Ex-APC lawmakers fought Fayose for selfish reasons –Olujimi

BY KEMI YESUFU

For Senator Abiodun Olujimi, her second coming to the National Assembly is fulfill­ing as the legislature re­mains her first love. This is despite her stint in the executive arm as commissioner and deputy gover­nor in Ekiti State. In this interview, she speaks on the battle between the ex-All Progressives Congress (APC) legislators and Governor Ayo Fayose. The senator who is in total support of how the governor fought to retain his seat, also spoke on what “stomach infrastructure” re­ally means to Ekiti people. Olujimi who is blunt about her approval of the process through which the leadership of the Senate emerged, equally stated the Peoples Demo­cratic Party (PDP’s) preparedness to provide effective opposition. Excerpts:

Some view your election into the Senate as a political rebounce. Is this how you see it?

No. I see it as a progression. I have made progress politically. Remember that I left the National Assembly to become deputy governor and when we lost office, I latter took charge of the ministry of Works in the state. After we left government, I was on the governing council of the University of Ilorin. I was also a national commissioner on the National Communi­cations Commission (NCC), board. I never left politics. So, my coming back to the National Assembly which is the love of my life is a progression.

Since the National Assembly is your first love life, we should expect expert maneuvering from you?

No, not in the way you are implying. What people should expect is a lot of hard work from me. They will see me doing a lot of research, plenty of work to under­stand the problems of the MDAs (Minis­tries, Department and Agencies). I will be doing a lot of research to look at our laws, especially those that are not working. I hope to be among those who really will be looking at making the National Assembly, especially the Senate more effective in making laws that will make life meaning­ful to the people. And to achieve this, I think it is important that we deal with chal­lenges that make it difficult for the Senate to enact impactful laws, maybe as much as the people would love it to.

You come from a state that made the term ‘stomach infrastructure’ popular in Nigeria. Why didn’t you mention this as part of your legisla­tive agenda?

Well, “stomach infrastructure” is the de­velopmental pedestal on which we stand in my state. Let’s be honest, you cannot talk about development to anyone on an empty stomach. What kind of development are you talking about if the average household cannot feed? Whatever policies a govern­ment pushes for should ultimately lead to people being able to do the basics of feed­ing themselves or their families. So, for you to harness human capital, you must first deal with ‘stomach infrastructure”. Therefore, people in my district can be rest assured that I will work on empower­ing as many as possible to be able to feed themselves and provide for their families. I definitely will be fully committed to teaching my people how to catch fish, how to be self sufficient and how to earn enough to send their children to school. This is because I have found out that some of our people have to sell their worldly goods to pay their children’s school fees. So, our people must know how to make money, how to be self-reliant. To do this, I certainly will be working with the relevant government agencies.

From your explanation, it seems that the concept of “stomach infrastructure”, Ektiti style is largely misunderstood? Has the term been used derogatively to describe what happens in your state?

Certainly our idea of “stomach infra­structure” isn’t about putting a bowl of food in your hand. It’s about livelihood. It’s about learning to make a living. People make it derogatory, they think it’s about sharing rice and sharing cows. We do that for special occasions. But the real stomach infrastructure is about teaching our people how to put food on the table.

How would you describe those days when Governor Ayo Fayose battled for survival against the APC lawmakers? How did those of you on the governor’s side feel after May 29?

Those were trying times. Those were the days we didn’t sleep a wink. It was the time we were afraid that people will be injured. It was the time that we were afraid that violence could erupt at anytime. It was quite obvious to all well meaning people that we didn’t need to go the route the lawmakers took. It is a shame that things went that bad. The truth is, if indeed you are a lawmaker elected to serve the people and not other masters, when you devi­ate from serving the people, it becomes a problem. For example, I am a senator on the platform of the PDP, the minute I keep running back to my party, rather than doing what is of benefit to my people, I would have deviated from the reasons I am in the senate. If we all see serving the people as the reason why we are in office, what happened in our state would never have occurred. But I can assure you that it will never happen again in Ekiti. We have learnt our lessons.

In other words, the ex-lawmakers’ actions were for selfish reasons?

