The top contender for the Eti-Osa Federal Constituency, House of Representatives, under the All Progressives Congress (APC), for the forthcoming 2023 general elections, Architect Azeez Adegoke Rasaki have assured the residents of the constituency of an all-inclusive representation of the people of Eti-Osa in the Green-Chamber of the National Assembly.
The Son of former Lagos State ‘action’ Governor, Brigadier Raji Rasaki, who was the Military Administrator of the state 1988 to 1992, has also adopted his dad’s mantra of ‘action’ into his campaign promises, during an incisive interview with the Lagos Panorama Teleview’s Facing Facts with Tayo, he averred that “with me Rasaki, you’ll always get action on ground, it’s not just words, it’s going to be action in your face, I will be in your house, I will be with you on the phone, you’ll hear me and I will hear you” the former banker asserted.
The trained architect asserted that “We are going to have interactions, we’re going to have those town-halls, and we will have information disseminated down to you all the times and promptly. You’ll know what’s going on, you will know what’s happening”.
“Obviously, if you know the kind of person I am, you will know I am not going there to become the Chairman or honourable, I don’t even care about the titles, what I care for is the development and I know you’re going to get that development if I was your rep, I will not rest because I am the kind of person who if anything, I am very stubborn about my ways (laughs), I always want to get things done. I will go after it and get it done, anyone that knows me knows that about me”.
“I want my constituents to know one thing, Rasaki is action! Action is Rasaki! You’ll get what you see, and what you see is what you get, you’ll get the representation, we’ll make sure we make a lot of noise, we’ll make sure, and we’ll bring the representation down to you. It’s not just about making the laws, but actually drawing attention to things that are really important to your lives, from the economic factor all the way to the social factor, these are the things we need to focus on. The Federal Government could do a lot better than where we are today, and God willing we’ll be there, we’ll make sure that action comes down to you” affirmed the eloquent action parked youthful Rasaki.
When asked about what he has differently from the incumbent, Rasaki alluded that “We all have our philosophies and ideologies, he has his own methods on how he wants to accomplished things, what he has done so far, I don’t believe is so bad but he could do better”.
“There’re some certain aspects I believe we’re lacking, everybody has individual characteristics, in politics you have those who can administratively work, and you have those who can be on ground to make sure administrative work actually get to the people and get them motivated, create the momentum to create further change, but you can’t do that just sitting in Abuja, which is what we currently have, I believe that if we can have one on one interactions with the grassroots, that would really have projected a lot of differences, people would have had their voices more heard as well, because you can’t just listen to your own voice and say don’t worry, they will be okay with whatever I dish out”.
“What I propose to do is to make sure I am in touch with the grassroots, make sure I am in touch with my constituents, make sure they hear my voice, and make sure I hear their voice too. If I want to do something, I’ll make sure they’re part of it. When we do something, we ask them what else they want. That question must always come back after meeting with them. I believe my representation is going to be different, because I know the area more, I know the people more, I know their character, and I have been working with them for a longer time. It’s about what you know about your community and what the people need, and can solve it, what are the things you need to solve it. A lot of problems we’ve right now are Federal based problems, the EndSARS was a federal based problem, most of the requests and demands in the whitepaper weren’t within the purview of the governor, they were in the purview of the president, the federal government, so that’s where we need to focus our attention”.
“When we had the EndSARS, you can ask yourself, who was our representative? Why was he not there? Where was the voice when we needed it? In fact a lot those things would’ve been avoided if we’ve somebody just stand-up amongst all them, I hope to be that person”.
Rasaki also expressed concern for the lingering challenges faced by the different areas of the Eti-Osa Constituency and promised to address most of the issues if elected to represent the constituency.
On the challenges within the Eti-Osa Federal Constituency, Rasaki stated that “we need a better representation and better representation has to be based on something you are trying to solve, so for example this one bothers me, the people of Eti-Osa as a whole, have their various culture and social economical alignments and the problem we are having are becoming bigger on a daily bases”.
“I believe we have to solve the problem of representation first of all, how do we represent Eti-Osa, Eti-Osa has one House of Rep member, I believe it has to be two, two House of Assembly, it has to be four, this part of constitution must rectified. Lagos is too big, with the amount of population and everybody inside it, it’s too big to have just 20 local governments, we need more than that, we need to transform some of the LCDAs into local governments, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu had right idea, the follow through is the only problem we are having today, APC has a party must fulfill the mandate, that mandate is on their head right now and they need to get that done. The only place we can do it, is at the Federal level”.
