Dr. Gbenga Fasua is the interim caretaker committee chairman, Akure South Local Government area of Ondo State. In this interview with SULYMAN PAKOYI, he speaks about the victory of Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, and his plans for Akure South Local Government ahead of local government elections.
Excerpts:

As a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in Akure South Local Government, the most populous council area in Ondo state, how did you receive the news of the victory of Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa and candidate of your party in the recently conducted governorship election?

To me, it’s not surprising. I’m not surprised. Why? His track record of achievements in the last few months speak volume, even louder than the volume of votes that he got. Mr Governor won massively because of the track record and investments that he has been able to attract to the state within the few months that he has been Governor of the State, that does not come to me as a surprise. But we thank our people for coming out en masse to vote for their Governor, my Governor, and our Governor. So, we thank God, and it’s not surprising.

The achievements of Mr Governor also tally with the results of the election and that’s why you can see, not only in Akure South Local Government, but across the 18 local governments. It’s unprecedented that we have 18-0. The zero is in big form against the opposition party. It’s an unprecedented development and unusual one. And that is because of the value, his importance, the support of what he has invested in the people. And that was what we put in turn back to him.

What does the victory mean to your party and the people of Ondo State?

You could see, immediately after this announcement was made on Sunday, you could see our people, they trooped out, indeed, to rejoice over the outcome of the election, which was in tandem with their votes. People came out rejoicing.

After the victory, we organised a “Thank You rally” to thank the people of Akure, appreciating them for the massive support. But I noticed that their happiness was even much more because I met them in that hilarious mood, rejoicing, appreciating that indeed the expectation did not get less.

What they invested was what they got, and of course, our people rejoiced. As the chairman of Akure South Local Government, I was happy the votes of the people counted, and we were grateful. With this, the governance will continue in the state.

Let’s come down to the local government as the closest government to the people at the grassroots. In the last few months, you have been in the saddle, what has been your impact on the people?

Thank you so dearly for that question. For me, as a person, of course, as chairman of Akure South Local Government, I am people-oriented and we have embarked on several people-oriented programmes.

Two things are my targets. Number one, we want to do human infrastructure. And number two, we want to do capital infrastructure. On human infrastructure, when we got to office, one of the things we were able to do was to meet with the staff. And of course, to be able to match the plan of what we have on ground, we sent them on a training.

Don’t forget I mentioned human infrastructure. I sent them on training to get trained to move from the analog to digitalized system that we want to run for the local government. That alone, we didn’t leave other aspects.

Talk about youths. In Akure, we have organized youth competition programmes. There is no way any government will not cater for the youth because I also see myself as one of them.

We have what we call youth competition for our people where we were able to, across the 11 wards that we have, despite the fact that we have LCDAs, my administration, of course, which is the main body, has been able to have what we call youth-inclusive government. We are trying that engagement for the youth. We have engaged them. Leaving that, look at the area of agriculture. First time ever, we had in large volume a tomatoes plantation in Akure South local government. We now have a stand to sell tomatoes and vegetable. It has never been like that.

To engage our people and, of course, to make sure that we give back to the people. I’ve seen that prices of commodities are very expensive. But for us, what can we do? Since we are not producers of very many things, what can we plant? We went into a plantation.

We planted, and of course, at a highly subsidized rate, we are giving them out. I’ve seen that, again, there had been a vacuum between government and the people. And what do we do to bridge the gap? We hit the ground running. We had to call for community engagement on radio, on TV. We went on, invited all chairmen of our various communities. We were able to have close to about 500 communities that came together to have an interface.

As we speak, I have on my phone, I have it on the system at work, all communities in Akure, their needs, their plans, their contacts, and whatever happens within Akure South Local Government. I’m using that for my security architecture plan to make sure that, nothing, nowhere is left untouched. I go on to speak on the issue of flooding; when there is no light, people can go on and put on their generator, or if there’s a candle, you can put it out. But when it comes to flood, it’s not what one man can attend to. I’ve gone into this area of flooding to avert flood. Years back, we used to have a repeated attack of flood within our community. But this year, the first of its kind of the one we did in conjunction with the state government support being given to us, we have widened the gap of our waterway.

It was last done in 2008. The one that we have done now covers for the next 10, 15 years. Of course, the issue of flooding cannot come within Akure South local government with what we have done.

