Comrade Abdulwaheed Odunuga, an activist, a seasoned economist, a professional administrator and a community crusader, threw his hat in the ring, several months ago, to wrestle the most contested public office in Kosofe LGA. Recall that the primaries for the member of Kosofe House of Representatives seat almost tore the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, apart in 2022. The party is yet to completely pacify aggrieved members who feel they’ve been betrayed by their leaders, and by extension, the party structure.
Since joining the race, Abdulwaheed hasn’t rescinded his comradeship, though also a politician, his foray into politics kicked off in 2015, when he led the Buhari Youth Organization, BYO, a group formed within the APC to publicize and complement the activities of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Abdulwaheed Odunuga spoke to members of the Kosofe League of Journalists at a media parley, to narrate his agenda for the Kosofe Federal Constituency. Grab a seat, get popcorn, a cold organic juice and enjoy the talks between journalists and Mr Odunuga.
Where do you see yourself in the coming election?
The chances are bright because one thing that President Muhammadu Buhari has done for us and we also appreciate is signing of the amended electoral law. Which has given a lot of Nigerians hope that our votes will count.
Who is Bankrolling you and do you have thugs?
On the people bankrolling me; the people are bankrolling me. I can not say a particular individual. In terms of bankrolling is a form of support and it’s a public document. We update our people on what comes in daily we see as much as N500,000 and as low as N2000 those are the caliber of people sponsoring and supporting us.
This kind of fund, actually, I will not call it bankrolling, I will call it a support in a project they believe in. The major reasons they are doing that are of two things; they want a better society and they believe in our project and that we are credible enough to take over from the current House of Representatives member. So, we don’t have a particular person that can lay claim that he was the one sponsoring my ambition. From the records so far, I think we have had more than 150 people contributed so far to this particular campaign.
On the issue of thugs, I don’t keep thugs and I don’t have the intention of keeping them. Because I am one of those who have complained about them in the past. I will not repeat the same thing we fought against, so, I don’t have any thug. As you can see you don’t see thugs surrounding me even going out alone. The only thing that we have done, because I won’t deny the fact that we have this relationship. The relationship we have with them is courtesy greetings. We have approached a lot of them and this morning, I spoke with some of them.
Sadly, people will want to campaign in a particular area and the ruling party will be stopping them to carry out that campaign. And most of the time they are using thugs to do that. Fortunately, this morning I challenged some of these thugs around and said please, it’s high time you change this attitude, these people will just use you and dump you. That’s the kind of relationship we are having with them to sensitize them that this country belongs to us, these people you are supporting, if there’s crisis, they will leave the country in 24 hours, you and I have nowhere to go to, or are you saying your children can not be president of Nigeria tomorrow? Would you want these kind of things you are doing to other candidates be done to your children? So that is the kind of relationship we are having with them, to sensitize them.
And you can not see any thug going with us to destroy people’s campaign posters, banners and billboards. Anyone that you see is because we have changed their mindset, that this is what is expected of them as a citizen, and I think they are actually waking up to that fact. Politicians have used them for so long and now they are beginning to reason that they also have a role to play and they should not be used for political gains.
What is the implication of imposing candidates on political parties?
It is a very big problem, you can’t assume that is democracy; it is contradictory to what they say or preach. Number one; the major effect is that you will never get good governance, you might only be lucky. I always make this example that Fashola was imposed on us and we got the best of Fashola. I am very sure that if he was not imposed he would have done better than what he did. Imposing a candidate, you will be denied a credible candidate from emerging within that system.
Secondly, you may end up with a mediocre, people who have nothing to offer and that’s the major one. And if you are having such, what do you expect them to deliver, you won’t get anything from that kind of leader because they are more responsive to people; godfathers not to the community, or the people that voted for them.
And to make matter worse, the ruling party will impose candidates, and the main opposition party will impose candidates, at the end of the day, you will be left without an option of who to vote for at the end of the day, you end up picking the best among the worst. This time around the NNPP, other smaller parties are bringing onboard candidates that are not imposed and we believe in democracy from within, if any of us emerge we will be a better alternative and better option for the people of Kosofe
Do you think you can win?
In terms of winning that’s left for God. It is God that decides who will be crowned at the end of the day and who is going to win the election, but we are very optimistic that we are winning this election, by God’s Grace. The feedback, I am sure that all of us are within Kosofe, I can not be a judge in my own case. I think by now you guys should have gotten the views of the public, not the politicians this time around because an NNPP member will tell you I am going to win, and the APC will tell you I am going to win.
