Shamusideen Olaleye is the Executive Chairman of lsolo Local Council Development Area. Olaleye a vast grassroot politician in this interview speaks with Anthonia Duru on his involvement in grassroot politics, his choice of successor, his strides in politics including his futile efforts in making companies and industries in Isolo to embark on Corporate Social Responsibilities. Excepts!
After the expiration of your tenure, what’s your next line of action politically?
That is left for God, I don’t own tomorrow.
For you, what was the attraction to politics?
The will to serve to the best of my ability attracted me into politics. Almost every politician in Nigeria will chorus this if asked. For me it is a call to service; I started politics from the campus. I see myself as a problem solver.
In achieving feats politically, can you tell us some of the ladders you’ve climbed?
Politics has been structured by God. I started by serving at the party level, I held different positions at party levels until 2002 when I was appointed as caretaker of the old Alimosho Local Government Area. I started partisan politics in 1989. Since 2002 till date, I have been occupying one office or the other. I was once the Vice Chairman of Alimosho Local Government. I have traversed all the departments of grassroot politics.
As a grassroot politician, there is an assumption that grassroot politics is all about giving handouts to people, what is your take?
It is a reflection of state of our society. What successive governments have been doing is to alleviate poverty, no one has talked about eradicating poverty because the posture of poverty is gigantic. Government is lacking in capacity to take away poverty hence there is short term measure to take away poverty.
There is poverty in the land and the capacity of government to tackle the socio-economy problem is below the bar. The theatre of development is the grassroot all other are superfluous. To take away poverty, you have to look at the capacity. We also have to look at poverty alleviation policies that will not crumble the economy.
In other words you are justifying politicians giving handouts instead of teaching people how to fish?
There are some immediate need we need to attend to if we really want to be sincere. You won’t expect a politician to ask a man whose wife is dying in the hospital to go work instead of assisting in paying the bills. You can’t take one away from the other. We empower people and we give assistance not minding what tag is given to that act.
Do you have an anointed candidate you would want to occupy your present seat at the end of your tenure?
Over the years I have worked with many people and they have been under my tutelage. Definitely whoever will take over from me will be anointed by God because I was also anointed by God to get into the office. I don’t take some things to heart. They have gone through tutelage on how to run government at the grassroot. I care less about who my successor will be. Nobody put me there so I won’t put anybody there.
Why won’t you have a chosen one, at least you are a godfather to them.
I am not a godfather to anybody, I am their leader. Anybody who is humble should not accept such tag. God is the father of us all. Out of humility that tag may not fly. We have leaders, mentor and role models. Who will not want to be Asiwaju Tinubu’s political follower. The man is so large hearted and he is the father of politics in Nigeria. He has left office for a long time and he is still very relevant. Asiwaju Tinubu is our mentor.
Its quite disheartening that despite the presence of elites and industries in your constituency there are still bad roads and bad road network. Why is this the case?
The climate has not really helped matters and our people are not helping matters by dropping refuse indiscriminately on roads and drainages. These are partly responsible for why the bad roads. The torrential rains has not helped matters at all.
What will you say is your greatest achievement as a Chairman?
This is not the time to talk about my achievement I will rather do that after I leave office. We are currently embarking on Legacy Programs. We are working on a couple of projects now and we will reel them out in due time. We are the first to provide school buses for pupils and students in public schools daily and we convey over 1200 students daily, we intend to get more of such buses to ease transportation for our children. We occasionally organise empowerment trainings and we still take care of our senior citizens.
Have you approached some of the industries in your constituency to partner with the government on road maintenance?
Majority of the industries there are deaf and blind to these things. We have approached them a countless times, they have always shut their doors against us.
What do you say of a company that keeps telling you that they are shutting down because the business environment is not favourable to them six years after they are still operating there. We have over 60 banks and that has not translated to any development rather they are security risk to our environment. There are giant industries around Abimbola Way but that road as we speak is not too good.
