Hon. (Prince) Wasiu Agoro is a prince of Imota kingdom and the incumbent Chairman of Imota Local Council Development Area (LCDA). He had served as the Secretary to Imota LCDA twice before being elected in 2017 to lead the council. In an interview with Kunle ADELABU, the Publisher/Reporter-in-Chief of THE IMPACT newspaper, the Chairman spoke on his experiences and challenges in managing the council, state of the council’s finances, plans to build a permanent secretariat for the council and projects being embarked upon to transform the council among others. Excerpts:
IMPACT: Good afternoon sir. For record purpose, can you please tell us your name and position?
Hon. Agoro: I’m Hon. Wasiu Kunle Agoro, the Chairman of Imota Local Council Development Area.
IMPACT: Thanks for the opportunity given to us to conduct this interview. It has been few months since you assumed office as the Chairman of Imota LCDA, what can you tell us regarding your experiences and challenges of your occupation of this esteem position so far?
Hon. Agoro: Luckily for me, I had served the council twice as the secretary to the Local Government in Imota and that afforded me the opportunity to have learned some things about local government administration especially that of the Imota council. Like you are aware that the challenges we are facing here is that of the resources. Out of the 57 LGs and LCDAs in Lagos State, everybody knows that Ikorodu LG is the one that get the least in term of allocation from the Federation Account. At the same time, we have least revenue base in term of internally generated revenue in Imota. We are just trying to develop our revenue base. The main challenge we are facing is that of scarce resources.
IMPACT: Despite these scarce resources regarding incomes from the Federation Account and Internally General Revenue, people are saying that you are a performing chairman. Can you please tell us in what ways/areas have you been impacting positively on the people of Imota? What are the projects you have been able to execute within this short time of being in the saddle?
Hon. Agoro: From day one, what we have been telling our people is that we are here to develop our community and not to enrich ourselves. The first thing that we started with was to fix and reconstruct culverts across the council which have been making vehicular and human movements difficult. This also helps greatly in linking up inner roads with the major roads across Imota. We achieved this within three months of our administration. After that, we come to the realization that the present secretariat we are using now does not belong to the council. It actually belongs to the Lagos State Health Management Board and the council has been given quit notice to vacate the premises before we assume office. This led my administration to acquire two and half hectares of lands which is directly opposite Asphalt plant in Imota. The property, which cost over N10million, has been fully paid for and in the next few months, we are going to commence the construction work starting with the foundation laying.
As a compliment to the construction of culverts across the council to link major roads, we also embarked on the grading of all the earth roads and this has so much impacted on the community. Some of these roads have not been graded in the last 10 years. The exercise took us two months to complete.
As I’m talking to you, we have started the complete renovation of the Imota Public Library.The renovation exercise is just like the rebuilding of an important institution. The Library has been abandoned for over twenty years. We are talking about a structure with a collapsed wall and which the Vigilance Group has converted into their office. This is a facility that ought to serve educational needs of the community. Work is in earnest and the facility shall be ready by early May and would surely be among facilities that would be commissioned by the governor in May when he will be visiting Ikorodu. We are putting up a very strong and conducive structure for studying and other educational activities.
We are also working on the rehabilitation of the Obadan market in Imota, which is our major source of revenue. The market was last attended to in 1999.The whole place is in tatters and presently, we have removed everything including the sink, pipe and woods among other things and they would all be replaced. We are also going to resurfaced the market floor. The project would definitely be the second the governor of the state is coming to commission. Coincidentally, we started working on these projects when we have not heard about the governor’s visit.
IMPACT: Sir, gone are the days when Imota LCDA was an isolated council languishing in the middle of nowhere, thanks to the highly revered monarch, Oba Ajibade Agoro and other eminent sons and daughters of the town who all assisted in facilitating developmental projects like the Rice Mill, agricultural project, construction of roads, Mile 12 market among many others to the town. Now that we have all these projects in Imota, how is the council keying into all these projects to improve the lots of the residents and achieve social and economic developments?
Hon. Agoro: Thank you very much. Imota has never had it so good before now. It is only God that did all these that you mentioned to Imota and made the town a new bride of our amiable governor. His Royal Majesty, Oba Ajibade Bakare Agoro, has been working hand-in-hand with the governor to facilitate all the projects we have been having in Imota. Imota is now an economic hub in the Lagos East Senatorial District. As we are talking, the new Mile 12 is under construction; the rice mill factory that is going to be the largest in Africa is also under construction; we have asphalt plant here too and by the side of the plant, we are going to have tyre manufacturing company that is coming to Imota. Aside all these, there is still the proposed housing estate that is coming to Imota which is going to commence very soon. There are the two roads per council constructed and the ongoing ones. All these we are having for the first time in Imota and it has been like a magic. I want to immensely thank the governor of Lagos State for placing Imota on the world map by developing the community and making it economically viable and we are ready to support his second term bid. To achieve this, we have been ensuring that our people who are yet to obtain their Permanent Voters’ card (PVC) are mobilized to register and get their cards. What the governor have done for us has doubled my people’s interests and they want to vote massively for him to show our appreciation to what he has been able to do for our council.
