The Chairman, Ojokoro Local Council Development Area, Lagos State, Honourable Hameed D. Idowu Tijani, in this interview with select journalists, bares his mind on the activities of his administration. GANIYU OBAARO was there.
Road infrastructure
Since 2017, when I was elected on the platform of my party, All Progressives Congress (APC), as the Chairman of Ojokoro LCDA, we have embarked on several road construction/ rehabilitation across our council area. Some of these roads included, Yemi Olabinjo,Ogunmla, Sobo, Sodeinde, Segun Akinyemi, Olu Akinade and Opeta streets. Others included, kilometers-long Nureni Yusuf; Ogunmola and Baale Animashaun streets, just to mention, but a few.
I can tell you that the rehabilitation/ reconstruction of these roads have been aiding effective transport and business in our LCDA.
Health Care Development
We have made good moves to develop the health facilities in the council. We have five health care centres, which operate on a 24-hour basis to meet the health needs of our people. They include the primary health centre at Kola and staff clinic for workers- because we believe that a healthy workforce is critical to the increased productivity of our council.
For example, the health care centre at Isokan, Gbinrinmi, was pulled down; and we have since started renovating it. We are doing this in cooperation with the Community Development Committee (CDC) in the area.
Education
We take the issue of education of our children and others alike very seriously. To this extent, we embarked upon free distribution of educational materials like exercise books, textbook, biros, pencils, to our pupils. Also, we renovated the dilapidated Gbeleyi Primary Schools 1&2 and New Oko-Oba Primary School, to make learning and teaching comfortable for the pupils, teachers and their administrators. We also distributed GCE and JAMB forms free to indigent students in our council area.
In fact, I am happy to inform you that through our joint effort with the CDC and CDA, we are establishing Akinyele Senior Secondary School. We have, in fact bought land for that purpose, while the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who flagged–off the construction of the school, has also promised to assist us in the realization of this lofty objective.
Youth Development
I interacted regularly with the youths in our council area, and particularly with the National Youth Council of Nigeria. Through this forum, and several others, we came out with a policy on poverty alleviation and we give them take-off grants.
We have also facilitated the development of youths and sports, especially through talent hunt involving the mobilization of youths for sporting activities. To this extent, we recently sponsored some youths for trials in Europe, and I am happy to say that some of those youths that we took there have been attached to clubs in Ukraine, where they are currently playing professional football.
Revenue Generation
In our effort to increase our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) , in view of the low allocation from the Federation Account, we have been very innovative. Indeed, we have created a data base for our revenue generation strategy, coupled with the training and employment of revenue officials who go round the council areas to carry out their statutory roles. We also put in place monitoring mechanisms to ensure efficient operations and raise our revenue bar.
Environmental sanitation
In our desire to enhance our environment, Ojokoro LCDA usually embark on public enlightenment on the need for our people to keep their environments clean always.
Apart from this laudable effort, we regularly clean the drainages to avoid flooding and other environmental disasters from occurring. In fact, during Covid 19, we worked closely with the Lagos State Government to clean the environment, de-contaminate it and we strictly observed all the safety rules, including social distancing, wearing of nose masks and washing of hands with sanitizers.
I want to thank the people of our council for their cooperation, such that no case of infection of Coronavirus pandemic had been reported here to date.
Security
We have close working relationship with the security agencies in our council. I mean the Police, Directorate of State Security(DSS) and other related agencies.
During the last #EndSars crisis, our people were not involved, except an isolated case which took place at MAO Junction area and Fagba. We have since discussed with the youths in these areas by giving them counseling that public property is their properly, which should be protected by them and not destroyed. We discovered that the protest was actually hijacked by hoodlums. To show his commitment to peace in our area, Governor Sanwo-Olu also came, met and discussed with the youths and our people in general.
Although, it the Constitutional right of Nigerians to voice out their grievances against the government, we have told them to explore peaceful means in doing so.
I am sure they have reasoned with us, because we have since succeeded in managing the crisis.