WHY I JOINED POLITICS: THE TRUTH MANY DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS

By Razaq Adedeji Jimoh and Toyo C. Ngem

Prince Idris Balogun, aka Oluomo Kaafata, rarely grants press interview as we have found out. Civics Weekly was nevertheless lucky this past week to get interactions with him at his office. We can authoritatively say it was a no holds barred interview in which the crown-Prince of Isheri Olofin Kingdom in Alimosho vibrated! This week, we bring him to the public sphere in what we have scheduled to be a serial revelations of himself and life in politics. For instance, is Oluomo regretting he did not eventually contest for the House of Representatives under the Labour Party? This and many other facts are what he revealed to this magazine. But before all that, one question yet rages: why would a successful Crown Prince dabble into politics? It all begins from here!

Prince, you are a successful man of royal blood, a potential king for that matter; a successful business man in the private sector. With all this to your favour so far in life, why did you go into politics?

Let me first of all thank you; I appreciate Civic Weekly for being here in my office this afternoon. Your media is doing a great and fantastic job because I read your magazine regularly. It is an honour for me to interact with you at this time. Now to your question, the reason why I joined politics is for the good wish I have for my people. Naturally outside or without politics, I have the wish to be assisting people. Then at a time, I asked myself, how can I sustain, increase and expand the means and the will I have to be assisting the vulnerable people, the less privileged in our community? Then I looked at my personal goodwill as an asset for politics to see how I could use the government’s power to do these. I realised that politics is one means to do greater good for the greater number of people. From there, you can see the answer to your question.

But as the direct answer to your question, I will still say I joined politics to improve upon my life as a natural giver, a natural charity man. I want to use politics to impart lives; the lives of the less privileged. I want to reach a greater number of people who must be lifted out of poverty across this our Alimosho Federal Constituency.

If you would permit me to say this, many that had come as party aspirants have always said this. How do you want to make a difference from such pasts of failed promises?

Let me say since I joined politics, I feel great with thanks to the almighty God. I give this glory Him because He has made me to become more exposed to the less privileged. With politics, many of them now have cause to reach me, to freely access me for their assistance and needs. I thank God that he has continued to bless me to meet their needs with my personal resources. I have had more people to support, more people to empower from which I have continued to derive joy that I am doing my natural good wish. The goodwill reward this has brought to me is that it has attracted a greater number of new members into the Progressives fold of Alimosho politics.

If not for the election sabotage the opposition caucus, I mean some ungrateful leaders of our APC party; if not for the plot this group perfected to work against our party and our leader contesting to be the president, the last presidential election victory would have being a walkover for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Alimosho. But to God be the glory. And to their shame Asiwaju became the president.

But then, the important point I want to clear for your question about how I will make a difference in service to the people is to tell you that I have a vision for this. My vision is not really about hand outs – giving out cash and food materials to the people alone. However useful doing this might be, it is always a temporary thing. My vision, is real empowerment of each of these vulnerable households we have identified. What I mean is that through politics, we can expand the use of our goodwill and influence to give the hooks to the vulnerable so that they can go to the river and start fishing. They will fish to feed themselves and for the market to get income all by themselves.

How do we intend to do that? I will tell you now! From each of these vulnerable households. I believe there will always be an active, agile and able body person in the family. It may be any of the parents or any of the children that we can empower for a means of regular income to sustain the immediate needs of the family. And whoever may be representing each households, we will first of all give them orientation in family value, family bonding. This is to make them appreciate that they are being empowered or they are getting this job for the purpose of their family support. This is the way I have designed my hobby of charity to become an institutional one in Alimosho.

That is my vision for going into politics and it is when I accomplish this that I will be satisfied that I have fulfilled one of my earthly missions as a Crown Prince. And let me clear this fact again, that as a prince becoming king, I might be limited doing all this for the kingdom of Isheri Olofin, my ancestral Kingdom in Alimosho, alone. But as a Crown Prince turned politician, I will not be limited to my kingdom or local council area. The scope will cover the entire landmass of Alimosho federal Constituency. That was why my aspiration was for the Alimosho seat in the House of Representatives in the last general elections, I mean this past 2023 general election.

If Civics Weekly has not witnessed your regular hand outs to the needy people, we witnessed the one you did yesterday (Wednesday, August 23, 2003). You described it as your private version of needful palliatives for this harsh time. Would you tell us what could have motivated this, given that the local Council across Alimosho had just done one about two days earlier?

