Honourable Asimiyu Alarape, from Atiba State Constituency, was first elected in 1999 into the Oyo State House of Assembly and became the speaker. He speaks to Deputy Editor, DAPO FALADE, on why he returned as the Minority Leader in the ninth Assembly in the state, 20 years after his first stint as a lawmaker.
I did not come back either to retrace or retrieve anything rather than to represent my constituents. I have been elected to represent them and that I will be doing. I am happy that, after 20 years, they still find me very worthy of their votes. I cannot thank them enough. It further shows that every politics is local and so if I am still very relevant to my constituency after 20 years, I am very grateful to my people and my promise to them is that I will strive to make more impacts, particularly in my constituency and the state in general.
Precisely, 1999 was the beginning of the current democratic experiment. What is your assessment of legislative business in the state between then and now?
What we experienced then was that we have had a very long period of military interregnum and whenever we have such a dictatorship in place, the only missing link is the legislature and that is why we call it the symbol of democracy. By the time you start to do something afresh, you can only improve on it. What I met here now is quite different from what we started with and it will still improve as people are coming in and going out.
You are coming into an Assembly, where its membership is relatively young. Some of your colleagues now were about five or six years old when you were first here. How would you be able to relate with the younger elements in the state legislature
Age is really a thing of the mind. By the time you see us interacting, you will be able to understand that politics is about diplomacy. You must be able to mingle with people of different ages because the majority of your constituents and the number of people that voted for you are preponderantly youths. It is a serious rejuvenation for me that I found myself among these people and there are other legislators, who are also relatively old. I feel about 20 years younger now that I am here and that is the way it will continue to be because all of us are colleagues and we will always address ourselves as such and we will relate as such.
Your decision to return as an ordinary member after your first stint as a speaker is novel because in this part of the world, politicians move from the lower level to the higher level. Why didn’t you go for the Senate or the House of Representatives, instead of the House of Assembly?
The Senate and the House of Representatives seats were not vacant in my senatorial district and federal constituency. In my own political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the person who happens to be the incumbent wanted to go to the House of Representatives again and, from my observation, people were asking him to contest. From the outcome of the election, you will see that he really won. So, I did not miscalculate. Secondly, if I had wanted to go for the Senate, the limitation was that there was already an agreement when we were coming in that Senator Teslim Folarin [a former Senate Leader] will be going for the election and, as you can see, the rest is now history as the man won the election. As things are, I did not contest the election out of my own volition as my people practically dragged me out of retirement because if you remember, in 2015, there was no representative from the APC in the state legislature from my constituency and the other constituency in Oyo.
Politicians generally hate being redundant and so some people saw your second coming as a way out of redundancy…
Even life and nature abhor redundancy and that is why when you are promoted into redundancy, you will find a way round it. But I have not been redundant over the years. I have always been active in politics and I know that you have been monitoring my movements and activities closely over the years. You remember that I was a special adviser to former Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala. In 2015, I was the Director General of the Senator TeslimFolarin Governorship Campaign Organisation. After then, I was made the sole administrator of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Oyo State to midwife the congresses of the party. The internal wrangling within the party led us to where we are today. In essence, I rose to a point in the party where I ran its affairs for some period.
Now as the Minority Leader, how are you going to cope in the situation where the ruling party, PDP, has an overwhelming majority?
That is the beauty of democracy. You see, the principle of legislature is different from the executive, though the executive sometimes defers to the political party that supported it to win election. But in the legislature, you are elected by your constituents and so, it is what is happening in your area that will get you into the Assembly, which is different from collaboration at the level of the executive.We have seen it before 20 years ago: we had 30 to two members in the House and we were all friends. It was then an assemblage of people of like minds. So, the same thing is playing out now; all of us see ourselves as brothers. During the inauguration of Mr Governor, all of us wore the same apparel and caps to commemorate that occasion. Even during the proclamation of the House, all of us wore same caps. This is to show that we are interested in one House; we are interested in the welfare of the people.
Are you now saying that party interest will be subsumed under the legislative business in the ninth Assembly?
Most of the time, the most important thing is our constituents. I am the leader of the APC in the House; that is the essence of being the Minority Leader. We even have whips for the three political parties that make up the ninth Assembly; APC, PDP and the African Democratic Party (ADP). But what I am saying in essence is that we are representatives of the people and the most important thing is that nobody has elected anybody to go and fight and decide not to bring the dividends of democracy to the people in his constituency. We have unity of purpose to make the state better and to advance the cause of the people.
Buhari should have lost last election over herdsmen crises — Soyinka
Every party has its manifesto, but the time of election is gone and the time of governance is here. In the next three and half years now, we would go back to our respective parties to seek for re-election. That is why I always persuade people to restrain from going to war because even after going to war, you will still seat down and jaw-jaw. Can’t we start on that note, instead of going to war to be wasting lives and property? So, in this case now, nobody will go to war with anybody. Rather, the House will always be there to keep the government of the day on its toes to be able to give its best to the people and that is what we intend to do.
The usual practice among politicians, especially from the minority parties, is to defect after major elections. Are we looking up to that from you?
In 1999 when we were here, it was 30 against two; the two gentlemen from the PDP when we were 30 from the Alliance for Democracy (AD) did not join our party. So, you cannot say defection would be entirely true for everybody; it is a matter of choice. In this case, I am a representative of the APC and I remain so. But the most important thing is that the government of Oyo State is our government and it must succeed. I have friends in the PDP and they may try to lure me into their party but the choice is mine.
What should your constituents expect from you as a legislator?
Experience is the best teacher and I think I am appropriately experienced to know what to do to hit the ground running. It is about what we can do to better the life of our constituents- through motions; through amendment to probably an outdated or an archaic law. For example, in a situation where you put a sanction of 50 pence, people are no longer spending pence. Such a law must be appropriately reviewed and amended. Majorly, we have to make laws and advise appropriately the government of the day on how best to treat our people. Our people should expect from the ninth Assembly in the state a very robust legislative activity and business.
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