour and a former capital of the federation and the present economic and commercial nerve center of Nigeria makes it the engine room as well as a motive force for well-conceived economic projections of the Yoruba nation whose major cities enjoy the closest proximity to it - a proximity that can be turned into heavy economic and developmental advantage.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PARAMETERS Socio-economic activities embrace all ranges of productive and reproductive engagements and interactions targeted at ensuring the material and spiritual well-being of the populace.
Man'sneeds spans from the most basic such as food, water, shelter, clothing etc.
to the most complex and mystical such as the pursuit of leisure and even a "personal" relationship with God.
In the course of pursuing the satisfaction of these needs, societies arose in which man mastered nature and its exploitation through labour to satisfy his needs.
These societies passed through series of adjustments and modifications due to specific challenges to each epoch and the relations produced by human interaction as such.
All of these constitute their historical experiences.
The Yoruba people, having emerged as a distinct people share similar experience with the rest of Africa in contemporary times, albeit with fine distinctions here and there.
The summary of that experience consists in invasion by the Arabs and the Western world, conquest and slavery, colonialism and the struggle for independence, and now, independent self government within a Nigerian federation.
We are all familiar with the consequences of this historical journey in every ramification as well as the present location of neo-colonization within which we find ourselves.
The crux of the experience is the production of military, para-military, and civilian despots who had no commitment to democracy, federalism and human rights and have subjected our land and people to decades of dehumanization and underdevelopment, in the process reversing vividly all the gains made during the comparatively short period when Yoruba, under the leadership of the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, sought and largely succeeded with a liberating development agenda for the region - an effort that, till date, remains the foundation of our development and progressive orientation in every facet.
WHAT IS OUR PRESENT STANDING? Echoing into the present are years of traumatic and dehumanizing military dictatorship that foreshadowed the immediate past unbeneficial government of General Olusegun Obasanjo.
We are all witnesses to the corrupt, anti-constitutional, anti-federal, anti-democratic and antipeople reformations of the eight years and the legacy of fraudulent and illegitimate government that is today bestowed on us.
The summary of the experience for the Yoruba is simply that, in that period, progressives in Yoruba politics lost ground, forcibly and otherwise, to an ascendant conservative class of politicians whose trademarks are violence, corruption, avarice, self-aggrandizement, hostility to the masses and the looting of collective wealth, in close association with their "mainstream" federal allies.
Especially in the last 4 years, deliberate efforts were made to rubbish and reverse the gains of yesteryears and shove the Yoruba people along the road to semi-barbaric existence that had been the misfortune of others in the federation to whom the standards of the Yoruba had always been an envy.
All the indices of development are today far below accepted civilized mark.
From good governance, education, health and infrastructure: to employment, security and cultural values.
Every facet of life is in the negative range; maternal mortality, infant mortality, crime rate, low life expectancy, fraud, moral delinquency, spiritual poverty, in short, hardship, misery, and a vast complex of disorder is the present reality.
It must be pointed out that in Nigeria, even in the Yoruba land, it had not always been paradise, but never had we had it this bad, especially in human resources development and purposeful dynamic governance.
THE STRATEGY FOR INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT Central to this proposal is the exchange of a vast array of goods and services possible among all of the Yoruba land and between all of Yoruba land (including its people in the fringe states of Kwara and Kogi) and Lagos state.
By merely considering agricultural produce, the crafts and small agro-allied products that spring from them, there is a possibility of mass engagement and production which will make the prices of the products and services from Yoruba land to Lagos almost unbeatable.
I do not want to go into a list of all these products and services or the consumption requirement of almost 17 million people resident in Lagos.
A researched and well documented database, updating all the facts already available concerning the economic potentials of all the states will have to be undertaken under a joint commission, and the findings made readily available to the governments of all the Yoruba states.
A time-bound, periodic target of goals, realistically conceived, and based on the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) projections of each state, combined with their federal allocations, outside all their funding commitment to recurrent matters, will have to be set.
MATTERS IMPERATIVE TO SUSTAINABLE INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT There are processes and foundations to be put in place before the objectives of an integral Yoruba Development Agenda can be translated into reality.