You may want to see my own palliatives as a direct response to the evil acts of the council chairmen in Alimosho here. If you see it that way, I can say you are right because of the coincidence to remedy the ungodly acts of these council chairmen. In their efforts to continue their group’s culture of aggrandizement and people’s enslavement, they are bent on destroying our party. There is a rumour that they have started the underground work to create the Omoluabi APC caucus in Alimosho, which their leader, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, launched in Osun State recently. They say the plan is going on across Lagos State. And if you looked at the shoddy and corrupt way they carried out their own palliatives in Alimosho here, compared to how other local governments in Lagos State did their own, you will have cause to believe that they actually used the palliatives to promote their new identity as Omoluabi APC.

Doing this, they cannot have any other reason than intention to use it to destroy the core Progressive APC that we the Joke Orelope group are. For them, they are not Progressives. They are pure conservatives pretending to be Progressives. If they are true Progressives they will not be working against the effort of our President to alleviate the hardship people are facing over the removal of fuel subsidy. We need to know that Asiwaju’s government we have now is the first true Progressives' Federal Government we are having in the history of Nigeria. With that Progressives’ mind, the APC at the Federal and the state decided to join hands to relieve the sufferings of the people.

Lagos as a Progressives’ state now advised the local councils to work out the modality to do that at the grassroots level. In Alimosho Federal Constituency, may be by instruction of Mr. Governor, the council chairmen said they would be giving out 5000 packaging of the palliatives to 5000 households. That is fine. It means 5000 across the six local governments, that’s about 30,000 vulnerable people to reach and that’s commendable. Now, among party members too are numerous less privileged people who have been with us for the party’s rally and campaigns. They are the majority in our grassroots mobilisation for elections. I think the instruction also came from the state that 100 units of these palliatives should go to each ward of the local councils. In Egbe-Idimu LCDA here, for example, we have five wards. That means 500 would go to party members and the remaining 2,500 would go to the public. That is also very reasonable if you ask me.

To distribute the slots for the party, we have an existing sharing formula of 55%:45%. The 45% is for our group while the council chairmen’s group use to get the larger 55%. But because they think they are the one in power, then they think they are gods. Because they think they are the Alpha and Omega, they decided to give us only 20% which we rejected outright. We rejected it completely. And I think it was even good that we rejected it because we would later discover that they offered us that small percentage because they did not have the 5000 palliative packages to share. We are not even sure if they produced up to 2000 units. Yet, they went to go and publicise it on radio that people should come for the palliatives. Yes, people came in their large numbers but many of them went home disappointed. Many party members did not get anything too.

Then I thought it’s like these people really want to destroy Alimosho APC for us, all because of their hatred for Bola Tinubu. I don’t know what this man has done for them for God’s sake! Yoruba would say the enemy of your boss is your enemy and I think it is because of their own boss fighting with Tinubu that they became the harsh enemies of Tinubu too. And now that we have seen them, I mean the six council chairmen, as enemies of Tinubu who is our own boss too; we can only see them as our enemies too. So I remember a Yoruba proverb that says ti’di ba baje ti oni’di lo ma da. another also says Oloju ko ni la oju e si’le ki talubo kowo. So, as our group rejected the 20% they offered us and many people from public also cried out that they did not get the palliatives they call them for, I decided to quickly organise the palliatives’ packages you witnessed yesterday. Like I used to do it regularly, I just woke up day before yesterday to check my pocket. And when I saw that I could do something, I came up yesterday morning and said: oya, go and get bags of rice, go and get tomato, go and get all cooking ingredients and package them. That was how I organised it. People came, collected and they went home happily.

Each was a package of rice, indomie noodles, cooking ingredients in a Bagco sac – not poly bag – for you to appreciate what could be the size of rice and other contents there in. On top of it was N1000 cash for the transportation of each of the beneficiaries who came in their large numbers. This was my own palliative as a private person using my own private money. But what was their own palliative which they used the government money for? They packaged one dirica of rice, one dirica of beans and one congo of gari, yet they could not produce 5000 of that! You can imagine that, my brother!

Further on this issue of your private sponsored palliatives, since this hardship of fuel subsidy removal started, you deployed about three American long luxurious buses in the roads of Alimosho to carry workers to and fro up till this hour of interview. From a quick estimate, it is an expensive project. How did you come up with this initiative?

Honestly, this is a serious question that I will be glad to answer diligently. I will begin by saying God gave me the knowledge, the wisdom and the resources to start it and sustain it. It was not that I had much when I decided on this line of assistance to people through free transportation, but out of the little I have, the initiative came and I started it. But the impression I would like to correct is that it is a project that has been ongoing for the past three years. We only have to put additional funding for a direct palliatives to workers in Alimosho this harsh time.