They didn’t think of the larger interest, that being the smooth running of our state. If they did, we all should have been able to work together. Nothing should have made us abandon the state. Some of them imagined violence and punishment they claimed was meted out to them. We knew there was nothing they could lay claims to. But we also knew that the human mind is fertile especially when imagining evil. They got carried away from believing unfounded rumors.

But there are many who say that on his part, Governor Fayose adopted outlandish methods to stop the lawmakers…

You see, it is when someone is pursuing, it is you who is running that really knows how you are trying to escape. An onlooker could wonder why you are running in zig­zagged fashion instead of running straight. But the person that is facing fire knows how tough it is.

By the way, if you are elected governor of a state, would allow anyone remove you unconstitutionally? When it is the fight for life or for living, people go the extra mile and this is what people saw play out in Ekiti. There was a fight for the seat of the governor, a fight for the soul of Ekiti, a fight not to lose something that was hard-earned. The governor fought for his life, his seat, his hard- earned tenure and the assembly men also fought hard. I don’t blame the governor at all.

Now that the battle has been fought and won, what do you think should be the priorities of the Fayose administration?

The good thing is that the governor has the right set of priorities. People will see him working hard to restore the education system in the state. He will be dealing with infrastructure deficit, he will be working on empowering the youth. Ours is one of the financially challenged states where you have to go the extra mile to improve the economic fortunes of the people. The gov­ernor has to work on taking the ‘stomach infrastructure” level of the people higher from the current level. He is going to work on making agriculture the main stay of our economy. I am sure that if our governor deals with these basic issues, our people will give him kudos. Our people are not difficult to deal with, when they see that you really have their welfare and progress at heart, they will support you to succeed.

Some have said the so-called hybrid leadership of the Senate is a pointer to PDP’s preparedness to play the opposition role. Isn’t it too early to say the party is ready to play the new role?

Of course not. What happened in the senate couldn’t have come by accident. We have 16 years experience as the ruling party and this shouldn’t go to waste. We should be able to use all that we garnered to play effective opposition. Now that we are in opposition, we will have to play the best of the opposition. But we also have to find means to work successfully with the leadership of National Assembly, since we all have constituents whom we have to report back to. What happened in the Senate (election of the senate leadership) is not something fantastic. We (the PDP) were only thinking aloud. We looked at the numbers and worked with it. We saw that there was no longer such a wide gap in the number of senators from both parties. We knew that we had to work on bi-partisan lines. Now, we have a Deputy Senate President from the PDP and the Senate President from the APC. Each of them would have to carry his own (party) senators along. At the long run, this will deepen democracy. I know this is the first senate that will be very vibrant and a lot of successes will be achieved at the end of the day.

The number of women elected into the National Assembly has reduced. How does this make you feel and are there plans by you and other female senators to promote gender related issues?

It is quite sad that we move two steps forward and then take ten steps back in achieving balance in female representation in the National Assembly. Whether people believe it or not, a lot has been done to ensure that more women win elections. I guess that we (female senators) have to meet when we resume to talk about the way forward. We can also talk about how we got it wrong. Fortunately, we have more female senators from the PDP while the APC has two, so the burden is on us from the PDP. But surely, we have to sit and talk on how to bring in more women into elective office. For me, our democra­cy is ripe enough to have produced 15 fe­male senators, two women governors and ten female deputy governors. Seriously. We women need to encourage ourselves much more than we do.

Beyond encouragement, stakeholders blame women for not being active in the parties, yet they want to secure tickets to run for office. How important is this observation?

Yes it’s true, women are not always strong when it comes to being active in the party. And when the time comes, they want to be nominated as candidates. But those who are active in their parties, don’t get nominated too! I think it is time we have well spelt out policies by which parties have slots for good women candidates. I am an advocate of picking a round peg for a round hole. So in any situation, we women should only back a good female candidate and there are many of them around. But I am grateful to God that in my state that we have two female senators. It is the same thing with Anambra State. We have to give kudos to these states. If other states had done same or even elected one female senator and one honorable member, we wouldn’t be here complaining.

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