From Christy Anyanwu in London
Dr DA King (Daniel Adewale King) is a multifaceted individual who has made significant contributions in the various fields of human endeavour.
With a PhD in Theology, he possesses a deep understanding of spiritual matters and has become a renowned church leader.
Prior to this role, he served as the chair of the school governors at Singlewell Primary school, where he exhibited his dedication to education and the well-being of young learners.
Currently working as a highway engineer, he brings a unique perspective to his field, blending his technical expertise with a holistic approach to problem-solving.
In this interview, DA King, the mayor of Gravesham Borough, in Kent, England, among other things, opens a window into his life as a UK politician, a servant of the people who voted him into office, his work as a pastor, running NGOs, and his willingness to become part of government in his home country, Nigeria, to turn things around for good.
Tell us more about yourself?
My name is Dr Daniel Adewale King. I am the current and the first Black African/Nigerian Mayor of Gravesham Borough in Kent, United Kingdom. I am married with lovely children, and we all live here. I was born and raised in Ebute Metta, Lagos, Nigeria. I travelled to Germany on scholarship immediately after my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). I spent couple of years in Germany before moving down to the United Kingdom. The fact that I schooled in Germany made me to be able to speak and write in Deutch.
How would you compare Nigerian politics with what obtains in the UK?
They don’t go there to serve the people (in Nigeria). We (in the UK) come here to serve the people, to serve the community. It’s all about community. Everything I do is all about the community. I had my first mayoral event last Thursday. All the money raised here will be given to the charities that I’ve chosen. I don’t take any of the money. I give it to the charities that I’ve chosen. So that night, selling raffle tickets alone, you know, the raffle tickets that we sell for £5, that they can win anything, we were able to gather from that raffle tickets sales almost £1,500 in just one night. So, it’s all about the community here. That’s what we do. But the Nigerian version is, I just want to go there and see what I can grab. But as I have come to this office now, it’s not about what I can grab. It’s about the legacy I can leave so that they can say I’ve made my mark. So, when they mention my name, when they see it on that board, they’ll say, when Dr Daniel Adewale King was the mayor in Gravesham, he did this, and he did that. The next thing I want to do is to partner this town with a city or town in Nigeria. That’s my next move because I have discovered we have four states/towns/cities in four countries that we partner with. We partner with Virginia in the United States, we are twinning with Cumbria in France, we are twinning with Neumunster in Germany, and we are twinning with Jalanda in India because of the Indian people. I’m an African. I want us to partner with African people as well. But the question my people will ask me is what will they benefit? That will be the question they will be asking me, and it should be about what will benefit the lot. You can imagine any of our governors, any of our politicians, anybody prominent in Nigeria coming here and I’m hosting them. I can host them, and we can speak about that one. I’m fortunate to be working with a local government, I am a highway engineer. I deal with bridges, footways, potholes and everything. I’m on the maintenance side, and I’ve been working there for the past 20 years. So, I know what it means to maintain. I manage a budget of over £100,000 every year, just to maintain the roads that I account for within the borough. I don’t take any of the money home. I have to use it for the roads. That’s why you don’t see much or large potholes. That’s why you don’t see light not coming on in the night. I know someone who used to be in government in Nigeria. He was occupying the same position as I’m occupying now. Then, as an engineer, the amount of money he had and was spending, here I don’t have that kind of money. I have to spend it for the community. So, until we come to that, accept that your position is to serve and not to be served, we will not achieve anything with our politics. So, politics in Nigeria cannot be compared to the one here.
As a politician in the UK, what’s your take on the fact that people are complaining that things are hard in Nigeria? What advice do you have for the government of Nigeria?
