When the Federal Government recently issued an executive order preventing the supply of petroleum products to filling stations located less than 20 kilometres away from Nigeria’s borders with neighbouring countries, not a few people hailed the move as a master stroke in the effort to check the smuggling of fuel across the nation’s international borders. It is, however, not music in the ears of the residents of Nigerian communities located on the border lines, as most of them have to travel longer than the stipulated distance to buy even five litres of petrol to power their generators. To make matters worse, they are often arrested by security agencies on their way back home for smuggling petrol. The Council Chairman of Badagry Local Government Area, Hon. Olusegun Onilude, spoke with VINCENT AKANMODE about the ordeal of border communities’ dwellers in his local government.
YOU have been the chairman of Badagry Local Government Area for two years. How will you describe the experience so far?
Well, it is a grassroots experience. It is an experience that teaches one how best to deal with people and resources. So it is a worthwhile experience, though it is hectic because it is not easy pleasing human beings. Anybody who wants to put his endurance and acumen to test should go for local government chairmanship.
Is that you opted for politics at the grassroots while many of your contemporaries are vying for positions at state and federal levels?
I have always been a grassroots man. I was Education Secretary for Badagry Local Government. By virtue of that position, a lot of people came around and I saw their plights. I was very close to the people at the helm of affairs then. I saw what they were doing and I was convinced within myself that I could add value to Badagry.
Initially, my thought was about the legislative arm, and that prompted me to come out in 2011 for House of Representatives. But I was not successful. I asked myself, would I be able to touch many people’s lives as a legislator? Yes, in the area of enacting laws that will have a binding effect on everyone, but the direct touch would not be there. As a local government chairman, every day, you receive nothing less than 50 to 100 people. They come and tell you their problems. You try to solve the ones you think are solvable. But it is a daily thing; the problem you solved yesterday is not the one you will solve today. That challenge was what made me to believe that I had something I could contribute. Your people could be your greatest asset if you know how to engage them.
Badagry happens to be one of the local government areas that host communities at Nigeria’s borders with Benin Republic. Is that an advantage or a challenge?
Living on the border with Benin Republic is supposed to be an advantage for us, because it ought to be an opportunity to dualise our relationships. You relate with the people on this side and have the opportunity to mix freely with the people on the other side. But that fortune is turning into a very big challenge for our people, especially with the happenings around us now. The closure of the border has become a problem that is better imagined than experienced. Badagry is known for fish and coconut. Our people who are involved in legitimate trade, like those selling coconut, we cannot consume everything they produce. We also cannot convert everything into coconut oil, so we have to sell some of them. But in the process of taking them to the potential buyers, Customs men seize their wares, claiming that they are smuggled products, because they also have coconut in Benin Republic and Ghana. I was with the controller of Seme-Krake border the other time and one of the things he was asking me was to bring our coconut and the one from Ghana to show his the differences between them. It is funny. What I know is that coconut is coconut. I am not a legal person, but I know that instead of allowing an innocent man to suffer, it is better to let go the culprit. That is my understanding of the spirit of the law. But for one to assume that this one must be imported and because of that you deprive the legitimate traders of their rights, it is too bad.
Besides that, there is this new executive order that disallows supply of fuel to filling stations located less than 20 kilometres away from the border. Even this morning, some of our fishermen were complaining that they cannot even buy fuel in jerry cans for their engine boats. So they are finding it pretty difficult to even fuel their boats. They have said they will come to my office on Monday to discuss the matter. So I have to go back again to the customs, the police, the army and others and tell them that though the laws are there, we don’t have any other place to live. We can’t say because the federal government has issued an executive order we will ask all our men and women to vacate their natural abodes and start living in Lagos. This is our home; we don’t have any other place.
So living in the border communities has become a very big challenge. We are not finding it easy. Even to light your home now is a problem. How else can we buy fuel than in a jerry can? If they limit the quantity that can be bought, that would have been better. But it is outright cancellation. So, how do I power my generator in a country where we don’t have regular supply of electricity? It calls for concern. My own take on it is that the federal government should have paid more attention to their men at the borders. They should not have allowed all these smuggled things in. All the illegal routes taken by smugglers, they should send their men there to police them instead of subjecting our people to blanket suffering. Indeed, we are suffering in Badagry. We are really suffering.
