The Lagos State House of Assembly Speaker’s son, Abdul-Ganiyu Obasa, has been endorsed by Agege Youth Vanguard to serve as the next Agege Local Government Area Chairman.
At a news conference in Lagos on Thursday, the youth group also disclosed that they had raised N5 million to buy him the nomination form for the All Progressives Congress.
Numerous well-known young people from the Agege community attended the meeting, which was hosted in the secretariat hall of the Agege Local Government.
“The main goal of this meeting is to inform you that we are very interested in the upcoming Lagos local government election concerning Agege local government,” said Ismaeel Garba, the group’s coordinator, in a statement to the media.
He made it clear that their interest was not motivated by self-interest or the desire to make Agege the “private fiefdom” of any political figure, as some may imply.
“We will all agree that the change we desire in Nigeria can only be achieved when the country is in good hands; and key to the development of a nation is its grassroots management,” Garba said, emphasizing the significance of grassroots management for national development. Therefore, our local governments must do it well if Nigeria is to escape its current state.
“To us in Agege Youth Vanguard, the journey to the promised land starts with making sure that the council does not fall into the wrong hands with regard to the next Chairman and seven councilors who will manage the affairs of millions of residents and business operators that make up our community,” he added, also outlining the group’s decision-making process. According to the Lagos political idiom, “Itesiwaju Eko a ju mo Jo se ni,” we conducted extensive background investigations on candidates for chairmanship and councillorship in each ward using the material at our disposal and came to the following conclusions:
Garba gave an explanation of why they backed Abdul-Ganiyu Obasa.
He said, “That the best man for the council’s Chairmanship job is Abdulganiyu Vinod Obasa.
“That his academic record beat that of all other chairmanship aspirants across all the parties. For your information, he has Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield England, and a Masters Degree in Accounting and Finance from Aston University Birmingham, England. A PhD student at the Babcock University, Abdul-Ganiyu is an affiliate member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA).”
“That the others’ aspirants work experience are no match for his, which includes: Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), Providus Bank Limited, and Parallex Bank Limited where he was Head of Performance Management and Strategy. As we speak, he runs a private business, a going concern in real estate.”
He further said, “That none of the chairmanship aspirants has his records in terms of community service in Agege. This is marked by his football academy, VINOD, which, as we speak, has four football talents in Europe on the brink of signing professional contracts.”
Garba also said, “That the fact that his father is the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly must not deny Agege its best bet to reach a new height.” And “That we will mobilise all the good people of Agege, including his indifferent father, to support him.”
Garba concluded by stating, “We have put our money where our mouth is by contributing N5m among our members to buy the APC Nomination form for Abdul-Ganiyu to enable him to contest for the party primary. In the same vein, seven councillorship aspirants across all the wards who we find worthy to manage the affairs of our local government with him will be given free APC nomination forms by us.”
The group also commended the outgoing Chairman of the Council, Alhaji Ganiyu Egunjobi, for his performance, noting that “Agege on his watch has witnessed tremendous development in terms of infrastructure and human capital,” and urged him to “keep it up.”
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