Dr. Loretta Ogboro-Okor, 46, a medical doctor, author, a United Nations ambassador, and philanthropist, is aspiring to succeed Governor Godwin Obaseki, next year, on the platform of the Labour Party, LP. In this interview, Ogboro-Okor, who was the policy lead for the Obi-Datti Campaign Group of the Labour Party for the 2023 Presidential election, among others spoke on her chances and plans for Edo State, if elected.
What informed your choice of Labour Party even though it is called the third force?
It is the Labour Party because they believe in equity and justice. When you have resources, the favour you can do to human beings is to distribute resources equitably. These are the things that endeared me to the Labour Party. Even their logo, Papa, Mama, Pikin, is a functional society, and if we want a functional society that is effective, you and I must take our place at the table. If we do not take our places at the table, we cannot shake the table.
Let’s not deceive ourselves, there is no free freedom, there is no stranger or alien that will come and liberate us in Nigeria or liberate Edo State people. We are the ones to do that because we were born Edo State people for a reason. That is why I actually went into the Labour Party. I have worked and toiled with them and for them even behind the scene and now in the forefront. I wrote the policy lead for health in the manifesto.
Some of us worked night and day and for a new Nigeria and we will continue it as far as the Labour Party lends itself to that initial motto that gave birth to them. Peter Obi is a good man, Peter Obi is one man who represents a motivating factor for any good minded human being and any well-meaning Nigeria.
Do you think the Labour Party has the structure to win the Edo State governorship election?
So far, the Labour Party has proven that they have the people as their structure. However, we have seen a glitch in that. We have seen that it is either the thugs do it, INEC mars it or the court does the final onslaught. The question is, do we say because the river drowns people, nobody goes into the ship anymore or nobody drinks water? We need to keep chipping away at those things that make life valuable for Nigerians to live collectedly.
If you look at history and societies that have changed, two things have happened: it’s either bad people decide to do good things or good people recruit bad people and make them do good things. When it’s time to jump the gutter, I will jump the gutter. Never judge a book by looking at its cover. There is no free food. Even the bad boys have begun to see that it is not worth it, they are the people at the lowest ebb, we should recruit them for good.
What is your motivation in wanting to become the governor of Edo State?
My motivation, simply put, started from my parents who raised me. My father actually made me know who I am, what I am, why I am that person’s daughter and what that means. So he made sure that I learnt how to speak the Benin language very well. And he taught us the history of where we came from. My father’s mother was Oba Ovonramwen’s first grandchild. She was with Oba Ovonramwen in Calabar. For those who are familiar with Edo and Benin City, there is Uyi primary school on Festive Circular named after my grandmother, and then his father was one of the people who in earlier days migrated with his friend the Oba of Benin at the time he was deposed to Calabar. So, they had a broad view of the different cultures. I think that because of that pedigree, my dad made sure that we understood our roots. He used to say, if you don’t know where you are coming from, you will not know where you are going. And he used to tell us that you are born into your family for a reason, into your state for a reason, into your country for a reason, into your race for a reason and not by accident. And so, you must find that reason.
And growing up he made sure that he built my self-confidence and self-esteem; they are two different things. Self-confidence is the belief that you can do something while self-esteem is putting yourself out there to do it, and knowing that sticks and stones will not break your back, you don’t care what comes with it.
You can see how I have been raised. I was raised to know who I am, where I was coming from. And I have been raised to find a purpose for who I am. That simply means growing up, I started realizing that there was no need for me complaining about things, but that I needed to be the solution.
My mum, bless her soul, at the time she married my dad, was about 30 years younger than him, and I come from a background of polygamy. I have been grounded in Nigerian culture and I had a very intelligent mother, and the balance of these two people made me who I am today, to seek solutions to the problems, and not to give up halfway.
Going back to your question, people who have lived their lives making sure that getting results is their day-to-day priority, do not start a project and leave it halfway. We carefully have been brought up and I didn’t know this at all, I knew it when my father passed on. When my father passed on, I was in 200 level, going to 300 level in Medical School and we suffered.
