Chief Jumoke Akinjide, lawyer and daughter of  former Minister of Justice and Attorney_General of the Federation, Chief Richard Akinjide, is the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Senatorial Candidate for Oyo Central Senatorial District. She  told  Vanguard what Oyo Central people and Nigerian women and youths would  gain from her as Senator at the National Assembly, if elected.  Excerpts:

By Bashir Adefaka

How prepared are you for the polls?
As a PDP Senatorial Candidate for Oyo Central District, I must tell you that I’m fully prepared for the election. I started my campaign over a year ago and I’ve campaigned based on issues and solving critical problems that my constituents face.  I’m very prepared and I am very well accepted in Oyo Central Senatorial District.

You were two-time Special Assistant to the President, first on FCT Matters and later on G77 and Nigerians in The Diaspora Organisation.  What would you say you could not do properly from the executive angle at that time but which you feel will now be done, if you were elected as Senator?

As you know, we have separation of powers in Nigeria under the Constitution: the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.  At the executive level, the task for you is to make up policy for the nation and execute it.  As a presidential aid, my job was to advise the President on policy matters and the execution of adopted programmes. That’s very different from going to the legislature.

The Senate as the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly has five distinct roles.  One, which is the obvious, is making laws.  And as a lawyer, that is something that comes naturally to me because law or legislation is the tool that lawyers use everyday.  We have to understand it, we have to break it down, analyse it, interpret it and argue it successfully before the court.

Now the second thing which happens to be Senate’s role is appropriation.  The Executive cannot spend any money unless it is appropriated by the National Assembly.

Thirdly, the oversight functions; the legislature is supposed to oversee the formulation and the execution of polices by the executive to make sure that every policy serves the national interest and the interest of the majority of the people of Nigeria and to ameliorate any harm that might come as a result of that policy.

Fourthly, the Senate has the unique role of confirmation of important positions such as judges, ministers and ambassadors and some major parastatals or independent organizations like the INEC, ICPC, etc.  Heads of these bodies have to be confirmed by the Senate.

And lastly, representation:  all elected legislators at the National Assembly are there to represent the interest of their people because they are supposed to be close to the grassroots, know where the shoe pinches and bring up their issues at the Federal level.
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What should Oyo Central people expect from your representing them as their Senator?
Oyo Central people should expect transformation in terms of representation.  They should expect me, 24 hours of the day, responding to the their issues, fighting on their behalf, informing them in writing and through the media of what I am doing, what I want to do.

I also have, for myself, some goals and projects that I have promised in the over one year that I have been campaigning to the people of Oyo Central Senatorial District.  These projects are based on the underlying  idea of helping the people to help themselves; giving the people the opportunity to lift themselves up, out of poverty, to lift themselves into prosperity and to give themselves and their children the opportunity to live their lives with dignity.

The projects include healthcare surgical healthcare free of charge for anybody who cannot afford it in Oyo Central Senatorial District, which, I have started.  We have gone round on a medical mission through all the 11 Local Governments of this Senatorial District and we have operated people free of charge.

After that we have chosen three locations permanently for my surgical operations programme in Oyo East Primary Healthcare Centre, Lagelu Primary Healthcare Centre and Egbeda Primary Healthcare Centre.  If you go every weekend, you will find my doctors there operating and doing surgery free for people.

How many of such surgical operations can we say your medical gesture has successfully achieved?
We have operated about 5,000 people free of charge.

In the medical again, I have promised that the medicines for malaria and typhoid fever will be delivered free to the people of the District because these two diseases are said to represent 80 percent of the health burden in our hospitals.

On the issue of education, I think this is critical to national development and I know that Oyo State people are so much concerned about the  education of their children.  So I have said I would provide, among other things, computer centres free of charge in the three zones in my District: Oyo, Ogbomoso and Ibadan zones with at least 100 computers where our children and young people can come and learn free how to operate computers and by so doing bring themselves into the digital age.

I have promised to give NECO and WAEC forms free of charge to at least 1,000 students in my District. I started doing this last year but that time, I was able to do it for only 270 students where we sponsored them for NECO free of charge.  I know I can do more when I get to the Senate.