Some of the factors are almost, but not entirely beyond achievement at the state level, and there are those that can be definitely accomplished if we are unanimously focused on these objectives: a.
A VISIONARY PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL PLATFORM IN POWER.
We have to revive the large spirit that rallied all the progressive sons and daughters of Yoruba land home and abroad that eventually crystallized into the Action Group.
We have to settle for nothing less than the discipline, dedication, lofty cardinal programs and loyalty to ideals and people that obtained in the Unity Party of Nigeria.
We have made everything that came after these two platforms a poor imitation instead of excelling beyond those precedents.
Perhaps that was the foundation of our present misfortune.
No one can be singled out for blame however larger his responsibility was.
We have to collectively and individually accept the reality as our making and show genuine resolve to rebuild.
And in rebuilding, we have to set principles as the benchmark, and goals as the rallying point.
We have to assign responsibilities and play our parts for our honour and for posterity.
Without such a platform that can rekindle the fire of enthusiasm for progressive advancement, without the full weight of an awakened and determined sovereign Yoruba electorate and mandate behind it, it will be impossible to displace the present conservative interlopers and marauders manning governments illegitimately in most of Yoruba land today.
Progressive politics that is overwhelmingly strong and popular and the ensuing mandate to run government all over Yoruba land is a singular prerequisite for an integrated development plan under set cardinal objectives.
b.
ORGANISATION AND MOBILISATION OF RESOURCES I have mentioned this in part when hinting at documented and updated database on economic potentials.
Also, the need to increase the lGR radically through the economic process itself is important.
But additionally, the Yoruba Diaspora has to be mobilized, once and for all behind a jointly assessed vision and project.
In our own case, the project is that of finally settling down with redeeming and uplifting our land and people within the Nigerian federation.
We must strive to attain this in every way possible; by creating a massively popular political platform that obtains the mandate of the people and by using government of the states, under the central direction of the party, to reclaim all our past achievements and progress.
c.
RADICAL TRANSPORTATION MEANS The most critical of infrastructure is ensuring and providing for how people, goods and services move in Yoruba land and between it and Lagos.
To this end, we must depart from tradition and embrace radical alternatives in rail transport, not to the neglect of roads and waterways, but relying on it in the long-term as the most effective and efficient means.
d.
A SERIOUS VIEW OF CULTURAL TOURISM A master plan must emerge, based on researched data, to translate cultural tourism into a veritable source of foreign exchange earning for the Yoruba governments.
e.
A NEW AGRICULTURE AS CORE CONSIDERATION Most Yoruba land, especially the large rurality is predominantly agrarian; this must be mechanized and reinvented to include all its diverse aspects.
However the focus must be on food production to feed the teeming population in Lagos, which is predominantly of Yoruba extraction.
Suffice to say that the daily food exchange value of Lagos is about N2 billion.
Therefore, each of the five neighbouring Yoruba states can each conveniently take 10% share of this enormous economic potential.
f.
RE-INVENTING HUMAN POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENT IN FUNCTIONAL EDUCATION This is one area where we are the acknowledged masters.
We must however reform our education and training within a new concept of functionality and relevance to our survival in this world of information technology and globalized competition.
Now the factors which may not be immediately within the entire control of the states are: a.
ENERGY AND STEEL For serious industrialization, the energy needs, as well as steel for tools fabrication is so much in shortfall and with the federal government being substantially in control of all these factors calls for special consideration.
b.
THE FEDERATION AND "NATIONAL" SECURITY The ambiguity of the Nigerian constitution, the headstrong adherence of the conservatives to a unitary and one-party philosophy, as well as the wholesome manipulation of the political space to the adversity of oppositions and the progressives.
If this continues, it constitutes a grave danger to independent self-development of the region.
The Lagos experience and travails in the defense of federalism and constitutionalism is a case in point, but for the creativity at harnessing the potentials of Lagos, it is doubtful if any state without a radical leadership, popular support and ingenuous economic agenda could survive.