I started following my mother to Oba Market in Benin, and when I got to that Oba Market, there was no toilet. If our fathers and mothers wanted to wee, no toilet. Osolo Market is the same, New Benin Market is the same. Which market in Nigeria has toilets? Don’t we think that that is a basic need of human beings? Don’t we think we need to add value to human lives, but sitting there as a student that time, I was not empowered to fix the problem I was seeing, and people would come, “Oh Mama Osaro died yesterday, Papa Osaretin died the day before yesterday, because of blood pressure, because of diabetes, and I was watching all those things growing up. I thought I was suffering, but no! God was refining and repositioning me with the recipes that my father had put in me to ensure that I know how to add value to human lives, and it is that preparedness you can see now meeting opportunity.
As I grew older, I discovered that I had to have a policy-driving platform to enact policies that will be able to enhance human lives on a large scale.
I can sit in a hospital and say next patient, next patient, but does that change the lives of human beings on a large scale? Does that change the lives of Edo State people; an average of five million people? Will that change the fact that we don’t have policies that will make malaria treatment free for the under-5? Will that change the fact that we don’t have a place where men like you can go and check their blood pressure for free? Is that going to change the fact that we don’t have jobs? So, to do all of these I quickly realized that I needed a policy platform, and that is why I am running for the governorship of Edo State.
Edo State will become not just the heartbeat of Nigeria, by the time my team and I finish, it would be like a city upon the hill, and I consider myself light-bearer.
On how she will improve healthcare system in Edo State
Before I delve into healthcare, I will make it clear that we are ready for all sectors; Team Loretta is ready for all sectors, and we are looking at what I call THE PACTS. T stands for Technology, H is for Health, E is for Education, P is for Production and Infrastructure, A is for Agriculture, E is for Commerce and Job Creation, T is Tourism and the Diaspora, and S is for Security, which is going to be married to your healthcare questions. And in all these pacts, we are going to ensure that the vulnerable population; the youths, the children, the elderly, the differently abled; I don’t want to call them the disabled, that they revolve in these areas in all of these sectors.
Now, narrowing it down to healthcare, the budget for the NHS is about 5 million pounds in hard currency. What is the budget for healthcare in African countries, in Nigeria and in the subnational governments? There is what is called the Abuja Declaration Act, where all the African countries came to Abuja, and they said they need to devote 15 percent of our budgetary allocation to healthcare. Apart from South Africa, which is trying to meet up with that now, based on the sustainable development goals, no other country is doing it. Nigeria has abysmally about six per cent or even less, and Edo State has even less.
So the startup point is to ensure that healthcare is in the front-burner and that we devote a significant part of our budgetary allocation to healthcare. That is where we will start from and then we look at basic healthcare infrastructure. There is no use having a big structure, when you have not fixed the bottom of the pyramid. We are going to focus on primary healthcare in Edo State, basic healthcare infrastructure. Healthcare is a complex system that has different sectors fitting into it.
For us in Edo State, a Loretta-led administration is going to ensure that apart from the budgetary allocation, we need to ensure that the local government is working, because this is how we are going to get the population, the average five million population of Edo State.
We will engage in primary healthcare, basic healthcare, and education provision level. Health and education are two sides of the same coin, so you often find out that when I am talking about healthcare, I am also talking about education; you can’t separate them. We are going to improve prevention, we are going to improve the management of simple diseases and we are going to do this via the healthcare centres.
We have healthcare centres in Nigeria right now and Edo State, which a recent research in 2022 shows that they are only 20 per cent functional. It simply tells you that I don’t need to start building new structures, but I need to improve the functionalities of the existing ones, because 20 per cent is abysmal. So, we need to renovate all those healthcare centres, and it will be best done when the local governments are functional. And we put the basic things that are required; power, water and then also educate the people. Increase their awareness to use the healthcare centre. There is no need to improve the healthcare centre when people don’t use it.
