Nothing wrong in state police, countries we copied presidential system from have it - Ogundimu
Having served as a lawmaker in the Lagos State House of Assembly from Agege Constituency 2 for 12 years, Yinka Ogundimu believes that he has to follow the instructions of the leaders of his party; the All Progressives Congress (APC) before he makes any move. Ogundimu also suggested that party leaders should resolve issues surrounding primary elections before going for general elections. INIOBONG IWOK brings the excerpts: Can you share your experiences as a lawmaker in the Lagos State House of Assembly for 12 years with us?
Going there was an opportunity to serve for me. When you look at the business of lawmaking and you are able to represent your people adequately, this will give you a sort of joy. When you look back to various things, aspects of budgeting, oversighting and you discover that you were able to impact your people and that has given me the edge to forge ahead.
The training acquired in the house, a lot of things that you were exposed to, you would be happy. If we are in a country like the United States of America (USA), where they would look at the cost of training, they will not want you to go because they will feel like they can bene t from your wealth of knowledge. All the same, it was a very good experience, and exposure for me to achieve all I did for the state as a whole.
On my constituency, I remember the bad roads that we were able to build and these were supported by my colleagues. ese have provided solutions to the bottlenecks in the roads in the area. at made us do some things and that is what gladdens my heart. You don’t need to be the governor before you can impact the people. I used the o ce to do many things for my people.
What are your memorable moments as a lawmaker?
ere are a lot of them, but I will mention a few. e rst one is getting feedback from the people to know what they need and not what you think they need. For instance, in budgeting but before that you need to engage people to know what their needs are.
That has saved us millions of naira. ere are many roads that were
xed in Agege as a whole, which is my constituency. A lot of canals in Agege and I brought the attention of the government and the commissioners to them. Whenever rain fell for more than 24 hours, the people would be in trouble. ank God that all those things are working now.
Talking about linking roads that help within the areas, a lot of them were repaired and many streets in the constituency were also tarred.
at’s another way we worked. From Salawu Street to Ota Road, they were all eyesore, then but I thank God that we xed them just as we did to a lot of roads in that area.
How do you feel operating within the Nigerian political system, which many people believe is characterised by violence?
I joined politics in 1993, when I was made the education secretary of a local government. I was relatively
young then, and I was the youngest politician in my area to work with elders, party people and the rest. We did our best at that time to win. ose exposures helped me get to office in 2011 as a lawmaker. I grew up within the environment because I’ve been used to having people around me. So, coming into politics I had no fear at that time because it was my intention to go and serve and I served the people very well.
Sometimes, I ask people to let us walk on the streets of Agege to see how people will run a er us, and hail us because we have been able to impact lives through the o ce that we were in. When you see people frequently, they will not fear, but if they don’t see you regularly it becomes an issue because they want to know if you are coming because of elections.
I’m talking about competition during primary and general elections, how do you cope with the opponents?
I’ve never had such an experience.
ere are tendencies that some people are not happy with some decisions or the others taken by the party at any point in time. If you say ‘stop’ they should be able to listen to you and that shows that you have the grip, but if you cannot control them then there is a problem.
ere must be a leader in a camp and once a leader says something, your followers, because they love you, must listen and act to your instructions even when they are not satis ed. ey will have an avenue to express their dissatisfaction but not violence.
Your ability to coordinate and carry people along, ability to manage people and your style of leadership matters. The issue of primary and general elections has to do with parties. ey have to manage di erences before general elections.
at is key as well because there is
As a grassroots politician, how do you think the government can make life better for the people in these di cult times?
I think we should look at this question from two di erent perspectives; the citizen and the government. The most important thing is that the government should try to enlighten the people to let them buy into it. It has to be done continuously.
The people should be made to understand that they need to be patient. When the government is doing reconstruction, there will be some constructive disruption so that these things will happen and when it does, they should persevere and a er that they will see the dividends of what they were trying to work towards.
e government should update the people at every stage of government activities to keep the people abreast of what is happening. Above all, the government should try as much as possible to take constructive criticisms when they are pointing us to where they think we have not seen. If these two aspects work well, there is no way we will not get results.
What were some of your achievements as Chairman of the House Committee on Education?
Education in Lagos State is a big project and it is on the rise. I was the Chairman of the House Committee on Education for about two years and we were able to change some things. As a government, you don’t need to expose some things; we pointed the attention of the government to some schools that cannot be called schools in the state at that time. We brought the attention of the government to this because the governor might not know that these things exist in Lagos.
I’m waiting for anyone to beat that record. We visited almost all the schools in the state. e model schools have been in existence, but they were upgraded because when we go to the one in Meiran area of the state, for instance, it had been a model school before then, but we saw the facilities there and we let the government know that this was not what we should call a model college and they saw it. We visited a lot of schools in Ikorodu, Ayobo, Agege and other areas.
During that time, we facilitated the modular school in Vetland area of Agege that is a model school now. Lagos is now a model, where almost all the governments in the country visit to see what is going on there.
ese are part of our contributions. We also discovered that the money for the schools were not enough to do anything.
We were able to increase the running cost of the schools and it was an opportunity for us, and this solved lots of problems. Maintenance of furniture in the schools will save government lots of money if they are well managed.
Every year, the government buys new set of furniture; what about maintenance? Some schools in Lagos now have workshops where they do maintain the furniture because they have some funds; they now have some stipends to spend on such things.
We worked on the security of the schools because they were not in a good situation and we started working on them.
What is the sense that you are spending money to put some of those facilities without security to watch over them? One area I was unable to nish was making sure that most of our public schools have titles to their land.
The government doesn’t have titles of most of the lands that we built our schools. When you look at that someone will just encroach on the land and when they go to court the government cannot produce any document.
People will come up with one story or the other whether it is right or wrong and he would say it’s his forefathers’ land and that they only gave us a part. Most of the schools in Lagos State don’t have C of O to show that they are government’s properties.
is aspect is where I still want much to be done by the government.
What should your followers expect from you soon, are you staying in Lagos or going to Abuja to represent them?
ere is an arrangement in our party such that it is only the party that will determine where they want you to serve. When you have served in a certain capacity and they are satis ed, it is now le for the party to say we want you to come and serve in this area again since your intention is to serve. e leadership of the party will always beckon on you when the time comes.
As a government, you don’t need to expose some things; we pointed the attention of the government to some schools that cannot be called schools in the state at that time
What do you think the government should do to solve the insecurity problem in the country, would you support state police?
We handled that in the legislative way by creating some other laws to enable states have their own police. I don’t see anything wrong in state police. If the states can have their own state high courts, governors and legislative arms, then what is wrong with them having their own police?
Who implements or enforces the law made by the various states houses of assembly? at one should also be looked at. ose countries that we copy have local governments and police. We should practice what they do to the end. ere are some areas that the government is looking at now. Everything cannot go with force.