Ondo State goes to the polls today. In a sane society, these should be the key issues voters are basing their decision on who to vote for on, not who drops more bags of rice

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Who will build the world's largest cocoa plantation in Owena. Nigeria is currently the world's sixth largest cocoa producer with an output of about 245,000 tonnes and Ondo State is the largest producer in Nigeria. This Owena plantation should have an output of about 10,000 tonnes with the potential to rise to 50,000 tonnes

[2] Who will then build Africa's largest cocoa grinding plant in Ondo City, gathering beans from farmers over a 200 mile radius stretching to Ado Ekiti, Akure, Owo, Idanre, Ilesha and as far south as Ilaro. Beans will be ground into cocoa butter and powder at this plant employing as many as 1,000 staff. Kind of similar to what Alhassan Dantata did with groundnuts in Kano

[3] Who will then approach chocolate companies like Nestle, Mars, Cadburys, Barry Callebaut and Lindt & Sprüngli, asking them to build a chocolate processing plant at Ore. This will make Ondo State the agro-processing capital of Nigeria. It will be a game changer that alters the state of the Nigerian economy forever

[4] To process chocolate, you need other things like sugar, milk, peanuts, cashews, coconuts, shea nuts etc. Governorship candidates should as thus initiate plans to grow coconuts in the coastal areas of Ondo State in places Aiyetoro, Mahin, Igbotu and Igbobini in Ilaje Local Government Area. Joint ventures should then be entered into with other states to produce other ingredients. For instance - Kwara (Sugarcane), Kano (Groundnuts), Ogun (Cashews), Benue (Shea nuts). These states should then all be linked with a railway freight network so goods can be transferred from one point to another with ease

[5] Gubernatorial candidates should be offering to construct a cargo export terminal along the coast at Aiyetoro to export finished products. What I have in mind is the building of a mega packaging plant there so that Ondo State can actually export retail-ready finished products to anywhere in the world

[6] Our governorship candidates should then ask investors if they are interested in building a cargo terminal at Akure Airport so their goods can be flown out if need be. Companies like Nestle, Mars, Cadburys, Barry Callebaut and Lindt & Sprüngli build such terminals all over the world to ship their products

[7] Ore for me remains the joker in the pack. It is the gateway between eastern and western Nigerian and simply has to become one of the most industrialised cities in Nigeria. Ore must become an industrial hub similar to Nnewi and Aba

[8] Whoever wants to become Ondo State governor should then offer to expand the production of cash crops like palm oil, kolanuts, rubber, timber, cassava and maize. Other parts of the world like Bahia in Brazil, Sumatra in Indonesia, Borneo in Malaysia, Entre Rios in Argentina, India's Uttar Pradesh or Punjab in Pakistan generate as much as $50bn in some instances in foreign exchange earnings and that must be our goal in Ondo State. Malaysia for instance makes $10bn from palm oil exports alone

[9] Then, the Ondo State governor needs to refurbish Idanre Hills, turning it into one of the world's biggest tourist attractions

[10] Ondo State is sitting on $10bn worth of annual bitumen exports, so whoever is elected governor must set himself aggressive export targets designed to make Ondo State self-sufficient without any federal allocation. Over the next five years, we should have export revenue projections that look like this: cocoa - $10bn; bitumen - $10bn; tourism - $10bn, palm oil - $5bn, timber - $5bn; transport - $5bn; kolanuts - $5bn; cassava - $5bn.

Ayoakinfe@gmail.com