Hon. Tunji Akinosi is a former commissioner for forestry in Ogun State, but he is now eyeing a seat in the Federal House of Representatives from Ado-Odo/Ota Federal Constituency under the All Progressives Congress (APC). In this interview with OLADIPUPO AWOJOBI, Akinosi speaks on what he feels are the achievements of Governor Dapo Abiodun, why the APC should be voted into power at all levels and what should be the focus of the next government. Excerpts:

You were a commissioner in Ogun State, now you want to move to the Federal House of Representatives, why the move from executive to legislature?

It has been an ambition that one has over the years on the development of Ado-Odo/Ota Federal Constituency. The representation that we have had between 2015 and now is not the one that we have been happy about, though the person there now has done what he could do. Our federal constituency is cosmopolitan, it has one of the largest concentration of industries in the country. One think that should be brought to bear on the people, which we have not seen. We have a federal constituency where we have almost 80% of the roads being federal and we need the attention of the Federal Government more here and I think that we will get that done more in lawmaking than in the executive. That is why I decided to go for lawmaking.

What have been the major challenges of the constituency, you have industries that ought to have developed the constituency …

Are there laws that compel them to be part of such?

It should have been part of their Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) …

There should be laws formulated for things like that so that we can insist on it. If you say that CSR should be done, a company has right to say that this is what they want to do as their CSR. In terms of employment, localising employment and employable individuals that have gone to school within the community where they are situated is also part of the laws that needed to be looked into. If you have people from Ado-Odo/Ota that have gone to school and who have requisite qualifications to go into companies and the companies say they want to bring expatriates or people from their own country, do we have laws that say we can insist on what should be done in our area?

You served under Governor Dapo Abiodun, but there have been some criticisms against the Governor, would you say he had been able to meet the yearnings of the people of the state?

Unfortunately, when people say there are lots of criticisms against the government of Prince Dapo Abiodun, I am an individual that likes us to critiquing things objectively, if we are saying that he has not done well in the last four years, what are you measuring his performance with, is it the eight years of former governor Ibikunle Amosun or the eight years of former governor Gbenga Daniel? For every citizen of this state, it is only someone who is not part of us here that did not see what happened between 2011 and 2019 that would say Governor Dapo Abiodun has not done very well taking into consideration that we have more than a year of lockdown over Coronavirus. We had about six months of shut down over #EndSARS and other crisis that happened. Technically, we lost about 18 months from about 43 months that he has spent. Take Ado-Odo/Ota Federal Constituency for example, the road that links us with Lagos was part of the roads that Abiodun did when he came in. The Sango-Ijoko-Alagbole Road was said to have almost been completed by the former government, but nothing was done there. It was this same government that has started doing a lane and payment must have been made for jobs not done by the past government. Take our internal road in Ota as another example, it is this government that has been going about to repair them. Take the Atan-Agbara Road as another one, from 2011 to 2019, not a block was laid there. That road is now seeing the effect of the government. Take the Ado-Odo/Ikoga Road, it is still under construction, but nothing was done there before. Take the Ilaro- Owode Road, it is about 95% completed now by this same administration. Take the Owode-Ado-Odo Road, it’s under construction by this same administration. Those things were not done by the last administration. In the last administration, it was as if Ogun West was not part of this state. Some of these things he did in less than 40 months he had to work. Don’t forget that all allocations from 2019 to date from the federal government have dwindled. Governor Dapo Abiodun has been bringing up new ideas, and new industries. You can see that Forbes Magazine recently gave him an award as the Best Governor on Industrial Revolution. If you have people that are criticising him, they are doing so based on politics. Look at the roads that are being opened in Ijebu; Ijebu-Ode/ Epe Road, go there and see companies springing up. Look at Ago-Iwoye Road that had been left undone, it was not touched by the past administrations. Look at our flagship road that was constructed by former governor Gbenga Daniel, look at the repairs that have come to it. It is now making Abeokuta a befitting capital. There are times we need to talk about issues and not politics.

Talking about your government at the federal level, do you think your party should be given another chance despite the economic and insecurity challenges in the country at the moment?

Economy and other things you have mentioned are not peculiar to Nigeria, they affect the whole world. Very soon, teachers in the United Kingdom would be going on strike, the price of fuel has gone up in every part of Europe and in the United States of America. The US is going into recession, and the UK too is under recession. Is it President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC government that are governing those countries. It is a problem of the world and for people in the press to educate our nation is a problem that we have. We have not been told that fuel in Nigeria is the cheapest in the world. Fuel is much more expensive in the UK and in the US. In the last eight months, three prime ministers resigned in the UK as they said that they could not solve the economic problems there. We have heard that in the UK they are giving money to people. Many of these things happen everywhere, malls and small scale industries are being given money to keep them afloat. Insecurity is not a Nigerian problem alone.

But people are saying that the APC promised to solve insecurity problem and fix some other things before they were voted into power, now kidnapping is on the rise and the government has not been able to help….

As much as I agree with you on kidnapping, it is part of the problems of Nigerians because if I have somebody in my family that is not working straight or doing something that is not right, we will not go into the police station to report him or her. Less than 1% of Nigerians would report family members to security agents. Once you see an individual that gets rich quickly and you go and report they would say you are jealous. We have seen so many arrests being made by the police and we see that Southerners are also involved in the crime. There is little the police can do without intelligence or information.

In some other countries, when they see you going in with a nylon and you did not come out with it, they would report to the police. That is what they do in advanced countries and you say that their police are working. Police are not witches or wizards. They work on information given by their citizens, but our citizens don’t do that. Until we educate ourselves and say that security is our duty too we will have problems. We are not saying we should carry arms, but giving information to the police is part of the duties of responsible citizens.

Could you set agenda for the next president of Nigeria, what should be the roles of our National Assembly in nation building and what are your plans for your people in Ado-Odo/Ota?

The agenda for the next government is being set by the current administration. The next government should put their feet on the pedal. The Second Niger Bridge has been done, the Bonny Bridge was going on water, now it has been done, other major roads have been done, the train has been done, though you see people vandalising it. On infrastructure, this government has done a lot, I would only advise that they should build on this with more speed. The second one is security, and like I said it is a problem because our people are not doing what they are supposed to do by giving information to the police.

See what is being done on electricity, the only problem we have is that we are not blowing our trumpets enough. Siemens is fixing our electricity instead of the ones the past governments have done without any result. So, the next Government should work hard to get u out of these problems. Once those three are done, people are ready to come on to create jobs and once that is done insecurity would reduce. On the National Assembly, their job is to make enabling laws and to be like guides and guards by holding the executive in the jugular to do what their constituents want them to do.

My going into the National Assembly is also to assist the government, both at the federal and state levels and to do what my people want. I told you that most of our roads are federal roads, but there are no federal citizens. The people cannot differentiate between the two. We will work to ensure that the state government gets the money they have spent on federal roads in the state back and that would enable us to be able to assist our people and do more roads.

What is your charge to the INEC on the forthcoming general elections?

The APC Government made INEC to be better then it used to be under the past governments. INEC is seen to be open and the APC-led government has conducted fee and fair elections. Our charge is for the INEC not to rest on their laurels and do what they need to do right so that the elections would come and go and we would be seen as conducting an election that would not be criticised by many people.

Please follow and like us: