Hon. Olatunji Abiola Shoyinka is representing Surulere Constituency II of Lagos State at the House of Representatives. He spoke with ORUKPE NELSON on some topical issues of local and national importance.

What is your view on the anti-corruption crusade of President Muhammadu Buhari administration?

I support the anti-corruption crusade of Mr. President with all my heart. If I have my way, I would want to be at the forefront of the crusade. But we must be very careful in doing this. I mean it should not be limited in vilifying the Peoples Democratic Party as corrupt, otherwise he is not likely to make a head way. We have not forgotten that about eight months before the elections, some people defected from the PDP to the All Progressives Congress. Does that make them uncorrupt? We have some governors that were in the PDP but defected to the APC; does that mean they are not corrupt? The issue is not about APC or PDP being corrupt; the issue is that Nigeria is a corrupt economy and you and I are part of it. In this corruption crusade, accusations should not be frivolous, rather they should be investigated thoroughly, charged to court and such accused persons convicted. It should spread across both political parties and even others in the private sector.

This is very important. Once people are sent to jail for corrupt practices and there is the assurance that any future criminals would be caught to face justice, others would fall in line and that is how the anti-corruption crusade can work.

Do you support downward review of the lawmakers’ pay?

Salary reduction to me is not what I feel is right. Is it just because the President said “I am reducing my salary”, how much is that salary? How much of the salary would help to make Nigeria a better place? How do you ensure productivity when you are not being given what is sufficient for you to do the job? So rather than cut the salaries, why don’t we reduce the number of lawmakers and make sure they are treated well. If they are five and they are not being treated well, what is the point? So we are going back to square one. If when we are talking about corruption, you reduce my salary and lawmakers cannot meet their expenses, we would end up encouraging the same corruption we were out to kill. So it’s going back to what you are trying to stop. Restructuring is nice, based on the fact that the revenue is not forthcoming, but not on the cutting of salary. A man that lives at Kuje here in Abuja, spending more than N1,000 everyday on transportation, minus feeding, housing. So what do you want to cut out of that salary that would be efficient? I don’t support the salary reduction but restructuring. If a minister has more than 15 to 20 aides, what is he doing with them? We can cut down on the number and make effective use of the remaining staff and pass the pay into developmental projects.

As the representative of the people; how have you impacted on your constituency?

There is something we have to state first and that is the fact that what people need is governance; to ensure that governance is working. I am a Peoples Democratic Party man to the core but it is not only PDP members that voted for me or else I would not be where I am today. The people of my constituency voted for me to represent them. We therefore identify those needs in a democracy and meet them. How do we do that? We do that by bringing to them dividends of democracy as much as possible from the federal level. Yes, we are the representatives, but most people don’t know the work of the representatives. When they see streets that are not tarred; they blame the representatives; they see a dilapidated school, they blame the representatives. But it is not supposed to be so because the representatives perform legislative functions; he does not have budget to attend to such things. We represent the people in Abuja, present their problems, ensure they are
addressed and bring feedback to the constituency.

What specifically are you looking at for the people?

Firstly, I want to make sure the youths are taken care of because once the youths are taken care of, we are bound to make a lot of advancement in our country, because the youths are the future leaders. In the face of current economic challenges, we need to make sure there are skill acquisition programmes for the youths because once the youths are skilled, they have about five to seven things that they can derive from it.  For example, if there is a skilled youth in a family, that youth would be self-reliant. That is one vital point. The youth would be able to assist his younger ones. That’s number two. Then the youth now is taken away from the streets, that’s number three, the youth is useful to himself and community in terms of job creation and crime reduction, because an idle man is the devil’s workshop. So if we are able to get the youths engaged; then we will stand to say that we are progressing. But that is not all, having skill is not all. If
someone is skilled and he is not given tools to work with and where to work; then the skill is nothing; it is wasted. So in that respect, we should be mindful of what kind of skill we give out. So in my view, skill acquisition is important for our youths, then other things like take-off support.

Give us some insight you have brought to lawmaking at the National Assembly?

Lawmaking has been in existence before I was born. So what I see and know is that we go to the floor where we discuss bills that are of interest to the country as a whole, and not only in our constituencies. We discuss bills, move motions on various sectors like aviation, banking, finance, agriculture and even health. The reason is that whatever law you make on the floor of the house does not only affect your constituency in the long run, it affects the whole country. So in that respect, we make sure that all those things that we do together on the floor of the house, are actually implemented. So we want to make sure whatever is being said on the floor of the house doesn’t end in the house alone.