CONCLUSION A time must come, and I believe that for the Yoruba nation, that time is now, when the people must rally its entire progressives, well meaning and resourceful sons and daughters to respond to the challenges of history.
For us, the challenge today is an existence within a drifting and pretentious federation, whose conservative forces are parasitic and despotic, working assiduously towards a one-party state and unitary system at whose mercy all the federating states and local government areas must depend.
We have an almighty federal government and its vassals which personalize the state, setting aside the rule of law for primitivity and the promotion of brigandage.
According to International Observers, our electoral process and the elections it produces fall below even the previously unenviable Nigerian standard.
We are living witnesses to the recent unprecedented fraud and the usurpation of the people's sovereignty.
Within this federation, we have so much to do to amend its nature and rules.
However, the most important task, and the one that will give us space for the translation of the ideals espoused above, is to put our house in order.
True, there will be no unity of purpose on this agenda.
We in the Yoruba land have our fair share of a mixture of conservative, lawless and self-serving politicians who have influenced the people with their depravity and utter lack of commitment to social good causes.
Yet, it is possible with concerted effort to reverse the trend in Yoruba land, precisely because that is not our heritage.
We have a duty to work on it collectively and dispassionately.
We must shelve the idea that one state can redeem Yoruba land and make it flourish.
Rather, it must be a regional and concerted effort.
We are a people and a nation - albeit within a nation that is failing.
In order not to mark time or go down the drain with the drifting and failing Nigeria; indeed, in order to assist to arrest Nigeria's drift and collapse, we need to do what we are renowned for: provide exemplary leadership and advance our people and make them models for the black race.
The struggle for our redemption and upliftment must commence and proceed in league with the struggle for Nigeria's total redirection and progressive advancement.
Our success begins with recreating the type of platform that ensured our past glory.
A progressive and visionary party with outstanding and purposeful cardinal programs for the land and people - leading to governments of action and development in all our states under the central co-ordination of the party, which guarantees freedom for all and life more abundant.
It is possible and it is about time we did it.
I hope that my presentation has hinted at the acceptable road that can lead us back to where we are coming from and into surpassing it in the nearest future.
Thank you for your patience and once again accept my gratitude for the honour of the invitation.
Thank you
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PARAMETERS Socio-economic activities embrace all ranges of productive and reproductive engagements and interactions targeted at ensuring the material and spiritual well-being of the populace.
Man'sneeds spans from the most basic such as food, water, shelter, clothing etc.
to the most complex and mystical such as the pursuit of leisure and even a "personal" relationship with God.
In the course of pursuing the satisfaction of these needs, societies arose in which man mastered nature and its exploitation through labour to satisfy his needs.
These societies passed through series of adjustments and modifications due to specific challenges to each epoch and the relations produced by human interaction as such.
All of these constitute their historical experiences.
The Yoruba people, having emerged as a distinct people share similar experience with the rest of Africa in contemporary times, albeit with fine distinctions here and there.
The summary of that experience consists in invasion by the Arabs and the Western world, conquest and slavery, colonialism and the struggle for independence, and now, independent self government within a Nigerian federation.
We are all familiar with the consequences of this historical journey in every ramification as well as the present location of neo-colonization within which we find ourselves.
The crux of the experience is the production of military, para-military, and civilian despots who had no commitment to democracy, federalism and human rights and have subjected our land and people to decades of dehumanization and underdevelopment, in the process reversing vividly all the gains made during the comparatively short period when Yoruba, under the leadership of the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, sought and largely succeeded with a liberating development agenda for the region - an effort that, till date, remains the foundation of our development and progressive orientation in every facet.
WHAT IS OUR PRESENT STANDING? Echoing into the present are years of traumatic and dehumanizing military dictatorship that foreshadowed the immediate past unbeneficial government of General Olusegun Obasanjo.
We are all witnesses to the corrupt, anti-constitutional, anti-federal, anti-democratic and antipeople reformations of the eight years and the legacy of fraudulent and illegitimate government that is today bestowed on us.
The summary of the experience for the Yoruba is simply that, in that period, progressives in Yoruba politics lost ground, forcibly and otherwise, to an ascendant conservative class of politicians whose trademarks are violence, corruption, avarice, self-aggrandizement, hostility to the masses and the looting of collective wealth, in close association with their "mainstream" federal allies.
Especially in the last 4 years, deliberate efforts were made to rubbish and reverse the gains of yesteryears and shove the Yoruba people along the road to semi-barbaric existence that had been the misfortune of others in the federation to whom the standards of the Yoruba had always been an envy.
All the indices of development are today far below accepted civilized mark.
From good governance, education, health and infrastructure: to employment, security and cultural values.
Every facet of life is in the negative range; maternal mortality, infant mortality, crime rate, low life expectancy, fraud, moral delinquency, spiritual poverty, in short, hardship, misery, and a vast complex of disorder is the present reality.
It must be pointed out that in Nigeria, even in the Yoruba land, it had not always been paradise, but never had we had it this bad, especially in human resources development and purposeful dynamic governance.
THE STRATEGY FOR INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT Central to this proposal is the exchange of a vast array of goods and services possible among all of the Yoruba land and between all of Yoruba land (including its people in the fringe states of Kwara and Kogi) and Lagos state.
By merely considering agricultural produce, the crafts and small agro-allied products that spring from them, there is a possibility of mass engagement and production which will make the prices of the products and services from Yoruba land to Lagos almost unbeatable.
I do not want to go into a list of all these products and services or the consumption requirement of almost 17 million people resident in Lagos.
A researched and well documented database, updating all the facts already available concerning the economic potentials of all the states will have to be undertaken under a joint commission, and the findings made readily available to the governments of all the Yoruba states.
A time-bound, periodic target of goals, realistically conceived, and based on the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) projections of each state, combined with their federal allocations, outside all their funding commitment to recurrent matters, will have to be set.
MATTERS IMPERATIVE TO SUSTAINABLE INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT There are processes and foundations to be put in place before the objectives of an integral Yoruba Development Agenda can be translated into reality.
Some of the factors are almost, but not entirely beyond achievement at the state level, and there are those that can be definitely accomplished if we are unanimously focused on these objectives: a.
A VISIONARY PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL PLATFORM IN POWER.
We have to revive the large spirit that rallied all the progressive sons and daughters of Yoruba land home and abroad that eventually crystallized into the Action Group.
We have to settle for nothing less than the discipline, dedication, lofty cardinal programs and loyalty to ideals and people that obtained in the Unity Party of Nigeria.
We have made everything that came after these two platforms a poor imitation instead of excelling beyond those precedents.
Perhaps that was the foundation of our present misfortune.
No one can be singled out for blame however larger his responsibility was.
We have to collectively and individually accept the reality as our making and show genuine resolve to rebuild.
And in rebuilding, we have to set principles as the benchmark, and goals as the rallying point.
We have to assign responsibilities and play our parts for our honour and for posterity.
Without such a platform that can rekindle the fire of enthusiasm for progressive advancement, without the full weight of an awakened and determined sovereign Yoruba electorate and mandate behind it, it will be impossible to displace the present conservative interlopers and marauders manning governments illegitimately in most of Yoruba land today.
Progressive politics that is overwhelmingly strong and popular and the ensuing mandate to run government all over Yoruba land is a singular prerequisite for an integrated development plan under set cardinal objectives.
b.
ORGANISATION AND MOBILISATION OF RESOURCES I have mentioned this in part when hinting at documented and updated database on economic potentials.
Also, the need to increase the lGR radically through the economic process itself is important.
But additionally, the Yoruba Diaspora has to be mobilized, once and for all behind a jointly assessed vision and project.
In our own case, the project is that of finally settling down with redeeming and uplifting our land and people within the Nigerian federation.
We must strive to attain this in every way possible; by creating a massively popular political platform that obtains the mandate of the people and by using government of the states, under the central direction of the party, to reclaim all our past achievements and progress.
c.
RADICAL TRANSPORTATION MEANS The most critical of infrastructure is ensuring and providing for how people, goods and services move in Yoruba land and between it and Lagos.