In other words, your people are the ones suffering dysentery for the excess sugar consumed by smugglers and dubious law enforcement agents…
Exactly! It is the effect of the activities of smugglers that is biting hard on us. I personally appreciate the measures taken to curb smuggling. At least that will help us to look inwards and make us producers on our own. But the legitimate traders should not suffer. If you see somebody carrying imported rice and you take it, nobody will complain. If you see them bringing in frozen chicken or turkey, seize it, nobody will talk. But to say we should not buy ordinary 10 litres of fuel to power own generator, it amounts to imposing hardship on us. To say my parents who are coconut sellers should not sell their produce, how do they want me and my other siblings to survive?
Attention should be directed at the security agencies at the borders to do their jobs the way they should do them. That should curb excesses. If they see me carrying a keg of fuel and I want to cross the border with it, they should seize it. But to buy five or ten-litre fuel within my locality you arrest me that I’m breaching a policy, I’m afraid it is not the best.
Is the closure of the land borders with Benin Republic also affecting your people?
Yes. The border town is a market on its own. If you go there at peak hours when things were booming, you would see people coming in, buying and selling. We are not like Ekiti State where there are lots of professors. We are not Zamfara where there are gold deposits. We are not from the Niger Delta where we can do oil bunkering and illegally refine fuel. These are our people and those are the people we trade with. I think what the federal government should do is to sort of liberalise it and 
find a way the government itself can benefit from the legal businesses rather than say there should not be any form of business, because literally, that is what it translates to. That is where some of our people live and they don’t know any other place. Some of them at the border have not even been to Badagry town before, not to talk of Agbara or Lagos. So what will fetch them a living if the government says they cannot trade?
Look at somebody who sells ordinary sachet water. For it to sell, he needs power to make it cold. If he cannot get fuel to do that, I wonder. I will not be surprised if soon they start arresting people for carrying imported fish. If coconut can become contraband, then we are getting to that point. A customs officer will call me to come and show the difference between the Tilapia of Badagry and that of the Republic of Benin even when it is the same water that stretches across the two countries. The funny thing is that the people don’t know the difference between the tiers of government. As far as they are concerned, government is government. So when they see some of us in political positions, they say we hope you see the punishment you are giving us? Is this how you want to pay us back for voting for you?
For somebody who lives around Gbaji and Owode to come to Badagry just to buy five litres of fuel. There are fishermen there who come to Badagry to but 20 litres of petrol to power their boats. Then policemen will see them on the road and arrest them. Everybody from Seme or Owode would not have access to fuel until they come to Badagry town to buy. And when they buy and are returning home, they are arrested.
What will you regard as your biggest challenges as Badagry Local Government chairman?
Badagry Local Government being one of the foremost local governments and an indigenous local government for that matter, we are one of the biggest if not the biggest in the state. It is the only local government with 10 wards. Most local governments in Lagos are with four, five or six wards. I think the one that is closest to us is nine. But when you look at the allocation of funds, it does not favour us. Our own infrastructure, being an old local government, is not something to write home about. Most of our infrastructure has decayed.
What we need most is funds. The formula for allocation does not favour us. The population and the utilities we have around, those are the things they use in allocating funds. Maybe aside Ikorodu, we are one of the poorest paid local governments. But look at our landscape from Seme to Owode and Agbara. You can pick four, five or six other local government areas from it. Even the size of Alimosho I’m sure is not as big as Badagry, although they have the population. But in terms of land mass, I don’t think they can match us. The implication of this is that we have a lot of areas to cover. The focus should be decongesting the urban for the seemingly rural.
For some of my counterparts, the problem is what they would spend the money on, because most of their structures are relatively new and they don’t even have space to develop again, so, they only do maintenance. But ours here, we have a lot of space to grow and expand but we don’t have the resources. So my appeal is whether it can be done in such a way that certain concessions would be given to the rural to decongest the urban.
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On Wednesday, I was going for a meeting and I left Badagry around 11 am. I had linked that Oshodi-Iyana Ipaja-Sango Expressway by 1.30 pm but I couldn’t get to Gen Adeyinka Adebayo Avenue, a distance that should not take up to 20 minutes, until around 7 pm. That is the problem we have with the urban areas. I saw a Daily Times edition of 1978 where they reported that traffic in Lagos had defied solution. This is 2019 but we are still on it. So, something fundamental needs to be done, and in my opinion, the concentration of development, of social amenities, the development of roads and infrastructure is lopsided. So, inadvertently, we are the one creating it. So, if they can start disinvesting in cosmopolitan Lagos for a seemingly rural Epe, inner Ikorodu and Badagry, there may be an end to the problem.