To me, if I speak from the maintenance side of things, from the highways perspective, I don’t think there is any policy to be drafted up that is taking the government years and years to say they want to draft up. If your government would just say, mine is to face road infrastructure and reconstruction, that is enough to create millions of employment. Millions, just to say, I want to face roads, every road must be tarred. Do you know how many jobs that will create? Engineers will get jobs. Doctors, lawyers, all departments are within the highways. This borough, as you see, every department that you can think of is here. Even Mama Put will benefit from the road construction because she will sell her food. Look at The Redeemed Church on Lagos-Ibadan expressway, for instance, by that church alone, look at how many people are selling by the roadside. Just that one alone. Just look at how many people are benefiting from that. There are three things governments just need to face in Nigeria. One major thing is to focus on road construction. If the roads are good, there will be less car maintenance cost and cars getting kaput every day that will hike the price of transportation. When the roads are done, it reduces armed robbery, because there are no potholes for you to be running from and they will throw something at you. I can literally pick you now and say I want to drive you back to Lewisham; we’ll be talking in the car and I’ll be driving. This interview can also be done in the car while I’m driving because there’s nothing that will distract me and there are no potholes to dodge and run from. If they focus on that one, it will eradicate a lot of bad things and look into our security system. When you have roads everywhere, because the road comes with streetlights, every streetlight you see in this country, we don’t manufacture any. They are imported from China and some are imported as complete knocked down, CKD, that is the one that they come to assemble here. Or they have one that they will have assembled over there and just bring here. So, roads are one aspect; I don’t know what they have around petroleum, so I cannot delve into that one because it’s a dirty thing. It is a very dirty thing. So, we cannot say they should look into petroleum. Imagine a country where they find bags of crude oil in the backyard of someone’s house, and they say they don’t know that person. Who does that? So, let’s face roads. At least, with roads, you don’t need any policy like that. It is not rocket science to be able to construct roads. We have governors. We have local government chairmen. We have House of Reps members. We have House of Assembly members. We have senators. Calculate the number of roads we have. In this borough now, if I go upstairs and I call Stuart now, who is the CEO, they will tell me the number of roads we have in this borough and how many engineers are looking after the many roads. Like I work with Bexley. We divide it into two areas, North and South. In the South, we have four engineers. In the North, we have four engineers. I have about 166 roads that I look after. Anything about those roads, it is me that they will call. If it’s something I have to deal with, I deal with it or I signpost it to, maybe, utility, gas, electricity. You know, all our things in this country pass underground. So, we have to refer them to these people. Let the government face roads. After facing roads, they can look into the petroleum aspect. When you face the road, you give constant electricity. There’s no magic behind constant electricity. It’s just politics they are playing (in Nigeria). People are eating from it. That is what is killing Africa. It’s people that are eating from it. It’s not that those things are not done. I’ll give you one typical example. If it can be done in Pinnacle Estate, if it can be done in Amen Estate, if it can be done in Chevron Estate, if it can be done in Royal Garden City Estate, it is possible in the whole of Nigeria. It can be done. So, we just need to duplicate those things outside. When you see it done, we can just continue to duplicate, and then even if we have to use a town to start as a model, we can start. When they wanted to start Congestion Charges Zone here, you know, congestion charge is about the emission zone, they started in central London, just a small place like that, to see how it’s going to be, to decongest traffic. They started like that. And when they saw that it worked, they expanded it. They saw that it worked, and they expanded it. Just like that. This is how you do it. You start with a model. If it’s a small town, go to a town, tar all the roads there, put electricity there, let them run for one or two years, then you will get the feel of what the problems could be, then you know who to employ. Even by taking expatriates to Nigeria to focus on one thing, say they come and do electricity, you know it’s Nigerians that would benefit. The expatriate that you bring, maybe about 10 of them, to be head of the departments, it’s our children that they will employ. Expatriates will not go outside and be digging roads. Expatriates will not be the secretary, will not be the manager, at the same time as the director, it’s our children that will be the managers. Are we not creating employment? So, you do the road and other infrastructure follows, such as pipe-borne water. Pipe-borne water in Nigeria has been forgotten. Everybody is now talking about boreholes. That is how we have become. We grew up knowing pipe-borne water. Every household in Lagos used to have a tap. If the tap in your house is not running, then we had a public tap where we would carry our buckets and go and queue for water. But there’s no tap now, it’s just boreholes. So, these are the things that the government can focus on. And in a bid to eradicate all these, they have turned the country to a palliative country, whereby things that governments are doing in Nigeria are the things that charities are doing here in the UK. Charities provide food, just like the Red Cross provides food aid. That is what the government in Nigeria is now doing. You can see a senator going out distributing money to people, giving them rice, what charities are doing here. I do that here. I remember when Grenfell Tower caught fire here many years ago. It was a tall, I think it’s a 23-storey building. When it caught fire, even in our church, we gathered clothes. I just announced it in church, If you have clothes in your wardrobe, you can bring them. Before I knew it, the whole place was full. I was loading clothes to go there. I have the DAKING Foundation. I run it here, as well as in Nigeria. I give scholarships to students. I pay their school fees, I pay their WAEC, junior WAEC, and so on. It’s a charity I just do. Sometimes, when I come to Nigeria, I’ll do palliatives with bags of rice and so on. I’ve been to Ibadan. I’ve been to Ikorodu. I’ve been to Ife. After I minister to the people, pray for them, we distribute gifts. We walk hand in hand with the Baale and the Kings of these areas.
You have an NGO in Nigeria and people know you in Nigeria for your NGO, too. With your knowledge as a Mayor in Kent, if you were called to come to Nigeria, maybe to serve in the government or as a technocrat, would you do that?
