Honourable Bade Falade is the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) for the by-election of the Osun West Senatorial District, scheduled to take place in Osun State on July 8, 2017. He speaks with DAPO FALADE on how he emerged as a candidate and the chances of his party in the election, among other issues.
What qualifies you to be the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) ahead the Oyo West Senatorial District by-election, coming up in the state on July 8?
I am from Ejigbo, in Ejigbo Local Government Area of Osun State. Between 2007 and 2011, I was in the House of Representatives in the National Assembly. I did my best, legislatively, to represent my people and while in the House, I served on various committees, including Foreign Affairs, Water Resources, Integration and Cooperation in Africa and Inter-Parliamentary, among others. As a member of the House Inter-Parliamentary Committee, I had the opportunity to attend parliamentary conventions in Europe and America and some African countries, where I gained a lot of experience in the art of lawmaking. In fact, I was the only member of the Osun State Caucus that was on the Constitution Review Committee and, as part of the ad hoc responsibility given to me in the House then, I was a member of the 19-man committee that probed the NNPC. Today, I am not in the House, but I think this cognate experience that I have acquired has prepared me for the task ahead to represent 10 local government areas from Osun West in the Senate.
Given the circumstances that surrounded the by-election, how did you emerge as the SDP candidate?
The by-election was occasioned by the death of Senator Isiaka Adetunji Adeleke. Incidentally, I was in the National Assembly at the same time with the late Senator Adeleke during his first term. When he died, the law provided that a by-election be conducted within a specified period and I think that is what the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is trying to do now.
I have been a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on which platform I went to the House of Representatives for the first time. The party has been bedeviled, of recent, with factional problems. We belong to the Senator Ahmed Makarfi group of the party and when the issue of this by-election came around, we were locked out of the party by the Senator Ali Modu Sheriff group. They were not even ready to tolerate us as they said we are not part of them. As an active political animal, we just need to look for other platform to vent our aspiration and SDP, being one of the parties the Makarfi group has been talking with for a possible merger in an event of the Supreme Court ruling in favour of Sheriff or better still, being one of the 17 other political parties we have been talking with to form a new platform that will be all-encompassing and that will be more deep-rooted nationally, we said SDP is one of those 17 political parties that we will align with.
So, my foray into SDP is not by accident; I am a progressive politician and joining SDP at this material point in time is a right decision taken by me and my followers. To the glory of God, we had a primary on Wednesday. It was not a single man affair; the process for the primary started some four weeks ago. There were six of us in the Makarfi group that showed interest in the contest; three of them stepped down and the primary was conducted for three of us where I emerged victorious. That has now made me the candidate of the SDP in the Osun West Senatorial District by-election billed for July 8.
The essence of contesting an election is to win. Many people are thinking of the possibility of SDP working with PDP to be able to defeat the ruling party in the state, the All Progressives Congress (APC), in the election. Did you see such a scenario working out?
I cannot foresee that for now. I earlier told you that we were locked out of that party, PDP. As such, there might not be a meeting point as far as working together is concerned. You see, a political party is a platform for contesting elections. There could be alliance, no doubt about that, but for now, I am not foreseeing one. As the candidate of SDP, I am ready to present my people to the electorate; I have my programme. I am not new in this business; I told you I was in the House of Representatives and this is a terrain I so much know. So, presenting myself to the electorate at this particular point in time is my priority and I might not be looking at an alliance for now. But if it is going to come up, it means somebody else is coming to my fold.
But many people are saying neither you nor the PDP candidate can win the election unless you work together to successfully challenge APC. What is your take on this?
I don’t believe in that because this is a terrain we all know. Aregbesola came to Osun State about seven years ago, but he has never been here for long. More so, there has not been any remarkable development to show for it. It is high time people came together to make sure that he is thrown out of this state. His seven years have been woeful; workers are being owed salaries; pensioners are not paid. There is no single road in Osun State West Senatorial District today that links one village to the other or one town to the other that was attended to in the last seven years.
Will you say that is a deliberate calculation by the governor to marginalise a senatorial district in the state?
I will not want to say that. I want to believe that, without any prejudice to his personality, politically, the governor is short-sighted as a person. His short-sightedness had prompted him to neglect this section of the state. This is a senatorial district that is compact; it is a district that has people that make things happen in this state. Let me be specific with those roads I mentioned earlier. Look at the Iwo-Osogbo Road: in the last seven years, it has not received any attention from the state government. Some few months ago, the Oluwo of Iwo led some members of his community to be filling potholes along that road. The Iwo-Ejigbo Road is practically impassable now. Look at Iwo-Ife Odan Road, Iwo-Ikire, Iwo-Gbogan Road, Ejigbo-Ede Road, Ejigbo/Ara/Osogbo Road. All these are major roads in this senatorial district and none of them has received the attention of the Aregbesola administration.
But how does one reconcile your assertion with the claim of the state government to massive road infrastructure development, as expounded in the ‘ona baba ona’ slogan?
What I am saying definitely calls to question the so-called achievements of the government on road infrastructure. I can mention all these principal roads we have in Osun West Senatorial District and none has received the attention of the governor in the last seven years, I wish the people will score him zero. Okay, sometimes during his first tenure, there was this programme of tarring 7.5 km of township roads in each local government area. Every local government area in the state, Osun West inclusive, were made to borrow huge amount of N800,000million from Wema Bank and that singular action has paralysed local government administration in the state.
Since then, no local government area can do anything and the contracts were not even given to indigenous contractors from the state. They were given to Lagosians who ferried away the proceeds and the gains of such a big job and the people back home were been made to suffer and pay back these loans from the successive allocations from Abuja which have practically paralysed the local government.
So, if you say you are tarring some roads within the local government areas, knowing full well that it is the responsibility of the local government area to maintain rural or township roads, if you tar the roads within Iwo and the road between Iwo and Osogbo is impassable; if you tar some roads within Olaoluwa Local Government Area; if you tar some roads within Ejigbo and the road linking Ejigbo with Olaoluwa, Iwo, Ede is impassable, then what have you done? You have not done anything. These are gentlemen who came from Lagos without knowing the state they are coming to rule; they came with a Lagos idea and it has aggravated our problems, rather than solving them.
The general opinion is that the forthcoming senatorial by-election is a build up to the 2018 governorship election in the state. Can you sincerely say SDP is well-prepared to take over the state?
SDP as it is today is not the SDP that people may be having in mind. It is a party that has now been populated by tested hands. Mind you, this SDP we are talking about has personalities like Senator Iyiola Omisore in it and I believe that, with our past experiences in election management and electioneering, we are the party to beat in this coming election. We are aware of the importance of this election to the 2018 governorship election. In fact, it is the fundamental reason why people are jostling for survival in this election. We believe that the 2018 election is going to be determined right from now. That is why you see them in APC wanting to kill one another; the home-based versus the Lagosians, though that is their own problem. In fact, we are going to tap into this their problem to defeat them in the election.
You earlier said your party leadership is in talk with 17 other political party, is the newly-registered Advanced People’s Democratic Party (APDA) one of them?
I want to believe so because Chief Raymond Dokpesi, one of the founders of the new party, has been part of us at the national level. APDA, naturally, even if it was not part of the 17 others that we have been initially talking to, is an offshoot of all these crises that bedevil PDP. Since most of the founders are of the Makarfi group, we expect them to flow along the line of this alliance we are talking about.