Isiaka Babatunde Adigun Gbadamosi is the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate for the House of Representatives in Akinyele/Lagelu Federal Constituency, Oyo State. He speaks on his aspiration and other issues in this interview:
What is your assessment of the quality of representation this constituency has got so far?
I think the incumbent has done fairly well, but that is not to say that there are no gaps that have to be filled. We still need a kind of representation that will be a strong voice at the national level, which, I think, is really missing. We need somebody with good charisma, understanding of the intrigues, and understanding of the political system, to push the position and interests of Akinyele and Lagelu constantly at the National Assembly.
What have you identified as priority needs of the constituency?
One of my key goals is economic empowerment of these people, such that they can make a decent living and expand their businesses. I can classify the constituents into two- agrarian and evolving settlements or semi-urban area.
We also have people in areas like Kara and Trailer park where we have a lot of animal husbandry going on. We will look at what we can do about the animals the herders bring in, in terms of spaces for them and the management, so that we will not have any kind of conflict.
I intend to use my relationship and expertise in the area of self-help as instruments to galvanize the people, make them understand why we need to go into self-empowerment to be out of poverty.
One of the ways we can do that is by bringing people and resources together.
For instance, most of the agrarian areas do not have anything like financial inclusion, like bank. The closest you have in Akinyele Local Government is in Ojoo. After that, you can go as far as Iroko, Eboda, Olanla and Ijaye. So, how do we get this financial inclusion to make the people plug into the system?
Two, many of the farmers, complain that substantial part of their harvests rot and waste because they do not sell everything all at once. We can have agro-allied industry, a small outlet, where such crops can be processed into semi-products so that they can sell at a good price when the price is a bit higher. What happens now is they sell everything at give-away prices and so get little returns for their efforts.
The way the population of unemployed people is rising, we must quickly do something about this time bomb otherwise it is just a matter of time it blows in our face. We will try to finance those ones who are already engaged in some vocations such as tailoring associations, vulcanizers and barbing associations and so on to enable them expand their trades.
Then, those without jobs, my intention is through my NGO, AMSSI, harvest all of these people, bring some experts and get them trained in some fields and see how possibly we can push them with some funds to go on, based on what they want to do.
People may call a legislator’s earning a bogus amount, but for me, I intend to make full use of it for this kind of purpose, because I know there are so many people in the constituency who have these needs and the more whose lives we are able to touch, the better for their environment and the better for the community and the better for the country even safer for all of us. Most of our women essentially are into buying and selling and those are the areas where I feel the financial inclusion will work magic because if we can put them in database and kind of profile them, we will know what they are doing and how they are doing it and be able to see if we can have a kind of savings/cooperative credit scheme and all of that by the time we establish their consistency and seriousness.
Any child able to come out with at least five O’Level credits including English and Maths and gets admitted, but whose parents have a challenge of financing his further education, so long as he is from Akinyele/Lagelu Federal Constituency, will have his education funded by us.
I intend to see what we can do to bring about reforms on the issues of self-help and financial inclusion, which, from my observation and experience, are still very weak. Essentially, I will say the government has lost touch with what the cooperative sector can really do. It needs somebody who has participated in the process, who knows how it works here in Nigeria and even outside the country to be able to put ideas together to restructure this sector.
We need a system of cooperative within the country that is going to create a kind of economic dynamics within the system so that the people themselves are now empowered greatly.
Today, we have the microfinance banks and the laws are there. In most cases, the law subsumes the cooperatives under microfinance banks, but do you know the interesting part of the story? Most successful cooperatives are far bigger than microfinance houses to the extent that most of them own microfinance houses. If you structure the cooperative society very well it can go ahead to create a very big enterprise because cooperative itself is an enterprise, it is not about merely giving loan and taking loans.
I also intend to look at the area of the Bank of Industry (BoI), Small/Medium Scale Enterprise of Nigeria, the Central Bank and Bank of Agriculture (BoA). These four agencies most times are all working for diverse purposes and there is need for us to have a synergy among them.
People who trained with SMEDAN, after the training, you don’t tell them that we have trained you, that is all we can give. There should be a kind of referral from SMEDAN to maybe Central Bank or to BoI or to BoA. There is need to have a legislation that can weave such arrangement together to strengthen our people at the grassroots.
Do you share fears that we may have an overbearing executive and lame duck legislature if the President is reelected?
I believe that Nigeria has come to the level where nobody can truncate this democracy. If anybody tries it, he is going to meet a vehement resistance from the Nigerian people, a very strong one.
People like us were on the streets during the Abacha era streets protesting and that spirit has not gone out of us. Nobody should think that you can subdue or cow Nigerians. This next legislative assembly, I believe strongly, is one that is going to be very vibrant and diverse, in the sense that a particular party might not have a majority in the National Assembly.
People have come to realize that it is not about the party itself, but the individual. People are now voting for individuals not parties. You will see in the National Assembly a situation whereby we will be having two to three parties forming a coalition to have a majority or get-a-bill passed. Not a situation in which a party would say, we are the owners of this place.