Member of the House of Representatives for Eti Osa constituency in Lagos on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Ibrahim Babajide Obanikoro has awarded bursaries to students and cash grants to traders as part of his constituency project for 2022.
Speaking at his constituency office on Monday, he said the students’ bursary is to enable them to meet some of their immediate school financial needs and the cash grants for petty traders is to help boost their businesses as injecting cash into the constituency will increase the bottom line GDP of Eti Osa.
“This year, we plan to heavily focus on the technological advancement of our constituents because we believe the world has gone digital and the earlier we keyed into it, the better for our growth. That is why we have decided to start the year by distributing 1000 laptops to some of our students, residents associations and also to our friends the Eti Osa Police. It is my belief these laptops will aid our students in schoolwork, help some of our constituents in their businesses and our Police stations in areas of information management and record-keeping.
“We will also be giving some of our student bursaries, to enable them to meet some of their immediate school financial needs and also have some petty traders who will be beneficiaries of cash grants to help boost their businesses. Injecting these empowerment programmes into our constituency will increase the bottom line GDP of Eti Osa and give succour to our constituents.
“We will also heavily align with the Federal Government’s focus on agriculture by training more people and helping to secure agricultural soft loans for our people. In order words, we have identified some support programs for the farmers in Eti Osa in 2022.
“I have also facilitated projects, training and supply of materials amounting to a total of about N1.5 billion to Eti Osa,” he said.
Obanikoro revealed that he has three bills pending in the House of Representatives awaiting the first reading and that he has moved many motions since joining the legislature in 2019.
“We have three bills pending in the House awaiting first reading – A bill for an Act to alter the provision of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to make economic and social rights in Chapter 2 justifiable under the Constitution and Related Matters.
“A Bill for an Act to amend the administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 and for other related matter to prohibit public parade of suspects before and after arraignment and a Bill for an Act to amend the National Commission for Rehabilitation Act, CAP N22 LFN 2004 and related matters to increase fines provided for by the Act and other matters,” he said.
Speaking on some of his achievements, he said, “On our contribution to education, a free school bus scheme was launched with to ease the commutation of children to and from their different schools. This is still very much ongoing and we plan to provide additional buses as time goes. We also started the construction of three blocks classrooms each for Okun Ajah and Ajiran Communities, they are at about 70% to 80% completion as of today.
“For infrastructure as we promised during our campaign, we facilitated the rehabilitation of two roads in Eti Osa, one in Sola Omole Street in Ado area of Eti Osa while the second is the Obalende Odo Street.
“I have facilitated the reconstruction and rehabilitation of four other roads within the constituency. Three of the roads are in the Osapa London area of Eti Osa while one is in 1004 Estate in Iru Victoria Island area of Eti Osa. These roads are expected to be completed by March 2022.
“I have constantly facilitated the securing of jobs in Federal Government agencies and parastatals and also in the private sector. I can confidently say that quite a number of our constituents have been able to get employment through our office. I have helped in securing admission into schools of their choices at the secondary and university level and facilitated the redeployment of some of our constituent corps members posted to areas threatened by security to preferred areas to carry out their primary assignments.
“In the recently approved 2022 Appropriation Bill, we made sure provisions were made for the completion of most of our ongoing projects and new projects will be coming up mostly in the areas of infrastructure.”
