‘Representation is about making yourself accesible’

Honourable Adewale Babatunde Jimoh is a member of Lagos State House of Assembly representing Apapa Constituency II. He was a member of National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in 1979. He was a member of Caretaker Committee in 2002 in Lagos. He also served as Supervisor for Agric and Youth Development at Surulere Local Government . He is going to represent Action Congress of Nigeria currently going into the House of Representative

Nobody expected that you would be going to the House of Representatives. What happened?

Well that is how God works. Everything depends on the leadership of the party. They have discovered one thing or the other that made them think I should go for House of Representatives. I initially felt so bad because my political mentor was the one that was there and we were working for his second term, probably, God wanted it that way.

What are you likely to do when you get to the House of Reps?

I intend to achieve a lot. The first job of a legislator is representation. People must be able to be free to you, when I was in Lagos Assembly people were free to come to me. So I will continue that, that is the first thing. Then number 2, this is a national assignment; I’ll look at things more broadly instead of looking at my constituency only, this time around. I will participate fully in law making, especially the ones that affect my people. Apapa has the largest port and a lot of business is going on there, both the federal government and Lagos State government are benefiting from it? But what are things people in Apapa area benefiting? It is time to look at this issue critically and put up an argument, by giving what is due to them.

You see, all what the legislators have is their salaries and some other little emoluments, yet from this salary, I’m doing a lot of things personally. I have an outfit on information technology, here people learn computer freely. I’ve established a standard, because I know I want to catch people young, I’m going to improve the standard, by the grace of God. I’ll try to organize a vocational centre where the women, the young ones, can learn a trade. The things will affect all the people, it is going to affect the two local governments in Apapa.

If I had my way, the true federalism has to happen, why because the almost 50% of national income is going to Federal Government. Go to your local government now, have you seen the impact of federal government? Bulk of the money go to the Federal Government. They cannot construct new roads; they cannot maintain the current ones they have, so what is there? We will be able to put heads together and have our constitution amended further by having a true federalism.

How did you really impact on the lives of your people when you served as member of Assembly?

You see when I started, within a year, I organized an event whereby I touched so many lives. I organized computer acquisition to equip youths. Some of them are self employed right now and some of them got jobs as a result of having knowledge of IT. Some of them are doing very well in their universities because if you are not IT literate, definitely you may not be able to do very well because everybody now have laptops.

Aside that I supplied environmental fools to the neighborhood within the first year and even the police, I was able to give them the reflective jacket whereby it will make them work at anytime of the day.