Gbajabiamila’s Constituency Projects
By Okey Ikechukwu
Let’s talk about Legacies and Legacy Projects, shall we? Femi Gbajabiamila seems to be setting new precedents, but much of that later.
Our Development Specs Academy hosted a Roundtable Discussion with some youth leaders on the true meaning of Legacy and Legacy Projects in Abuja, late last year. A lot came to light in the process. One of the speakers from the South-West said that the major Legacy Chief Obafemi Awolowo left for his people was the Cocoa House. This is a massive edifice, even by today’s standards. I was somewhat taken aback by this declaration, and tendered a contrary view.
The debate raged for three hours, amidst very informed perspectives and contributions. In the end, our friend had to agree that Awolowo’s Legacy was education. The South-West’s subsisting awareness that it is knowledge and responsible, forward-looking leadership that drive sustainable development is a by-product of this legacy. It is that legacy that explains much of the economic triumphs, elite sophistication, global relevance, connections and contemporary developmental strides of the South-West geopolitical zone.
The former Speaker of the House of Representatives, who is currently the Chief-of-Staff to the President, flagged off what he called Legislative Mentorship Initiative (LMI) some two years ago. The objective was to identify, train and equip the next generation of public sector leaders, particularly legislators. The 2nd LMI participants comprised 45 Fellows, selected from the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT.
The programme spanned several weeks, and includes the Fellows-in-Training (FITs) Speaker Series, during which every Fellow is given the opportunity to make an insightful, captivating and igniting presentation on any important topic of choice. The trainees are also subsequently given feedback on their performance, to improve their public speaking skills; as part of the training process.
Small as this may seem, it is a very important “Constituency Project”. Here, the word constituency is understood to mean those who make up (constitute) the sociopolitical variables of your operating environment; and not just your immediate physical/geographical/ethno-religious space. Imagine what would happen if most of our public office holders begin to pay more attention to many, apparently out-of-the-way, constituencies all over the nation!
Many, especially the younger generation, can thus be leveraged and retooled and to step forward as a well-capacitated Replacement Generation.
It was for this very reason of raising the right Replacement Generation for the Conservative American State that Morten Blackwell, former Chief-of-Staff to President Ronald Reagan of the United States, set up the Leadership Institute (LI) in Arlington, Virginia. The objective of this human capital training/recruitment platform is: “To train conservatives” so that they do not lose control of the inner American State.
It was one revelation after another for me, on how to drive ideological group interests, during my programme in the Institute over ten years ago. The deliberate seeking out of members of conservative blocs, the well-targeted programmes, the efforts at getting conservatives from all over the world to be part of LI was something else. It was a conscious, determined, unrelenting, unrepentant and unapologetic commitment to ensuring that the people who believe in God, who are pro-life, etc. do not end up a minority in the US.
As for its core goals, “LI provides training in campaigns, fundraising, grassroots organizing, youth politics, and communications. The Institute teaches conservatives of all ages how to succeed in politics, government, and the media”. Blackwell saw a gap that needed to be filled. He noticed that “Many liberal organizations exist to increase the involvement of liberal activists; few similar organizations exist to serve conservatives. Because conservatism tends to focus on the power of ideas, most conservative organizations are think-tanks that focus on policy or legislation”.
For that reason, he set up an institute that would ensure that conservatives do not keep walking into the political field of play with a limp. The left, and left-wing politicians generally, seem to always have some advantage when it comes to organizing and mobilizing large numbers of people. They are more visible, and perhaps noisier, in the public policy process. LI thinking and orientation is that “it is the lack of widespread, active conservative participation that is one of America’s greatest practical weaknesses”.
With LI determined to keep increasing the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders in the public policy process, it the Institute takes them beyond policy impact analysis, to recreate and also teach the process of influencing policy through direct participation, activism, and leadership. The active support for the entire conservative movement extends to the nurturing of unique conservative nonprofits, and freely sharing LI’s most valuable resource. This resource, strange as it may sound, is the Institute’s list of students it has trained and its list of conservative student campus groups – with other conservative organizations.
But back to Gbajabiamiala!
He reeled off a commissioning marathon of sorts, inflicting on his politically contiguous constituents a number of high value and high impact ingredients of modern social infrastructure. That was a few days ago. The scope, quality, relevance and likely long-term impact of the projects under reference completely outpaces anything several of his former colleagues put together can muster.
