REPOSITIONING IFE TOWARDS A GREATER HEIGHT ECONOMICALLY:- Rotimi Makinde

Adam Smith  the famous economic wizard was the first to realize that the Wealth of a community was not in the accumulation of commodities nor in the resource reserves that such  a community may happen to possess. But rather wealth exists in the productive knowledge of its people. The ability to efficiently transform resources (factor inputs) into desired goods and services represents the true source of a nation's wealth.Without exaggeration, I have not seen a Yoruba town that has mass land compared to Ile Ife,the ancient town shares boundary with Ijebu Igbo in Ogun State,until recently,other border spot was up to Asejire river.To say the naked truth,the community reserves the honour of being the largest contributor to the revenue purse of the state of Osun.

Now let's ask ourselves,to what extent are we as a people turning that into potentialities to change the fortune of our people positively,what is our attitude towards farming,how mechanised are we towards agriculture.How are we positioning our local council towards tapping the so called potentialities as stated above,which of the council's decision is towards aggressive creation of wealth or do we as a people have to wait until an indigene of this great city become the governor of the state of Osun.These and many other questions are what I think we should begin to ask ourselves without sentiment and without apportioning blame to any individual or office.

For instance,in the early 70s,some of us can attest to the fact that commercial activities was booming in our society better than the present scenario.Commercial Vehicles,such as taxi and other commuters were feasible at their best,the famous Oja Tuntun,Garage Oke,Idi Omo,General Hospital are places Taxis could ply to make their daily lives.Today is all gone,not just because okada took over but because we failed to create further avenues to prolong such activities.

Physical and human capital represents the true embodiment of wealth. This wealth is used to generate factor income as a payment for the production of desired goods and services.This can either be generated automatically,artificially and purposely with serious intention to create wealth.

Let's think in this direction and begin to do the needful. What is wrong in Ife east and ife central working together in creating enabling environment for the betterment of ife people.There are precedences for such,Oodua investment company was a creation of Late Obafemi Awolowo where states of like mind sat and contrubuted to make life meaningful for the people of Western State,it gave birth to Epe plywood,Wema bank and others.Such noble effort is possible within similar nuclear families like ife east and ife central.It will not be wrong if we create another Oja tuntun for the people of ife and in such a place that taxi,okada and bus could ply to deliberately creating  jobs for transportation business.We can also create a great location for all inter state transportation outside the residential area to further boost commercial activities, physical therapy and people's movement of our citizenry.As it is now,the present Oja tuntun is so choked and infact I doubt if people all over the town need taxi or bike to get to the location,so also garage oke and others.Motor parks now litter every corners in ile ife making it extremely difficult to control and police for security purposes.How good would it be if we as a people and as a community are working unitedly with our local council, present to the state government exactly what we want as a people,back it up with provision of land and in good thinkable location for those things we think can better our community....

I would like to see our council working in consonant with Ife development board,the palace to ensure we have in our midst agricultural equipments for the use of our farmers in rented capacity even as we embark on aggressive enlightenment campaign to our people to develop interest in farming, and we encourage them with land in tandem with state policies,to be so doing is to reposition this community for a better future of our dream.


Just my little cents.