I have known Kunle Rasheed Adegoke for more than five years now. I met him through a mutual friend, Sola Fanawopo.

Brilliant, normal and loyal to his friends, Kunle, a brilliant lawyer, is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who believes in leadership by accountability and responsiveness. He thinks of the common good as the measure of effective leadership, which yields value to everyone, from the lowly to the most highly placed in society.

Kunle Adegoke, more popularly known by the sobriquet KRAD, is comfortable in the shanties as he is on the high streets. I am from Enugu State, but having assessed his vision for Osun State, where he is currently aspiring to become governor, I owe it to my conscience and to the future of Nigeria, currently plagued by a leadership with little or no plans to deliver values to the people, to speak for his capacity to deliver the democratic dividends, if I must use that cliché, which most of us have only seen in our dreams.

I was in the trenches for the Labour Party during the last general elections in Nigeria, working to enthrone a radical change in the leadership in my state from the Peoples Democratic Party to a new one I saw as holding a realistic promise of giving the people a responsible leadership capable of freeing the people from years of emperor-style rulership that serially failed to aggregate the needs of the people and attending to them in creative ways that was going to unleash the potentials of the state, socially and economically. Kunle, I am aware, was, and still is, in the All Progressives Congress, where he has characteristically demonstrated loyalty to the party and its leaders.

We rarely discussed partisan politics. Times when we have had the chance to sit and discuss, KRAD has demonstrated convincing capacity for making life meaningful for his people, and this is why I am rooting for him, because of my believe that while a radical torpedoing of poor leadership might be hard to accomplish nationwide, someone with KRAD’s vision and plans in one state is capable of triggering the spread of value-driven governance in other states of the federation.

Such a loyal person should be given the task of extending this loyalty to the management of his state. Giving him the governorship ticket will not even amount to a reward, but a means to get him to extend his service, from the party to the people. May commonsense and the needs of the people guide the elders of APC in Osun State in making the right choice.

Nigeria will be better when states begin to compete, not on the present level of which governor out-loots the other, but on who revives the people a lot more by economically applying the God-given resources in the state in question.

I first visited Osun State as a journalist. I have visited a few other times as a friend of some of the finest sons of the state, and when I read some of the things KRAD plans to do for the people of the state, I could see how achievable they are, having seen the premised upon which they are based.

Political manifestoes, where they exist in Nigeria, have been reduced to mere soundbites filled with high-falutin words, designed merely for the heck of it, rather than something they intend to use for the delivery of social and economic values to the people. Politicians in Nigeria produce manifestoes merely to, as they say, fulfil all righteousness; they mostly do not contain what they mean to guide their management of the social and economic affairs of the state they are pitching to govern. Produced by consultants, the people for whom it was produced might not know what it contains. Manifestoes have been reduced to papers relevant only to the extent of romancing the elites and impressing on them that the person seeking their support is smart enough to have put such a document together.

I have seen a governorship candidate who was literally promising in his manifesto to hew down the state and build an El-Dorado within his first term. This one promised to demolish all the old buildings in Enugu capital and build high-rise structures in their places. Going by what he stated, he was envisioning fine cityscapes he has seen in New York, Singapore, Dubai and Beijing.

This sounded quite good, until you begin to interrogate how this was going to be achieved in terms of cost, law and culture of ownership of property.

This is not KRAD’s approach.

KRAD has gone round the state, studied and understood its peculiar resource-endowments, and this has enabled him to fashion workable means of getting the economy to spike and compete in volume and value with those of the oil-bearing states of the country.

KRAD is thinking agricultural revolution differently. He is not copying from the torn templates of telling the people he would provide tractors and farming inputs.

Hear him: “Our agricultural revolution begins with land reform. Today, the biggest barrier to commercial farming in Osun State is access to properly titled and prepared land. We will work with communities to aggregate scattered farmlands into economically viable blocks without dispossessing owners. Ownership remains with families, but the land becomes bankable and usable for commercial farming.”

His steps to achieve this include: making the cost of acquiring land lower.

“Government will bear the cost of land survey and Certificates of Occupancy. This creates formal documentation, increases land value, and enables farmers to secure financing and enter partnerships.”

His administration will bear the cost of making the lands farming-ready by undertaking the processes of clearing, ploughing, and the provision of access roads, while the individual farmers and cooperatives receive land ready for cultivation.

Instead of fragmented inheritance patterns, KRAD intends to encourage community-based landholding, allowing families to retain equity while investors and cooperatives drive commercial activity. This approach, he says, will expand arable land use, draw private investment, enable mechanised farming, create jobs across rural communities, achieve food security and commercial surplus

The South-West has a favourable climate for dairy production. Oyo and Ogun are already models. With the right breeds, feed support, grazing systems, veterinary care, and training, Osun households can join a sustainable dairy network.

His plans to create a diary economy out of Osun State is also riveting. With global warming incensing herder-farmer clashes in the country, KRAD plans to empower his people to keep household cattle, while government distributes improved breeds to the people. With cows in nearly every household, government would then build milk-collection centres in communities. When these are aggregated, the volume would be so huge as to transform the state into a notable diary centre of note. With his plan to make his government to guarantee offtake, the economy of the state would receive instant boost that cascades down to households.

His plan for tourism as a major economic development tool is also based on deep insight and study of the state. Osun State already has several cultural events and historical sites.  From the Osun Grove to Oke-Ila, Erin-Ijesa, Igbajo, Ile-Ife and beyond. He plans to convert these assets into jobs and revenue.

His strategy is to create enabling infrastructure of roads, electricity, water and security around the many tourism sites in the state to lure visitors and make them stay after visiting or at least draw them to make repeat visits

Tourism will become for him a major revenue source, rather than an item entered in PowerPoint presentations to merely impress.

Between Iwo and Osogbo, a drive along that long stretch reveals the sort of flat ground that is rarely found in most of southern Nigeria. This area, KRAD believes, will become a vast agricultural area capable of producing a variety of crops, including rice, which is currently being experimented by a few farmers in the area.

With a visionary government, such as I strongly believe KRAD would bring, this area will expand Nigeria’s rice base, contributing to national food sufficiency and boosting the local economy.

This state also has some rare minerals currently not receiving good attention, largely due to the national feeding bottle every state has been feeding from. A visionary like Kunle Adegoke has the capacity to recognise and utilise these resources. Kaolin is one of the rare earth minerals in Osun State. This mineral is important in many industries such as the pharmaceutical industry, ceramics, paper, paint and rubber.

It is in the interest of the entire Osun State that KRAD is given the ticket to fly the APC flag in the coming elections. It is in the wider interest of the Nigeria of the future that people with measurable plans, like KRAD, are allowed into leadership.

I am aware that Kunle Adegoke has used his legal practice to help his party in the state and nationally for many years now without asking for financial compensation. Was he not such a loyal party man, he could have made decent income from assisting the party with his legal services?

Such a loyal person should be given the task of extending this loyalty to the management of his state. Giving him the governorship ticket will not even amount to a reward, but a means to get him to extend his service, from the party to the people.

May commonsense and the needs of the people guide the elders of APC in Osun State in making the right choice.

Kunle Rasheed Adegoke is the bridge to the future.