To this end, we must depart from tradition and embrace radical alternatives in rail transport, not to the neglect of roads and waterways, but relying on it in the long-term as the most effective and efficient means.
d.
A SERIOUS VIEW OF CULTURAL TOURISM A master plan must emerge, based on researched data, to translate cultural tourism into a veritable source of foreign exchange earning for the Yoruba governments.
e.
A NEW AGRICULTURE AS CORE CONSIDERATION Most Yoruba land, especially the large rurality is predominantly agrarian; this must be mechanized and reinvented to include all its diverse aspects.
However the focus must be on food production to feed the teeming population in Lagos, which is predominantly of Yoruba extraction.
Suffice to say that the daily food exchange value of Lagos is about N2 billion.
Therefore, each of the five neighbouring Yoruba states can each conveniently take 10% share of this enormous economic potential.
f.
RE-INVENTING HUMAN POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENT IN FUNCTIONAL EDUCATION This is one area where we are the acknowledged masters.
We must however reform our education and training within a new concept of functionality and relevance to our survival in this world of information technology and globalized competition.
Now the factors which may not be immediately within the entire control of the states are: a.
ENERGY AND STEEL For serious industrialization, the energy needs, as well as steel for tools fabrication is so much in shortfall and with the federal government being substantially in control of all these factors calls for special consideration.
b.
THE FEDERATION AND "NATIONAL" SECURITY The ambiguity of the Nigerian constitution, the headstrong adherence of the conservatives to a unitary and one-party philosophy, as well as the wholesome manipulation of the political space to the adversity of oppositions and the progressives.
If this continues, it constitutes a grave danger to independent self-development of the region.
The Lagos experience and travails in the defense of federalism and constitutionalism is a case in point, but for the creativity at harnessing the potentials of Lagos, it is doubtful if any state without a radical leadership, popular support and ingenuous economic agenda could survive.
CONCLUSION A time must come, and I believe that for the Yoruba nation, that time is now, when the people must rally its entire progressives, well meaning and resourceful sons and daughters to respond to the challenges of history.
For us, the challenge today is an existence within a drifting and pretentious federation, whose conservative forces are parasitic and despotic, working assiduously towards a one-party state and unitary system at whose mercy all the federating states and local government areas must depend.
We have an almighty federal government and its vassals which personalize the state, setting aside the rule of law for primitivity and the promotion of brigandage.
According to International Observers, our electoral process and the elections it produces fall below even the previously unenviable Nigerian standard.
We are living witnesses to the recent unprecedented fraud and the usurpation of the people's sovereignty.
Within this federation, we have so much to do to amend its nature and rules.
However, the most important task, and the one that will give us space for the translation of the ideals espoused above, is to put our house in order.
True, there will be no unity of purpose on this agenda.
We in the Yoruba land have our fair share of a mixture of conservative, lawless and self-serving politicians who have influenced the people with their depravity and utter lack of commitment to social good causes.
Yet, it is possible with concerted effort to reverse the trend in Yoruba land, precisely because that is not our heritage.
We have a duty to work on it collectively and dispassionately.
We must shelve the idea that one state can redeem Yoruba land and make it flourish.
Rather, it must be a regional and concerted effort.
We are a people and a nation - albeit within a nation that is failing.
In order not to mark time or go down the drain with the drifting and failing Nigeria; indeed, in order to assist to arrest Nigeria's drift and collapse, we need to do what we are renowned for: provide exemplary leadership and advance our people and make them models for the black race.
The struggle for our redemption and upliftment must commence and proceed in league with the struggle for Nigeria's total redirection and progressive advancement.
Our success begins with recreating the type of platform that ensured our past glory.
A progressive and visionary party with outstanding and purposeful cardinal programs for the land and people - leading to governments of action and development in all our states under the central co-ordination of the party, which guarantees freedom for all and life more abundant.
It is possible and it is about time we did it.
I hope that my presentation has hinted at the acceptable road that can lead us back to where we are coming from and into surpassing it in the nearest future.
Thank you for your patience and once again accept my gratitude for the honour of the invitation.
Thank you