Engineer Akeem Olatunji was the Oyo State Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the incumbent chairman of Oluyole Local Government Area. In this interview with YINKA OLADOYINBO, he shares his views on salient issues including local government administration, autonomy among others.
LOCAL government administration in Nigeria has been condemned for poor performance. What do you say to this?
The major thing is that this is hot seat; it is the only government that deals directly with the people at the grassroots. You live among them; you operate among them and even you don’t have your own time unlike the president and governor. If you don’t book an appointment with a president, you cannot see him, you cannot barge into the privacy of the governor, you may not see the governor in six months. But a local government chairman that wants to copy the president or the governor like that would be cut off from his people. When one is outside, you have a lot of views that are different from what obtains on the field, this is practical governance and lot of things don’t appear the way people think it is. As for me I can say that I just have to fit in and my own way of doing things has to align with the reality and expectations of our people.
What has been the experience in the last six months that you have been chairman?
The experience is that I don’t have time for myself, I have devoted most of my time to the service of the people because we have to change the orientation at the local government level which is somehow difficult. Some workers are just interested in collecting salary, some choose the day to come to office and we have to lead by example, I come to office every day in the morning and I don’t leave until evening time. With that, we are trying to inspire others, we are trying to correct their orientation and this has led to improvement in service delivery in Oluyole local government. There are instances that we have issues like that of Omo onile and we don’t run to state government secretariats or police station in Eleyele before we intervene and prevent it from escalating, as the chief security officer, I should be able to reduce the stress and the load on the governor
The belief among the people is that local governments across the country don’t do anything, how have you been able to impact on the lives of the people of Oluyole?
I follow my campaign manifesto, which aligns with that of Governor Seyi Makinde and we have touched virtually everything. The first is security because Oluyole is the most industrialized local government in Oyo state and one of the most industrialised in Nigeria so the security of the investors and the residents remains a our priority. Before I came in, we used to have the issue of kidnapping, since I came, that has stopped, it is only when there is adequate security that you can invest or increase your investment anywhere and this has made the investors to increase and job opportunities for our people have increased. Recently we organised the first security and investment summit in the local government, in which majority of the companies here attended.
On education, we have distributed free exercise books to selected students in Oluyole, we organized remedial classes for the students of the 10 wards during holiday, we organized vocational training for our people, both skilled and unskilled. We will organize graduation ceremony for them by December and they will be empowered, these trainings are practical, involving catering, barbing, makeup, bead making. Some days ago, we organized a quiz competition and the winner was celebrated as a day chairman in the local government, in order to encourage our students to study hard and that was why we celebrated the 12-year-old girl that won the competition.
During our 100 days in office, we organized empowerment for our people and we also had food bank where we distributed food to our people. We have also organized free medical outreach and screened those that have eye problems and we organised free cataract surgery for our people in Lagos.
Despite being an industrialised local government, Oluyole is also an agrarian council but it is like you are not capitalising on this for development.
We took over the leadership in the middle of the year and we need to plan very well. We have just discovered one of our lands that is about 100 acres that we want to cultivate for maize, cassava and others. But the only thing is that we have to put certain things in order. For instance when we came, in there, was no electricity connection in this council secretariat, the transformer was down and for three and half years there was no light. The same thing goes for the 150 kva generator, I have just fixed those things so it is a gradual thing. So before the next raining season we must have set the machinery in motion for the 100 acres; we have put it in the budget and moves are on to get some hectares of land for farming purpose in Olode.
Local government autonomy has become a major issue in Nigeria and four months after the Supreme Court judgment on the issue, we are still to implement it.
Governor Seyi Makinde has rightly addressed this and many people are coming to terms with him, he had seen into the future because immediately they gave the judgment he talked about lacuna and that, is what is delaying the implementation till now, there are many ambiguities. If we go ahead to implement the judgment like that some local governments won’t be able to pay salaries of workers not to talk of embarking on developmental projects as the judgment didn’t take care of that and that is what necessitated the presidential panel, what I expected the President to do is to invite Governor Seyi Makinde because he has shown that he knows what he was saying, so they can compare notes and share wealth of experience, months after making statement on the judgment, many are now realizing that he was right. But whatever we are going to do, the interest of the average Nigerian must be paramount, how is the resultant effect not going to affect the average Nigerian, what we battling with now is how to feed, there is poverty in the land, whatever the way we want to implement it, the first cardinal principle should be how to make the implementation a succour for our people. But I align 100 percent with Governor Seyi Makinde, we need to consider the stakeholders that the implementation will affect.
As a major stakeholder, what will be your advice on the implementation of the judgment?
The Supreme Court has given its judgment and I have said that I align with the propositions of Governor Seyi Makinde because it is now coming to reality and gradually the Federal Government is towing that line but I expect them to borrow ideas from the Oyo State governor.
Do you think your party, the PDP has any chance in future election considering the crisis rocking it and the statement of the national chairman of APC after the Ondo state governorship election that Oyo and Osun are next for APC to take over?
Ganduje was only trying to attract attention to himself. He can say anything; he said that because they won; if they had lost, he would have said another thing and he has to show his people that he is working. What is the strength of APC in Osun, the peculiarity of each state affects election. Looking at Edo State, the scenario has to do with the peculiarity of the state and the crisis made the party to lose. In Osun State, the PDP is having a united house and the governor is a grassroots man, so if election is conducted today, Governor Adeleke will have a landslide. The factor of former governor Aregbesola is there and a party that is not reckoning with such a political gladiator says it will win and Governor Adeleke and Governor Seyi Makinde today are like Siamese twins. In Oyo state, how are they going to do it, is it those APC that is losing members every day, the APC that has lost touch with the good people of Oyo State? The first constituent of Governor Seyi Makinde is the masses of the state, we are praying for God to reveal the person that will take over from him in 2027 and we will support him, so as for Oyo State, the PDP is one family and we are confident of winning.
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