We make the people own their projects. You must domesticate your interventions, you must go in through the community entry points. We will go to the community heads, to the local government areas, employ local labour, install solar energy and renovate these structures and put them in use.
Edo Central, for example, lacks water, we are going to address that. Once they are functional, because the community was involved in it, the people are going to use it. Basic medications have to be there. We will teach the people who are there on how to refer. This brings us to the next thing I am going to do, which is human capacity for health. Doctors are japaring, midwives are japaring, nurses are japaring; I mean they are leaving the country. How do we make sure that in Edo State these people stay back?
The World Health Organization, WHO, says that the ratio of doctors to patients is 1-600, but we don’t have that in Nigeria right now. We then need to think out of the box. You can’t import any system and impose it, you must domesticate it. We need to think about something called task-shifting and task-sharing. In our communities in Edo State right now, we have community extension health workers, we have traditional birth attendants, so we need to empower these people to do what is called training the trainers. We need to train them in their own localities; improve their water, improve the light, so that they can remain in those localities.
On what she would do address illegal migration in Edo
The push and pull factors for illegal migration and trafficking must be understood for us to say that we want to curb the menace. The push factors are poor economic situation; hunger in the land, the no employment for those that have left schools, and the general disentrancement with the state of things, not just in Edo State, but also in Nigeria. Other push factors are migration along old colonial lines. Migration push factors can also include what value the society places on monetary and material things.
The state of insecurity is also a push factor.
The pull factors are that people who have gone abroad come and portray the picture that is very economical with the truth, like they are picking dollars, pounds, Euros along the streets of all these countries, and we don’t have proper mentoring to counter that. Proper mentoring in the sense that we don’t have those figures who have been successful actually coming to say you must understand the meaning of delayed gratification to counter what these other people are saying.
Those are some of the pull factors. And of course the need for cheap labour in these countries, whether you like it or not, these western countries need cheap labour so they are exploiting either legally or illegally; they are exploiting all of us and they have been known routes to all of these.
If we understand these push and pull factors, then solving it is simple. First of all, we need to create an environment that employs a lot of our youths. I have been with the Loretta Healthcare Initiative and we have gone round the three senatorial districts in Edo State, going into the hinterlands giving free healthcare.
Out there, you have the elderly population, then you have the grandchildren, the middle population are either in the cities or they have gone abroad. How do you keep them there, because you now have only the vulnerable groups? First of all, basic and technical education is one way to start solving these problems.
Technical education is going to improve our production line and then we are going to think out of the box, how do we generate job opportunities for these people? First of all you must have hub models, where, as a government I could actually get land, create a space, build offices for artisans. That takes off the burden of having to start up and pay for a business site. Their startup cost will be reduced, and then I tell them, you don’t have to pay taxes for the first one year or two years depending on what kind of business they are into. I have grossly reduced their startup and more people will now go into business.
Also, when you look at the age group that will determine that, myself and my group were discussing and we said, who is a youth, some countries will say from the ages of 12 to 25, but we said in Edo State let’s take 15 to 45 because of how our own state is. So we can say that we now have different interest rates for loans and break these groups down. The most vulnerable from 15 to 30, why don’t we reduce interest rates on their loans, and also for women and other vulnerable groups? And for those that have gone, we need to attract them back; brain regain or reversal of illegal migration.
We need to also explore the diaspora power of Edo State, Edo State has one of the most vibrant diaspora in Nigeria. Does Western Union sponsor any other festival? But they sponsor the Igue Festival.
It means we can actually have our own bank as a state, and if you are from Edo State origin and you are using this bank, we are going to give you a discount but you are going to pay some commission and it will come to the state. There is no use bringing people back without empowering them and reintegrating them back into the society, and the plan is to move from consumption to production.
