THE AVERTED FAMINE IN ALIMOSHO: THANKS TO JOKE ORELOPE, OBASA

By Razaq Adedeji Jimoh

It is the thinking of generality of the people that Alimosho has never had the fair share of her due in sharing the victory cake of the progressives at every cycle of the general election in Lagos. I refer to party faithful and the collective people of the Federal Constituency generally being marginalised in terms of reaping the fruit of their labour and the public service value respectfully. Just a couple of weeks past, the “Renewed Hope” of the people was dashed amidst a “Greater Lagos Rising”. It was from no other person than His Excellency, Governor Babajide Sanwoolu, when it turned out that Alimosho was to get only one commissioner slot in his second term of office.

Sequel to that, it was a cross-caucuses' appealing personality – Barrister Rotimi Ogunwuyi – that landed the slot. Cross-appealing because of the common sense of justice that gave him the rousing right of first refusal, having been earlier officially robbed of his hard earned victory as the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for the Lagos State House of Assembly, Alimosho Constituency 01. Accordingly, the distraught of Alimosho people was never about the person of choice because it was a case of justice not delayed to be denied. It was about the injustice of, first, the correlative size of Alimosho landmass to one cabinet slot; second, the injustice of marginalisation by correlative size of her contribution to the electoral victory – the largest in vote returns. In other words, the cry of Alimosho was a demand for a minimum of three commissioners to have enough that could go round for all and clear the ravaging famine induced by the long spell of Rauf Aregbesola’s “Communism” in the land of progressives.

Unfortunately, to the extent that the party faithful fell under the spell of justice for Ogunwuyi, they lost their olfactory sense. Those with alert sensory, mostly in the leadership cadre, would later discover that he smells of the choking stench of Aregbe’s communism, which happens to be the origin of famine still ravaging the Federal Constituency from about 20years past. Thus to say the people could not perceive it that, as Aregbe’s man, the famine remains in continuum.

Thanks to the eternal vigilance of the Lagos’ Progressives – the duo of ‘Renewed Hope Guards’ – Her Excellency, Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire and Right Honourable Mudasiru Obasa, Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly. As leaders, they have the far sight to see Alimosho people yet famished in drought farm site. They therefore acted responsively and responsibly to avert the coming famine.

Doubtfully being out of innocence though, the attempt to kill Ogunwuyi’s stench with fragrance of Greater Lagos Rising yet became a failed endeavour. He just could not be cleaned because he had rocked so much with them to permissively rot in their rots. Ask Bisi Yusuf, his kinsman! As such another four years of Aregbe’s communist claws on Alimosho would have been disastrous.

Reasonably, if anyone would ask this writer, the choice of Barrister Ogunwuy for the commissioner slot this time would have seem a fair wholesome share of – call it-10% -- compared to the crumbs the immediate past Uzamat Akinbile-Yusuf and her predecessor, Dr. Lateef Igbiroba, had made Alimosho to enduringly cope with in sequence of the past 12 years unabridged. The feeds from them were deemed crumbs from the victory cakes of the 2011, 2015 and 2019 elections because neither of them, as members of the rogressives, came forth as representing the collective aspiration and wishes of the Alimosho people. So, it was a ravaging famine for a dozen of years because not even a small number of people ever felt their value impact within and outside politics. Within politics, as to the best of this writer’s knowledge, there is very few, if any at all, of fair testimony to their service years as minimally impactful in human capacity development that could be remotely connected to them as enduring institutions members of the party have had or are gaining from currently. And from the side of public, they merely became baggage of liability to the party out of their zero ideas to move impactful infrastructure growth for electoral asset building for the progressives.

Today, whether they also have excuses to give for their woeful failures in perspectives of their service years, it yet matters that they were both assertive products of the much flaunted Aregbe’s communist leadership era of The Mandate Group under which the party members have been sustainably famished, thus crying in anguish all through the 12 years of Ibirogba and Akibile-Yusuf.

Interestingly, how the both became members of the State Cabinet could be quite amusing as well. They were both gate-crashers in a manner of sort. This is as much that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu even once became quizzical as to where Aregbe brought Akibile-Yusuf from. “I don’t know this one”, Asiwaju queried, pointing at the woman the party members now largely see as usurper. “I only see him on television”, he told his audience. In her defence elsewhere and anywhere, what Alhaji Abdullahi Enilolobo could ever give as excuse for her worth as “emergency commissioner” was always a fallacious tale of how the woman and her husband escaped the flying bullets of opposition thugs by swimming in the gutter during a campaign rally.

