Ogboro-Okor Loretta Oduware, a Medical Doctor currently doing a PhD in Law and Criminology was the policy lead for the Obi-Datti Campaign Group of the Labour Party during the 2023 presidential election. In this interview, she speaks about her quest to contest for the position of Governor of Edo State during the off-cycle elections in September 2024 and what she would do as governor.
You are a medical doctor, why are you going into politics to contest for the governorship of Edo State?
Yes, I studied Medicine at the University of Benin and I did my one-year house job at the University of Benin Teaching HospiLabtal (UBTH).
I also obtained a Masters in Public Health Research at the University of Edinburgh and started a residency programme, or what you call speciality training in Obstetrics and Gynecology. I also got a second masters degree in Clinical Education and currently work as simulation expert and clinical trainer but I know how much I have prepared for the role I am going for, which is governor of Edo State.
You are leaving the private sector to pursue a career in politics that is known to be volatile, what motivated you to make the move?
My motivation, simply put, started from the day I was born and from the parents who raised me, and it has fuelled along the way as I got more and more exposed. From the age of two, my dad was already reading to me, so I was one of those pre-consciously developed children. I started reading and writing very early, but there was something my father did. 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. In our house, growing up, it is either you speak Benin language or you speak Queen’s English. My grandmother was Oba Ovonramwen’s first grandchild.
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? I quickly realized that I needed a policy platform, and that is why I am running for the governorship of Edo State. By the time my team and I finish, Edo State will become, not just the heartbeat of Nigeria, it would be like a city upon the hill, I consider myself a light-bearer.
You are aspiring on the platform of the Labour Party, why?
For me, it is the Labour Party because the party believes in equity and justice. When you have resources, the favour you can do to human beings is to distribute those resources equitably. There is no need hoarding it in the hands of the few and getting the worst of us to be the first. 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, it simply means 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.
Have you considered the challenges you may face as a woman in a male-dominated political terrain?
Your question is one of the things that we ask what are your challenges, it is the first thing that looks large, but let’s not forget that for every challenge, you can turn it into an opportunity. Sometimes, we read the tide a bit differently as well. Yes, there is the 35 per cent affirmation from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and overtime, women participation in politics has been very low, worldwide.
It is a problem; however, in this same Edo State, you have Aneke from Edo North, the mother of the first Ikelebe who went to war with the Igala people. I am saying that Edo State has a history of great women who had written their names not only in 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. We need to ask ourselves how many women are at the political table? They are very few, why are they few? It is because of the obstacles of finance; secondly, if you are at the table, they brand you a wayward woman. 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.
Edo State produced the first elected female senator. I 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.
If you are elected, what would be your priority?
Unashamedly, I will state here that healthcare is very much in front of my radar because an unhealthy population cannot be a productive population. Let’s not deceive ourselves, when you are moving from consumption to production, you must first have a healthy population to achieve that, and if you want to make healthcare standard, it cannot be free. There is no free healthcare, someone must be picking the bills and as someone who studied healthcare systems, I can tell you of some of the best healthcare systems in the world. From Sweden, Canada, the NHS in UK, Capitalists and Insurance System in the US, juxtapose it with what we are doing in Nigeria but I am not saying we must import any model and swallow it hook, line and sinker. We have to domesticate our own healthcare.
What do you think of governance in Nigeria?
As far as governance in Nigeria is concerned, we need those in diaspora to invest at home. As governor of Edo State, I will delve into healthcare. 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 healthcare questions. We are going to ensure that the vulnerable population, youths, children, the elderly, the differently abled, (I don’t want to call them disabled) that they revolve in these areas in all of these sectors.
What is the budget for healthcare in African countries, in Nigeria and in the sub-national governments?
There is what is called the Abuja Declaration Act where all the African countries agreed to devote 15 per cent of their budgetary allocation to healthcare. Apart from South Africa, which is trying to meet up with that, no other country is doing it. Nigeria has abysmally about six per cent or even less, and Edo State has even less.
So the start-up 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.
Several doctors are leaving the shores of Nigeria to seek greener pasture abroad, how do you intend to make them stay back?
The World Health Organisation (WHO), puts the ratio of doctors to patients at 1-600, but we don’t have that in Nigeria. We 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 for instance, 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, improve all these things there and then they can remain in those localities.
What can be done to reverse the illegal migration in Edo State and how do you hope to overcome your closest rivals?
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 the poor economic situation; the hunger in the land, the no employment for those that have left schools, and the general dis-entrancement with the state of things, not just in Edo State, but 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.
These days, if you go to church and you donate N10 million, everybody will start hailing you; they don’t ask, even if you are 19, where you got that money from. All of these are push factors, and of course, the state of insecurity is also a push factor. People have been pushed along all of these lines, and then we found out that in the early 80s, mid 80s, the problem was very bad and it is still ongoing.
Quote: “Edo State produced the first elected female senator. I 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”