More so, I won’t forget Hon. Babajimi Benson who is a God’s sent to Imota because he has done so much for us. I’m always on his neck calling him for one thing or the other and he is ever ready to assist. He has installed the solar power in the Night market in Imota and has also promised to give us a block of three classrooms in Igbalu Primary School in Oke-Agbo which I called the worst primary in the division. There are so many other projects he has executed in Imota in term of empowerment such as presentation of tricycles ( Marwa) to some residents and monthly distribution of food items (Apo Anu) through his foundation, iCARE Foundation, all of which have been of great assistance to the beneficiaries.
I also want to thank Sen. Gbenga Ashafa. Some weeks ago, I got a call from the Senator informing me that he will be given us a block of classrooms as constituency project but due to some misunderstanding with the education authority regarding the citing of the project, the project was taken to Epe and I quickly alerted the Kabiyesi who swung into action to recall the project back to Imota. Unfortunately, we were told that there is no way the project could be returned to Imota and instead we were given a mini-town hall and an ICT Centre which we accepted, but we never ceased pursuing the school project even after they have started constructing the alternative projects. To achieve this, Oba Agoro was at all time on the Senator’s neck and I also joined in calling him to remind him about the school project. I also enlisted the assistance of Hon. Babajimi Benson, Mr Lasisi and Mr Adebogun, the Chairman of Caleb University, to assist in ensuring that the school project was brought back to Imota. As we are talking now, the ICT Centre is almost completed and the 2-Classrooms block, also donated by Senator Ashafa, is also nearing completion. We were able to get the senator to give us the classroom project lost to Epe. Our efforts paid off eventually in getting the two projects. Our own Hon. Nurudeen Saka Solaja is also a major partaker in all these developments we are talking about. He is doing wonderfully well as our representative.
All these efforts, coupled with our own at the local government, compliment the efforts of the state government in developing Imota and making her the envy of others.
So, the council is using its meager resources to impact on the people and we intend to lay the foundation of the new secretariat by the time we are a year in office
THE IMPACT: We actually did a story some few months back concerning the acquisition of the land for the new Imota Council Secretariat. The question now is how do you intend to finance the construction of the Secretariat in the face of the council’s state of finances?
Hon. Agoro: We know that we have meager resources but a very big dream which we plan to achieve before the end of this administration. We plan to contract the labour to a competent hand while we shall be supplying the materials. For instance, if the builder or contractor states that he needs ten trailer tones of granite and 500 blocks, it shall be our responsibility as a council to get them for him. In this situation, we are going to be partly contracting the construction of the contract out i.e. the labour, because contracting the whole thing would make it too big for us to finance.
IMPACT: We can see that one of the schools in Imota (LG Primary School) which we wrote a report on its dilapidated state early last year is being given a modern structure. As the chairman, in what ways have you impacted on educational system in the council?
Hon. Agoro: On the day we shall be marking our first year anniversary in office, we plan to give bursary to hundred students of Imota in various higher institutions. We also plan to give free exercise books and school bags to all the pupils in the coucil. Presently, Oke-Agbo Primary School is the worst in Ikorodu division. In that school, primary 1 to 6 pupils cluster together in 3 classrooms. In fact, the three classrooms are dilapilitated buildings and that is why I tagged the school the worst in the division. By the time Hon. Benson completes and hand-over the construction of the block of three classrooms he promised, this council would move the pupils into it and then embark on the rehabilitation of the existing 3 dilapilitated classrooms structure so that when it is completed, there would be a total of 6 classrooms in the school to be allocated to classes 1 to 6. At present, we are having 1,111 pupils clustering together in 3 classrooms and you can imagine that situation. There was a time that I got hold of an information and I had to call Hon. Solaja whom I related the information to and we both had to go to the office of the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) regarding this information. On getting there, we did everything within our power to ensure that we get an intervention from the board to construct a befitting structure for A.U.D Primary School in Imota. I’m glad to announce that the construction is in this year’s intervention budget of the SUBEB. We are able to get 13 Classrooms with offices and toilets facilities for that school. We also want to do our empowerment programme for people with disability. We intend given empowerment tools to some of them with skills so that they can engage in their skills and make a living out of it.
IMPACT: Thank you very much for your time. We shall be back for another interview after marking your one year in office to appraise your achievements.
Hon. Agoro: You are welcome. No problem.