“If Kano can have 40 local governments, Lagos can have 40 too, even more than that. But I will accept 40, but we should get more House of Reps, I believe that is very much important, Lagos needs better representation at the federal level, because been an economic hub of Nigeria, the economic capital of the entire nation, with a large population, we need better representation because a lot of people have been depending on the federal government to actually intervene in some of the problem we have, for example, now I can go further into Eti-Osa as a whole, look at Victoria Island we have a constituency broken down into two, if you slip down the middle we have constituency one and constituency two, part of Victoria Island is in constituency 1 part of it is in two. If you look at it, we can join them based on what is happening on ground, join Victoria Island, Ikoyi-Obalende together and have one big constituency including Takwa-Bay”.
“ At Okun, Ajah there are lot of water erosion that Federal Government can work on with the state government, but I don’t believe is a problem that can be solve by only the government, because it costs a lot money to do that but why don’t you bring in private entity, under a Public/Private Partnership (PPP) and in return they have something back, you can do like a joint venture or concessions, you sand-fill all these erosion spaces, let the community have their own part, let government have their own part, let investors have their own part, that is easy, because we would have solved a lot of problem through that way”.
“We don’t expect the Federal government to all the time throw money at it through the budget, it takes too long for that. Let us get concessions from them, let us get concessions from the minister, from the governor, let us get the business community together and say look, we have a project, and we want you to create land for us or reclaim this property back for us in return we give you so and so amount of the property and we give the community that was displaced, give them back their own portion of the land and the rest for the Lagos state government for them to also give out to new and better development programme that may come up along the way”.
“Takwa-Bay has a lot of problems and to be honest, it’s a tragedy what is happening. We have multinational company, oil and gas, all situated on the Island and displacing the indigenous people there, and they are not giving them anything in return, imagine removing somebody’s house completely and telling him to go find work, then the guy now turns around and starts bunkering, I’m not saying is a good thing for them to do, but they start bunkering to make a living because you cut off their means of livelihood and you expect them not to steal from you”.
On the ‘Not Too Young To Rule’ and preparedness of the Nigerian youth to take mantle of political leadership, he alluded that “there is no time that the Nigerian youths that we are not ready, is only that we are mostly focus our energy in the wrong place, when we talk about taking the mantle of leadership roles while the so called old politician were digging their foot in and knocking in the political parties and those kind of things our youths we are not really engaged as much as they were meant to be. But lately with the Endsars, with the political agitation, the economic and political situation of the country, a lot of them have taken notice. People like me have taken a lot of notice as well, in fact I can say since 2016, 2017 we are already building ourselves through the party but is not a one day job, is something that takes time before we get to that level where even those party hierarchy will give us that ability”.
“So another thing is that if you talk about whether we are ready or not there is plenty of us out there, is just that most of us feel that we will not be given the chance and I hope even my candidacy shows you can be given a chance if you are ready to dig in your heels and do the right thing”.
When asked if he would prefer to be a consensus candidate of the party against the declaration made by the National Leader of the APC and Presidential hopeful Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu at a recent APC Lagos Stakeholders meeting, that every aspirants should go test their popularity at the party’s primaries, the son of the former Lagos State Military Administrator in a swift reaction said “no, no I’ve never been a fan of consensus candidate, because it just throws democracy out of the way and what he (Asiwaju Tinubu) said is the beauty of democracy itself. Let the majority carry the day, let the peoples will be carry forward and if he can say that, if he can sit down and say between all these people even though you contributed, build the party up to put it together and work for the party even if he has to go to the poll then who is anybody else to disagree unless you don’t want democracy and you want authoritarianism or some kind of coax democracy, I’m not for that I believe that if you want democracy let the masses, let the people even the leaders should let the members of the party dictate what happens that is the beauty and then you get the popular candidate everybody can put their energy behind you understand”.
“Most of the time we end up with people that are not popular, we always have problem, we always have policies that don’t happen in the constituency because those people don’t really care about these people, because they got in through the back way, so they don’t really actually take the constituency into consideration, so therefore they don’t work for the constituency, they work for the impostors and that’s what we need to stop, they need to start working for the constituency, Asiwaju has told us to go and work for them, test your popularity, go work for your constituency, so is very important that we actually get that done. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is a true democrat in actual sense” he asserted.