Alternatively, the rail should become functional. The light rail, if they had done it during the time of Jakande, maybe we would not be where we are now. The other day I wanted to see one of my leaders at Ajegunle. I started considering the traffic. I chose to go through the lagoon, and in one hour five minutes I was there. By the time I called my driver who drove the car, he said, ‘Oga, are you not going again?’ I told him I had returned and he was shocked. So, government should do more in the area of water transportation. The state government is trying to do something in this regard. But they should do more regulation.
What would you say you have achieved as the chairman of Badagry Local Government?
Of course, we have done a lot. We have built schools. We’ve done LA Primary School Keta West at Gberefu. We’ve done LA Primary School Iyaafin. We are in the process of fixing LA Primary School Ajido. We are making desks and benches for the pupils. We bought GCE forms for indigent students. I feel very happy when some of them call me or text their results to me. There was a man that did not even go to secondary school but he was studying at home. He studied up to the level he was supposed to sit for GCE but he could not afford the forms. We bought him the form, and when the result came, he made seven credits, including English and Mathematics. We trained them, organizing extramural classes for them. We also organize Spelling Bee and other programmes for the students. We do exercise books for them too.
On roads, we did a road of about 800 metres at the Ajara-Sunny Ajose and other adjoining roads. The streets were lighted too with a generator to power the light. We did Agakanme Road in Badagry town. Presently, the Agric-Salu Road, we are fixing the drainages. In the area of health, we always participate in all the federal government immunization programmes. On our own, we have organised many eye screening, sugar and BP tests and we give them the medicines. We do this quarterly. Aside that, we are renovating our health centres. Presently, what we call the flagship at Ajara is undergoing renovation. We are equally putting a touch to Etopo Health Centre.
We organise sporting activities like football for the youth. One is currently going on. On general infrastructure, we are trying to put our international motor park in proper shape. That place was built by Hon. Kiki of blessed memory when he was the local government chairman between 1991 and 1993. The condition had become highly deplorable. We have almost finished it. In the area of markets, we have transformed Ikoga Market. It was an ancient market whose structures had become moribund. It is now a modern market. At the Badagry Roundabout, the structure built by Hon. Kiki is aged, so we are rebuilding it. We are about starting a road in Ikoga too to ease transportation. Presently, we have a customary court in Badagry. It is an ancient building, so we demolished the structure that was weak and almost falling. Although some people wonder why we would demolish such a historical structure, my own position is that even the Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem we visit, the structures are not the ones left behind by Jesus Christ and Mohammed, yet people are still going there. The city hall in Lagos is no longer in its original shape. We need to develop.
By the grace of God, next year, the Badagry Town Hall too will get a face lift, but the current shape will be retained so that the people that come after us know that this is how it has always looked. In the area of empowerment, we do it almost regularly. And there are categories. For somebody who cannot even feed at all, if you give him or her N5000, it is a lot of money. If you go to the market, you would see somebody who came to sell cocoyam but the worth of the whole cocoyam may not be up to N1,000. Somebody who sells pure water will be very happy with a thousand naira or two. Some of them don’t even have money to buy, so they are given the pure water to sell and bring back the money after taking their commission. For such category of people, we package food items and put N5,000 on it. That N5,000, to them, it is a big thing. So, when some people ask what N5000 can do in the life of a person, it depends on the level the person is. If he or she is at the bottom rock, it could mean a lot. Somebody who wants to sell pure water, two bags is okay for him to begin with. Why we attach food to it is that we don’t want that person to spend the money on food.
We also look at the people in businesses and assist them accordingly. We give sewing machines to those who are tailors, for instance. We give hairdressers hairdressing equipment. We give out pepper grinding machines and give refrigerators to those who are selling fish, and so on. Those who are into farming, we give them fertilizer, sprayers, seedlings and some other things.
In the next level, we want to look at the poorest of the poor within the community. There is a man I call my friend. He told me that since he was born, he has never slept on a mattress. He said his roof is leaking and his mat is wet. To that person, if you give fridge or pepper grinding machine, he could sell it to meet his immediate needs. So, we have set up a committee to identify people like that so that we give them funds. Or in the case of someone like that my friend, we look into fixing his house, getting him a mattress and little fund for him to move on. We want to look into giving people we know are into petty businesses about N100,000 or N200,000 so that they can boost their trades.
It has become a regular thing to send our staff on training even abroad, probably because I am coming from the field education. We take training very seriously. Our political office holders and management staff, we have bought official vehicles for all of them to ease movement. We even plan to have a school bus for pupils. Maybe because I am a teacher, I feel bad when I see school pupils around 9 am still looking for okada (commercial motorcycle) to take them to school. It means the pupil has already missed the first two periods. We want to ease their movements by getting a bus next year to convey them to and fro.
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