I am more than willing to contribute and help put things in place. I’d love to. I’ve spoken with a few people, including Pastor Femi Emmanuel.
The last time he was here, we met in his hotel room, and he said to me, “Nigeria is looking for people like you.” He sent me a message, saying: “Bishop King, my mayor, thank you so much for allowing God to use you for us. Your physical presence changed the atmosphere. Your testimony was inspiring, challenging and impactful. My God shall continue to honour you all the days of your life. Thank you for your generosity, I wasn’t expecting it.” That moment meant a lot to me. Pastor Femi Emmanuel, Bishop Francis Wale Oke (the PFN president), and I have often met when they visit England. I’ve even hosted them in our church in Peckham back in the days. If I am called to serve in any capacity, I am ready. I look forward to the opportunity because the knowledge and experience we’ve gained cannot simply go to waste. All I hope for is the chance to express and apply what I’ve learned.
In the last election, people were suggesting that citizens in the Diaspora should vote. How do you feel about that? Do you think it’s worth it?
I wouldn’t say it’s not worth it because whether we are in Diaspora or we are at home, we still are a country. I still carry the two passports. I’m a Nigerian as well as British.
So, I think it’s worth it because we will vote based on our mindset. If I’m going to vote now, I’m looking for somebody that will resonate with my idea because of my mindset here, how I see things done. You cannot come now from Nigeria and give me N500 to vote for you. That is not my mindset. Like I told you, people voted for me here because of the manifesto that I carried and the way I was approaching them without knowing me before. I didn’t have to bribe anybody. I didn’t spend anything for this election. I didn’t spend a penny. So, if people in Diaspora are allowed to vote, I think the vote will be clean, because we are not biased. People think the Diaspora is biased. But we are talking based on what we see here. Why can’t we replicate the same thing over there? So, when we hear somebody speaking our mind that they want to do something good, I would say, okay, this one is speaking sense. I believe diasporas should be allowed to vote because, in this country (UK), people are allowed to vote even when they go outside the country. That’s why the whole thing shifted. Conservatives have been in power for over 19 years and people were confused, things were not working. So, it was time to try something else. That’s the way it operates in this country. Let’s try something else.
What do you have to say concerning the U.S. presidential election, any lessons for the world, especially Nigeria?
That U.S. election is something else. I think somebody wrote that the U.S. is just an advanced Africa. I love all of them because, for you to have gone into politics, you must have it at the back of your mind that you want to offer something. Whether you are right or you are wrong. Some might say: He’s just like a pastor, or he’s just like Babalawo that tells you to drink this thing or that. If he’s not sure of it, he will not offer it to you. But you might take it and it might or it might not work for you. The fact that he’s so sure of it does not mean that when you take it, it works for you, but at least he has something to offer. He’s so sure of it to offer it to you. So, every one of them is coming out, but it’s only in America and Africa that a former prisoner or convict can become President. Here, it’s still very, very hard. Once you have a criminal record in the U.K, it’s hard for you. As a mayor now, I go out to schools, even private schools, grammar schools, and colleges, I go there to speak to our youngsters, just to encourage them. If I can, you can, too. What message am I sending across? I’m simply telling them, don’t use your today to spoil your tomorrow. The time when the riots happened, around August and September, some reporters interviewed a few individuals, mostly White and British, and asked why they felt they weren’t getting jobs. Many blamed foreigners, saying, “They’re taking our jobs.” However, when asked about their own profession, some admitted they had no profession, had been to prison, or were on the sex offenders’ register. The question becomes: who would employ someone with such a record Meanwhile, you have someone like Adewale from Nigeria, who came to the UK, earned an MBA, and specialized in project management and business analysis. He worked hard, gained skills, even went to Bible college to study religious studies, obtained a BA, completed a master’s, and pursued a PhD in theology. Now, when he preaches in church, someone claims he’s taking their job. But when asked about their own knowledge of the Bible, they say, “Jesus was born in a manger,” and that’s all they know. How does that compare? It doesn’t. The question is: what have you got to offer? That’s what truly matters. If you look at cases like Trump’s or others, it is only in places like Africa and America that individuals with 34 convictions, not allegations, but actual convictions, are still allowed to participate in an election. In this country, it’s hard for you to sit in public seats. Even to become a governor in a school, they will DBS-check you. They will check your records; they will check your profile down to any motoring offence and if they catch you they will charge you. We have what is called a DBS, criminal record. If anybody wants to employ you, they go and check that one first. There is what is called a credit check. They will do a credit check on you, to know whether you are credit viable. That is why the majority of our people don’t get mortgages. Because they want to buy on credit, but they don’t have the money.