We have to also look into agriculture. Why have we not considered artificial irrigation in Esan Central? Do you know that some of the best minds in the UK, creating roads and doing the waterways are of Esan extraction? And the day I sat down with one of them to discuss the problem in Esan land and how it can be fixed, it was like an eye opener. How we can trap even run-ups, whenever rain falls, all the erosion, trap it and recycle it and use it? How can we harness water from nearby rivers like the way pipelines are laid for oil? What stops us from laying pipes from our rivers into the communities? Nothing stops us, it’s just the will.
We also intend to have boot camps every weekend, boot camps with people who have excelled in their own industries and we get youths, bring them in to spend time with these people.
How do you intend to beat other aspirants in the Labour Party and become the flag bearer before you talk about the main contest?
I love this question that you just asked, but in my opinion, I don’t see them as competitors, I see them as motivators. That is my point of view, other people can disagree. Experience is actually a good currency, I have always worked and lived in a male-dominated world. My basic specialty of surgeon is male dominated where there is a huge hierarchy. It is also like a police force. I have been used to working in that kind of environment. And someone running for 20 years and still running tells us something. Doesn’t it?
I am not going to get into a contest of spending, I am coming to serve the Edo State people and Nigeria by extension, and I absolutely have no doubt that they can discern those who truly have the heart of service. Those who up until now could have shared the monies, and you could be thinking, “Oh she has a lot of money and she is sharing to individuals”, but rather I have gone into the community and the grassroots and distributed equitably what I have.
The cost of funding free glasses for Edo State indigenes, the cost of buying the test kits for glucose, for malaria, the cost of getting hypertensive medication, the cost of getting all these free medications that Edo State people have been enjoying from Loretta Healthcare Initiative, do we know what it is? But you see, the way the mind works, because it has not been shared to one leader or the other, they may not know that money has gone down in a good way for Edo State people. We will not hesitate at anything at all in continuing in this partway for the Edo State people. I have implicit confidence in them that they know those who place much value in their lives.
Having considered your place as woman in Nigerian politics where there is usually gender issue, how are you going to sail through?
Your question is one of the things that we ask. What are your challenges? But let’s not forget that for every challenge, you can turn it into an opportunity. And sometimes, we read the tide a bit differently as well. Yes, there is the 35 per cent affirmative action from the SDG, the Sustainable Development Goals, and overtime, women participation in politics has been very low, worldwide, moreso in Nigeria and Edo State.
It is a problem, however, let’s step back in history. In this same Edo State, you had Aneke from Edo North, the mother of the first Ikelebe who went to war with the Igala people. You have Owan who River Owan is named after. I am saying that in the history of Edo State there have been great women who actually had written their names not just on the sands of history but in the hearts of men and women. How did they do it? They didn’t do it alone, they must have done it with progressive minded men at the time and those kinds of men and other women still exist.
Again, what we first need to ask ourselves is how many women are actually at the political table? They are very few. And why are they few? Because of the obstacles of finance, secondly if you are at the table, they say “Oh she must be a wayward woman; maybe he doesn’t have a husband or she is sleeping around”. Our socio-cultural fabric is now interwoven in such a way that without doing it we are actually disenfranchising our women, but our history shows otherwise. We should look to whom we have always been, and we should see how women have always come to the rescue in very dire times, and we should also understand that Edo State is unique.
Location of Edo State in Nigeria is unique. It is in the South-South, but it its bounded by Anambra, Kogi, Ondo and Delta states as such people traverse the state wherever they are going, people settle within the state, so you have a mini Nigeria in Edo State, and Edo State has already had that template of a strong-minded people, plus having a mini-Nigeria in the state. That means the people in the state are very open-minded. They are not the usual sheep-shepherd kind of people. The people in Edo State are able to weigh their options and make their decisions.
Edo State, unsurprisingly, was the first state in Nigeria to have its first elected female senator. Because of all these factors, I have traced it back, our history, our location, our demography and it’s going to play out. We are going to have the first elected female governor in Nigeria from Edo State. To God be the glory, it will actually be the opportunity which we will explore, but we need to make the people see the reason why we must be the same great people that we were.
SOURCE: VANGUARD