Please you guys need to help with that feasibility study. But from the feedback I have gotten so far, I can assure you that we are winning Agboyi Ketu LCDA, with a very wide margin, I can assure you of that, for Ikosi Isheri LCDA, more than 60% assurance that we are winning, and our major challenge is Kosofe Constituency 1, we are putting everything in place, we are reaching out, you know you can not be popular everywhere. I want to use this opportunity to appreciate our supporters because they have taken our gospel of good governance out of Kosofe Constituency 2 to constituency 1, people have been our greatest strength. We don’t have the resources to throw around the way the ruling party and major opposition is doing but with the help of our supporters and people who believe in us within our community, they have been reaching out on our behalf to the people that have been helping us and one of the feedback we have gotten so far is that people are tired of the system and they want a true change.
If elected, what would you do differently?
I will be doing a lot, as I said earlier. The first thing we will bring is hope and trust back to governance for our people, so they believe they have done the right thing by electing us.
Secondly, we will be sponsoring bills and motions that will impact people’s lives. I know this is going to be a tough one, but we need to be honest with ourselves, and getting a bill passed in the house is not child’s play.
This is because we have 360 members; I will have 359 colleagues in the house and you need a simple majority to get a bill passed.
One thing I will be doing differently, I have made up my mind that I will be sponsoring bills on public institutions by appointed or elected office holders such as health and schools. What I am trying to say is that the children of politicians must attend public schools and hospitals. With that, I believe our public institutions will be in a better place because you don’t have any choice but to make use of those public institutions. The bill has been sponsored before on the floor of the house, but it failed. I think the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, killed the bill, it should have been passed two years ago. It was sponsored by a PDP lawmaker. We are very optimistic that by the time they see the PDP guy in the house and other credible candidates from other locations, the bill will be passed into law.
I have noticed a lot of our constituency projects are fraudulent, a lot of them not just in Kosofe but in the entire state and the entire southwest. I tell people when they see constituency projects, mostly empowerment projects, that I have an issue with them, because these are programs that will even be difficult for you to account for. It is always very difficult for the anti-corruption agencies to even investigate because how do you investigate the distribution of 20 hairdressing machines to beneficiaries when those beneficiaries are not even hairdressers?
One of the things we will change in whatever project we are nominating for the floor of the house is the need for programs and projects that are sustainable. They will be projects that impact people’s lives. For instance, during my campaign, I went to Shangisha, where I saw a lot of boreholes—more than six—that people are not using, because almost everybody in that axis has boreholes in their houses. Do you need a borehole in those locations when you have Agboyi Ketu that’s suffering from water? So, our projects will be based on the needs of the people, not what we want to do for the people. It is about what they need.
Most of these projects we will not just do; we will do them in conjunction with community leaders, the Community Development Committee, and Community Development Associations because we have seen a lot of projects that are bad after 4 or 8 years, with the current holder and no one will fix them. So any project we will be doing, we will do in conjunction with the community. We will do a project that they’re ready to take ownership of after maybe a year or two years because we cannot be there forever.
After leaving office, who will manage those constituency projects? Those are things we will be doing differently, so that on its own, it can be sustainable.
Another thing I will be bringing on board are oversight functions. Our national assembly is lacking in that we are always putting pressure on the presidency and placing all the blame on it. For instance, the fuel scarcity is something we have done in the past under the Buhari Youth Organization; during the fuel scarcity, we disperssed our members in Kosofe to fuel stations and gave daily reports to the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR). A lot of fuel stations were sealed in Kosofe.
Now, what is our House of Representatives member doing? We have price regulations, and I believe no filling station should be selling above the pump price. Now even NNPC has changed their price to N185; others sold as much as N280 in Alapere yesterday, and nobody is saying anything. Do we expect Buhari to come and fight for that? The job of our representatives is to say, this is what is happening in my constituency at the National Assembly.
Look at the suffering our people are facing because we don’t have good representatives, because they are not actually thinking, or because they just thought governance was all about making laws on the floor of the house of assembly.
You have a lot of things to do within your community, to change a lot of things, not just on the floor of the House of Assembly.
What are your chances?
For instance, in 2015, a lot of people came out with the hope that Buhari will change things in the country; even people who had never voted in their lives came out to vote for Buhari. Now they believe the same thing. If a credible candidate emerges from most of the political parties, you will see our youths coming out to campaign for them and vote for them. That is what we have in Kosofe today, especially since the youths see that credibility in us, and that is the reason why we are not seeing anything difficult when it comes to the issue of funding. I always tell people one thing: when you are not more popular, you have to spend much more on the election. When you are popular, you spend less.
What is your advice to the people of Kosofe?
The electorate should vote for candidates irrespective of political affiliation; they should not be deceived by tribes or religion; they should ensure that the best candidate emerges irrespective of political affiliation, ethnicity, or religious sentiments.