We didn’t stop at that. We make sure that all areas, organs of governance is what we must be able to cover. Very many things we’ve been able to achieve within few months. Just to mention a few.

And don’t forget, I’ve been the secretary of Akure South local government for two and a half years. That has prepared me so much for this office. We have studied the template, the temperature of Akure South local government.

What informed the regular health checks for your people in Akure South local government?

 Health they say is wealth. To cater for this area, one thing that we know is this. We must know the state of your health. If you know the state of your health, you are 50% healed. 50% healed. When you know the state of your health, you know what to do. We are doing what we call a quarterly medical outreach.

What we do is go out to make people understand and know the state of their health. The last we did, we were at Arakale in the market. People who came to that market, we have over hundreds of attendees who came, who participated in this free medical outreach.

We were at the Democracy Park for those who were on the other side and those who live within that vicinity. We went as far as FUTA axis for the students and all those who are within their local metropolis

We cited one at NEPA for those who are coming from Oda, Ilekun, Ijoka axis. We cited another along Ondo Road, Custom Junction, just to cater for these people. We are a government that the need has been entrenched in our plan for the people. Health is very important, and we  do this to give them better state of their health. One, they know at whatever level of treatment, at primary and secondary state, we do this free for them.

It’s a part of what we have been able to do within the scope of our time being chairman and co-leader.

 As approach the new year 2025, what are your plans for the people, what will you do differently to further bring succour to them?

By the grace of God, I won the best Chairman of the Year award by Niger Delta. This is the fourth one I’ll be getting. And of course, they were particular about the investment that we have been able to make during our few time as chairman. And one word I keep saying for the year to come is, I want to break my record. Whatever record we’ve been able to set, we are breaking it. We want to set a bigger one.

My short appeal, my word to my people is, that we’ve been able to touch so many lives in the areas of infrastructure, training, investment, and health. These are what we have done in 2024.  In 2025, we will do bigger, better, and they should expect much more. It’s going to be greater.

We have seen different groups, individuals endorsed you ahead of local government election in January 2025. What is the secret?

 People Living with Disability in Ondo State in their hundreds, came to meet me, both home and in office and openly declared support for me. People came from other local governments, like Ikare-Akoko, Ilaje, they came endorse me. And of course, it was covered.

They have not sought my consent if I’ll be going. They said with what you have done, the demand is loud. They want me to contest for the chairmanship election that is coming. And of course, by the yearnings and the demands of my people, I have swung to their will, that I’ll be contesting for the chairmanship election come January 18, 2025, by the grace of God. And like we all know, it’s a grassroot governance and it’s the closest to the people. At the moment, I have been able to see different groups from the 11 wards of Akure South Local Government. I’ve touched them.

When it comes to infrastructure, I can say one or two things. There are roads to which we have given attention.

Ordinarily, people ask me, where do you get fund for all this? Yes, people ask me. With what you get, have you gotten your autonomy? That you are doing this much? I’ve gone into road attention. For that, I want to assure my people, both young, the old, the elderly, like I’ve mentioned that our record that we have set, we want to break that.

I assure you, people of Akure, that when it comes to education, we have a budget, we have a plan. When it comes to infrastructure, it’s our main course. Our infrastructure is in two phases.

The first will be human capital investment. For that, we will invest greatly into this to develop our people. .

To develop our people. Of course, when you look at Akure as a state capital, it doesn’t really match its equals. It’s our physical infrastructure that we want to do. Akure must be able to match its equals and compete with them and substitute them, if possible. We are running a race for that. We are having a manuscript.

I didn’t meet any manuscript. We are drawing a manuscript for Akure for the next 100 years. Because if there is no reason for you to run, you don’t run, you sleep.

We are putting up a manuscript targeted at the development of Akure. We thank God we won the election, and I’m grateful for that, to me, it’s not really a contest.

The contest is the will of our people. If the demand of our people has been coming in this light for us to contest, I get this report almost on every attention of any engagement I have… Incoming…

And like I told them, the election, January 18, I am resolute. I am calm. Why? Because at the moment, in other local governments, there are vast number of people who have been coming out to contest. But here, number of who would have contested keep saying, ” You are doing a good work…continue what you are doing.