Pastor Yinka Adepoju is the Director-General of Oyo State Signage and Advertisement Agency (OYSAA). The soft spoken and amiable Director-General in this interview with OJO PETER speaks about the activities of the agency and its next line of action to remove illegal billboards in the state. Enjoy:
Sir, can you tell us some of the activities of your agency since it was established in 2012?
Thank you very much for that question. Let me start by saying that the agency was established in 2012 by an ACT of Parliament approved by the Oyo State House of Assembly and that law is known and popularly referred to as the Oyo State Signage and Advertisement Agency law 2012. That is exactly where we derived our power from. Ever since that Law came into existence, we have the mandate to transform the Oyo State outdoor space in a way that it would attract investors particularly advertisers which will consequently translate into promoting the economic activities of the state. That is exactly what our mission is supposed to be. We have a goal as a responsible agency of government. Right from inception, our goal has been to re-energize the outdoor space for beautification and ultimately support the Internally Generated Revenue activities of the state because come to think of it, this government is doing a lot in the area of infrastructural development and for us to achieve this, or to bring it into a meaningful conclusion, we need money and one of the reasons why the IGR of the state must go up and to the glory of God, our agency happens to be one of the revenue centres that is making up the state revenue. We want to say without being immodest that we have made our own modest contribution in this area.
In addition to that, since we came on board, we have succeeded in regulating and controlling indiscriminate erection of billboards on our roads across the state including the cities outside the state capital. We have also ensured strict adherence to specifications and high ethical standards and making sure that the practitioners or our stakeholders fulfill safety and aesthetic objectives of the state. You will agree with me that this government under the leadership of our highly revered Senator Abiola Ajimobi has good intentions for the people of the state and part of the good intentions is to make sure that we have an environment that is conducive for living and economic activities. One of the things this government has succeeded in doing is making the environment a lot better than how we met it in 2011 and I won’t lie to you that our own agency is also part of the government MDAs that contributed in this aspect.
You have been talking about billboards, banners and posters. What of vehicles that are branded because sometimes you see some local government officials on aprons stopping these vehicles. What is the relationship between them and your agency in this respect?
This is a good opportunity to clear this area very well. The Law that I talked about earlier on gave my agency, that is, the Oyo State Signage and Advertisement Agency the powers and everything that it takes to regulate. control and administer everything that has to do with advertisement. And that Law also empowers us to cover the area you have just mentioned. You are talking about the mobile advertising – all these vehicles that have advertisement displayed on them. It is one of the areas which this agency is empowered to cover and we have made it clear or known to the kind of people you just mentioned that this authority have long been withdrawn from them but some of them are still very mischievous in the sense that they are yet to withdraw completely from that activity. What we have done in our agency is to standardize this aspect of advertisement. How did we do it? We have what we call mobile advertisement stickers which we have produced and engaged the services of accredited consultants to sell on behalf of the government and we have also done it in such a way that these people will not just stop vehicles on the road indiscriminately.
Apart from the fact that they have to go to the companies where these vehicles are owned, that is, the corporate organisations that own all such vehicles, they are to also visit them, have a relationship with those organisations, take audit of the numbers of vehicles that they have that has advertisement on them and sell the quantity of stickers.
Our stickers are printed and just sold at just N3,000. It’s a form of tax to the government because when you see these vehicles going around with advertisement boldly displayed on them, it shouldn’t be for free, nothing is for free. All these advertisements you see on these vehicles whether on cars, trucks or pickups they move around the city even across the state. It’s a national programme. But the fact still remains that, when you have succeeded in buying a sticker in Oyo State, you are entitled to use that sticker across the country and that is why I call it a national programme. What I am saying in essence is that all these vehicles you see around with advertisement, they must be able to show or on demand, they must be able to show sticker that we call mobile advertisement sticker that has given them the approval or the authority to go around with such a vehicle and this is why I say that the local government officials you see on the streets or the roads are infringing on the rights of the agency. It’s not as if we don’t know that we have some unscrupulous elements claiming to be agents of local governments. We have even taken this to the highest authority in the government to caution the local government officials that are in this trade or habit and I hope that has been done but it is almost getting to a point or time now to go after these people because they are not supposed to carry out such task.