In fact, Gbajabiamila has “Done a Nwesom Wike” on his fellow former legislators. Remember how Wike embarked on massive infrastructural development projects, announced that the resources came from a monumental largess of arrears from the Federal Government, which his fellow South-South governors also received; but “chopped” in silence. Some of them started speaking in tongues, to avoid what they thought they had swallowed in peace. The difference here is that Gbaja is saying what Wike verbalized, but by his actions; not words and flexing.
The Conference Centre Gbajabiamila built for the Lagos State University, as shown a few days ago, is a desperately needed facility that will impact the quality of the school’s learning environment. The dualized Babs Animashaun Road in Surulere speaks to the end of a nightmare for that part of town, throwing up better esthetics, greater traffic fluidity and general upliftment of the environment.
The Sam Sonibare community Development Centre, now erected and standing in Surulere as part of Gbajabiamila’s “Constituency Project”, has brought back a sense of history to a distracted generation of phone pressers and bugger eaters. In case you know nothing about Sonibare, Wikipedia tell has this to say: “Chief Samuel Olatunbosun Shonibare (January 8, 1920 – January 1964) was a Nigerian businessman and politician who was a founding member of the Action Group (AG), he was an active member of the party from its formation until his death in 1964”. And he impacted Yoruba political history and its development.
The new Femi Gbajabiamila General Hospital will create jobs and offer health services. The new Hall of Residence built for the simply over-compressed students of the University of Lagos, where I was once a teacher in the Department of Philosophy, will create elbow room for meaningful student accommodation, while the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) Surulere Campus will make the needed impact in an environment that inherited from Chief Awolowo the right legacy on lasting development.
With Bode Thomas police station, a mini-stadium at Orile, and the reconstructed Randle Avenue Road, as part of CONSTITUECNY PROJECTS by just one legislator, the question for many would be: Was Gbajabiamila the only one who went to the National Assembly in the name of his people?
Due to the overwhelming success of the 1st LMI Fellowship flagged of by Gbajabiamila in 2022, the 2nd edition of the residential Fellowship ran from December 4th -22nd, 2023 in Abuja; at the end of which the class is voted the top 3-5 Speakers who presented their talks during the Closing Dinner and Graduation
To wrap it all up, our people say that a young man who thinks that all it takes to make a home is a well-built house, or even mansion, should not be trusted with anyone’s daughter as a wife. Our people hold that the concept of home must first exist in the mind, as a nurturing platform. It is not just a physical space, or a special location, no!
That is why we can say “I feel at home with you, or in this place”, and not be talking about our place of residence – or a house. It is, instead, a cocktail of values that human societies deploy in order to create and sustain a self-replicating sense of community. The home is the primal Human Capital Development Factory of any community, or society.
Institutions of state, strictly understood, are supposed to be extensions of this primal task of the home. They are actually designed, in intent, to drive and sustain norms for reciprocal relationships and group survival which had it sprout and seed strength from the home. But that is a matter for another day.
It is against the background of the foregoing that our people speak thus: “It is not a barnful of yams from today’s harvest that guarantees continuous future harvest in future”. It is precisely on the basis of this last saying that elders take time to say to young, ambitious and unduly enthusiastic aspirants to a farming career: “Do not mistake enthusiasm for ability, or staying power. Pay attention to what you will meet on the road you have chosen”.
And they will then go ahead to educate the neophyte along the following lines: “The five things you need to succeed as a farmer are (1) Close attention to the soil type, degree of soil fertility, and its suitability for certain types of crop; (2) Careful selection of the quality of seed and crops to be planted; (3) Continuous monitoring, to drive away harmful birds, weevils, etc.; (4) Periodic and regular weeding of the cultivated areas, to ensure that wild grass and brambles do not choke and kill the plants; (5) Careful harvest and sorting into “grades” of the yield, since not all that is harvested would always be of the same quality”. But enough of all that.
The Federal Republic of Nigeria needs a new orientation on several fronts, with government and non-government actors intervening where it really matters. The REBIRTH Initiative of Development Specs Academy and its major partner, the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), is predicated on this. The acronym of this new, private sector driven initiative to drive new national leadership and followership consciousness, rests on the desire to Reinvent, the Essence, Beauty Integrity Resourcefulness and Traditions and Heritage (REBIRTH) of our fatherland in a sustainable way. We are off to a prepare our teachers and those entrusted to them for new values of responsible citizenship, guided by knowledge.