It goes that at a time, I sat myself down and said if on my own I could eat three meals a day. We have some people that cannot have I meal a day conveniently. I also thought it that many of these families are the ones that have their children in public schools. Somehow, I also realised that in the postings from Public Primary Schools to Public Secondary Schools, many of these pupils are posted to Secondary Schools far away from their homes, which will further stress their parents with transportation fairs. So, I thought I could help these less privileged people in a way through this. I said if the transportation problem should be out of their struggle to give their children the right future, then I would have done something Godly, something good, to relieve them of the pains.

Thereafter, I just decided one day that I was going to buy one bus in order to start and I did. But not up to two weeks again, I bought another one. And I think just within the next one or two months, the three buses were completed. I was now left to deal with the running cost and maintenance. Then I returned to God that: well, God, you know my mind. It is left for you how you will be providing for me to fuel these buses. I wanted the three buses to be running Ikotun, Command, Igando, and Iyana/Ipaja – all the corners of Alimosho. My brother, since when I eventually started about three years ago, I have never lacked this money to run it. You see the way God has been wonderful to me. They all run on diesel, which you know is far and far expensive than petrol. Diesel was about N600 to N650 before the subsidy removal. I have never for one day cried for lack of money to fuel them. For the three buses, I have about 8 staffs for the operations. I will pay their salaries, maintain the buses to be in good conditions. Meeting all these obligations are just happening in miraculous way to me. From that three years past, the buses have been on the road running every day to carry the students to and fro. Then came the recent time when our President removed the fuel subsidy and people started lamenting over the pains. By my nature, I began to feel the pains with the workers who are mostly affected because they must go to work by force. When this holiday for the student came, I saw that the staff and the buses would become idle. I asked myself: why would I need to pack the vehicles for about a month and half when it could help Tinubu government and my Lagos APC to show that we are a people with human feelings? We feel the people’s pain even though all we are doing is to make them get abundant life in the nearest future. So, I went back to the drawing board on how I could be of help to alleviate their pains of transportation cost to these workers.

I came out with three-day assistance per week. In other words, I said the buses should continue operations, conveying workers to and fro their works three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That was how I came about the transportation palliatives for workers resident in Alimosho – the civil servants, the artisans, the market men and the market women. This has been going on for over a month now and I am very impressed with the feedbacks I have been getting from the beneficiaries, mostly in prayers. If it is only with these prayers God will reward me, I am satisfied with it.

In running this transportation palliative, how much would you give as a rough estimate of the cost you incur every day?

By rough estimate with the new cost of diesel, I will put it at N100,000 daily. For the three time a week we are doing this holiday, that’s N300,000 a week. This is without any assistance from any quarters. God is my source, my assistant. You can then imagine if I have the power of state resources to serve the people officially. That time is coming and people will see true governance.

In all honesty, I could feel their prayers. Since we started over the three years back, we have never received any bad news – either of accident or bad thing happening. We have not encountered any sorrow; no calamity! This is also enough for me to be grateful to God because it could be one avenue for my enemies to attack me. Before you know it, they will say may be he is using the charity for ritual if anything bad had happened.

With the happiness I see on the people’s face from which the down to heart prayers come from, I will never relent in doing this. I will continue doing it. As I said from the beginning; naturally, I have the mind of giving to the people. The happiness I see in their moods as they receive it is one way I derive my own joy too. That is my spirit. I am therefore using this opportunity of media address that the people of Alimosho should continue to expect more of assistance from me because God in his infinite mercies will continue to provide the resources to do it.

When the students resume, will the assistance to workers stop?

The students are resuming early next week. It is not a time that we hope the hardship would have gone down. What I will do is to go back to the drawing and re-strategize. As it is in my mind now, I don’t want this palliative support for workers, market women and men to stop. I will only re-work the programmes to see how we shall satisfy the students and satisfy the workers’ needs too. I know it will raise the expenses by a lot of additional funding. But God is there to do it for me.

What advice do you have for the public concerning the current hardship they are facing?

I will first of all say all I want is for the people to appreciate the government of APC at the Federal and state level that it is for their own good that all of us have to go through these pains together so that we shall reach the Promised Land where we will have milk and horny flowing in abundance. Although, I know that in a government of democracy like our own, people should at least have access to three meals per day. But where that is not affordable, two meals should be a guarantee.

But unfortunately, because of the much destruction to our economy by the past governments, there is much suffering in the land. That is why I want to appeal to people that share this spirit of giving to people with me, the spirit of helping people, to come out. Let us come out to assist! Support the less privileged and the vulnerable people. I cry out this with the passion in me. If we all come out to do it as regular charity works, then we can be rest assured that if poverty is not totally eradicated, at least, it will reduce.