For comparism, as empirical basis for this writer’s view, Princess Adefulire was first a commissioner between 2003 and 2011 – eight years stretch – with the portfolio of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation (WAPA). Her self-initiated idea of skill acquisition for youths and women, which she successfully pushed through the approval of the Executive Council, was made to take off from Alimosho. This gave birth to the state’s Skill Acquisition Centre at Egbeda on Karimu Laka Road, besides the Millenium Secondary School in about the year 2004. She was to soon establish the second one at Egan in Igando for the desirable balance of justice across the two constituencies’ spread of Alimosho. At the proposed Town hall meeting of the Presidential Delegate with the Business Community in Alimosho, botched by the Emefiele’s intrigues of sabotage, not less than 300 graduates of this acquisition centres were to be part of the event as CEOs and business owners of thriving enterprises.

She did not limit it to the skill acquisition alone. She designed what this writer has chosen to describe as Ijeun agba project across the state. That came in form of a source of daily and regular income in the business of combined car-wash with Public Toilet services. Alhaji Balogun (aka Baba eleran) in Idimu and Alhaji Mukaila in Agbado/Okeodo were known beneficiaries of these creative gestures. Beyond the income generation economic value, the idea emerged at a time the World Health Organisation (WHO) opened the campaign to make the world pay attention to the ills of open defecation as a matter of emergency in the health sector. Then and till now, Nigeria was ranked high among countries of the world guilty of this abnormal culture. Thus to say that governance is about creativity in this manner of solving a social problem with equal value in empowerment against poverty.

This rightly poses the question to point attention to the core objective of this piece: how creative are those the Alimosho progressive is recycling in governance and political leadership? Dwelling extensively on those that have served as commissioner with portfolio is not to forget that those that served in the lesser capacity as Special Advisers and those that were so elected as representatives to the State and National Assemblies have ever fared any better within the same period of about 20years. Discussions on these sets of public servants is better kept in view.

The converging points of the discuss here is that whatever may be the reason Ogunwuyi was eventually dropped, it should be seen more as divine intervention that averted another 4years of famine in Alimosho. To the knowledge of this writer, he would have hardly come to serve as a unifier of both factions judging from the tales of his allegiance pedigree to the Argbe camp. With his emergence as mere commissioner nomine, the Enilolobo camp had rather hyped its arrogance of power impulsively to it. The most recent evidence to that was the sharing of fuel subsidy palliatives which they shrouded in roguish transparency. How else could a looming famine be seen in the horizon?

A former Aspirant to the House of Representatives, Alimosho Federal Constituency, Prince Idris Balogun (aka Oluomo Kaafata), recently gave a grahic detail of the underlining wrongdoings that trailed the palliative packages purportedly distributed by the council chairmen of the Alimosho six divisions. From further investigations gathered by this writer, it was revealed that a sum of N5,000 was budgeted for each package of the palliatives by the administrators of the councils, but it was changed when the council chairmen were summoned to the Arida 'Kremlin' House where the course of business as usual was perfected to cause many of Alimosho people going home deprived of their commonwealth dues. What and where could be assurances that Ogunwuyi would depart from his past?

To the extent of his lost of party candidature to Hon Lukmon Orelope, it is on record as a fact known to this writer that Her Excellency had done her bit of compensations. Not only that, she did justice of the conscience by giving the Aregbe camp their right to independent choice of their wish, which fell on Ogunwuyi. It all stopped there from her side. It is only an ungrateful soul that would want to blame her for the nemesis that would later return to catch up with the camp to which he aligns. Accordingly, this is to say that at this juncture, let individual carry his/her cross. The Mama's cross is to banish hunger from Alimosho land by averting the looming famine. Ogunwuyis' cross is the prize for blind loyalty for which he and only him can take responsibility for that. But this is not to say hope may have been lost for hime entirely. No! Orun to wa ni'ta yi si le gbe aso, provided he could swiftly regain his sight to see the light in Mama's way.

Alimosho should move on!