It is about one month since the swearing-in of newly elected Executive Chairmen across Ikorodu Division’s six council areas to preside over the affairs of their various council areas.
While congratulating the returning first term chairmen for their second term in office, I will also want to welcome the two newly elected Executive Chairmen of Ikorodu West and Ijede- LCDA into office.
The campaign period threw up many salient issues among the aspirants. The ‘incoming’ aspirants gave most of the incumbent Chairmen a run for their money, in terms of raising valid questions that bothers on infrastructure, security, evenue generation, transparency, accountability, public engagements among others.
It is pertinent to note that, while some of these issues might have been swept under the carpet, since ‘elections are over’, addressing some of these issues raised, will however impart positively on the quality of services being delivered to the masses by these helmsmen.
It is disheartening that some Chairmen seems unprepared for the pre-primary election campaigns, or perhaps, they assumed that they were going to get their second term ticket on a platter of gold, hence their shabby outing during the campaigns.
It was shocking to me and many concerned stakeholders that some Chairmen rather have excuses of ‘invisible’ challenges as reasons for their poor first term outing. The same Chairman still has the gut to ask for a second term ticket from the party, as if second term is a right.
Funny enough, more than one of the chairmen also listed some major constituency projects facilitated by a federal lawmaker, Hon Jimi Benson as part of their scorecards in office. This is how low the performance benchmark at the local council has gone.
This article is not meant to slight any council chairman but, rather to open their eyes to some salient issues that characterized the local government Chairmanship campaign period and to enable them borrow a leaf from the issues raised.
The import of this article is to challenge our new council helmsmen and the second termers to live up to the expectations of the electorates whose mandate they hold in trust.
As strategic stakeholder and Ikorodu residents, there are some very unique ‘raw’ materials peculiar to each of the six council areas that had remained untapped and neglected, in the midst of ‘meagre’ resources at the the disposal of the council areas.
For instance, a unique specie of maize is peculiar to Igbogbo LCDA, it was popularly known as ‘agbado Igbogbo’. It was the toast of most Lagosians who came from different parts of the State to buy. But, this has now become history as the former maize plantations of those days has been taken over by weeds, and in some cases housing developments of all sorts. The earlier the council leadership looks into investing in farming at this time of dwindling federal allocation and hike in the prices of foodstuffs, the better for both the council and its residents.
Similarly, Ijede- LCDA was known for Fufu. Our old women would scorn a child with ‘funny’ heads as resembling Fufu Ijede. That is a unique area the Ijede LCDA needs to invest as a way of empowering women and teeming unemployed youths. A replica of the Agricultural empowerment initiative recently emabarked upon by the Lagos State Government is all that is required to change the revenue narratives.
This is apart from natural coastal and aquatic resources that has remained massively untapped in Ijede LCDA.
For Imota LCDA and Ikorodu North LCDA, these two LCDAs are currently the most blessed in terms of uncultivated land mass . Rather than sell off the lands as presently being done, it will be in the best interest of the councils to embark on massive agricultural investments to productively engage their teeming youths, poor women and boost their internally generated revenue.
The leadership of Ikorodu North needs to creatively leverage its been host to the largest Industrial Estate in West Africa to its full advantage.
Ikorodu West LCDA is lucky to be host to Ikorodu Lighter Terminal and is surrounded by massive water ways. This abundant natural endowment is yet to be tapped into by successive administrations in the LCDA. Ditto for the massive need for markets, designated motor parks among many other ‘virgin’ natural resources.
For Ikorodu Central, I cannot agree less with the Executive Chairman who rightly admitted the need to scale up the revenue drive of the local government at the inauguration of the council’s legislators few days ago.
It has further signed the Ikorodu local government 5th Legislative Bye-law, aimed at strengthening the local government revenue drive.
While these steps are commendable, the council administration needs to do more by identifying and leveraging more untapped revenue sources lying fallow within its jurisdiction.
It will be in the best interest of Ikorodu residents and that of the council chairmen if this article is received with open minds and the issues raised viewed with objective minds.
When this is done, Ikorodu will no more have anything to do with ‘meagre’ resources as excuses for it’s under-development.