However, I am here emphasizing that if you have a car, a bus, a pickup, a truck that has an advertisement message displayed on the vehicle, you are duty bound to buy that sticker. It is expected that whether you are a corporate organisation, an individual, whether you belong to the religious group or schools, any business you do as long as you have advertisement displayed on your vehicle, you must pay tax to government because it is still part of what we call social corporate responsibility. You have to fulfill your social obligations to the government. We have done a lot of senzitization or awareness campaign on this but it’s never enough. What we need to do now is to intensify efforts again and make sure that we reach out to people. Advertisement all over the world are paid for and don’t forget that those people who are displaying advertisement, they are trying to attract people to whatever they do and in the course of doing that, they make so much money, so why would they now not want to fulfill their own obligations to the government and give what is due to the government?
Sometime in 2012, your agency went on a mass-drive of the removal of illegal billboards all over the city, but now if you go around you will discover that those billboards have been replaced?
That tells you the nature of our people. Human beings generally are the most difficult creature on earth that God created. Difficult in the sense that you tell them the same thing severally and in the process of doing that, some people will still be recalcitrant in nature. You are right to have said that sometime ago, we removed structures. We did not just remove them; we removed them and confiscated them. We warned those that were involved not to go back but overtime, we discovered that some of the places we removed those illegal structures and unapproved structures, the structures are back there. However, let me say that this government as you are probably aware does not tolerate any illegality. I make bold to tell you that sooner than later, all structures that are not approved which we term as illegal structures will be removed. It doesn’t matter how many times we remove them. But this time around we will not just remove them, we will even have to prosecute the owners if we are able to identify them. Some of these structures are being put haphazardly and indiscriminately all around, and some without address which make it difficult to identify the owners. We already have our own programme courtesy His Exellency who has given us the go ahead to remove illegal structures. We are not against people putting up structures, we are not against people putting up billboards and that is why we have this agency but due process must be followed. For you to put up any advertisement structure and material including banners, the flag-poles the first port of call should be this agency. That is why the agency was established to regulate, control and manage everything that has to do with advertisement and we have done a lot of sensitization in this regard. There was a time when we had to trek round the whole Ibadan in our uniforms. We carried this message all around but unfortunately, the kind of people we have around – some of them are so defiant. Some of them believe they have the right to do whatever they believe they should do but we are saying a capital no. I want to use this platform to announce to the people who have in one way or the other carried out things in this direction they have between now and next week to remove those structures by themselves otherwise the hand of the Law will catch up with them. We will remove those illegal structures and for those we are able to identify we will not stop at removing the structures but we will also prosecute them because they have carried out actions that are against the law of the land.
How can you describe the administration of Senator Abiola Ajimobi?
His administration has been wonderful. Don’t forget that the governor now has a title of ‘Koseleri’ and I believe and I am so confident that this man has been so wonderful. He is an administrator par excellence, he is a leader, he is an icon, he is an international person, a man of colour, a man of quality, a man of ideas. Ever since he became the governor of this state, we can see the way the state is being transformed and repositioned. Oyo State has gone so far now. Everybody is looking up to Oyo State that it has come to live up to its name, the pacesetter state because things have been transformed. Are we going to talk about the peace and security that exist in the state now? Everybody wants to come to Oyo State, Ibadan in particularly – for one thing or the other. When you look around especially during weekends, a lot of people are coming in from different parts of the country just to enjoy or spend their weekends. It’s because this administration led by Senator Abiola Ajimobi has raised the standard. When we talk about the infrastructural development – roads are being developed, reconstructed every day. We are talking about standard roads. Talk about the distribution of portable water which is almost getting to every nooks and cranny of the state. Talk about other amenities that you can really enjoy in a state. We have everything here now. I see the people of Oyo State enjoying the dividends of democracy and I also see a lot of them being happy with this government. Don’t forget that the governor is serving his second term which has never happened in the history of the state and that is actually to tell you that the people acknowledge his efforts in taking Oyo State people to their Canaan land – Canaan land in the sense that the governor is doing well. I want to tell you that by the time this administration is coming to an end in 2019, Oyo State would have been better than this. We thank God for the standard that we have now.
