A former speaker of the Oyo State House of Assembly, Hon. Asimiyu Alarape, has explained why he decided to return to the Assembly 20 years after leaving.
The chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, who is now minority leader, was speaker between December 1999 and 2003 on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy, AD. He was re-elected in the just concluded election to represent Atiba State Constituency.
In an interview with NigerianTribune, he explained that “I did not come back either to retrace or retrieve anything rather than to represent my constituents. I have been elected to represent them and that I will be doing. I am happy that, after 20 years, they still find me very worthy of their votes. I cannot thank them enough. It further shows that every politics is local and so if I am still very relevant to my constituency after 20 years, I am very grateful to my people and my promise to them is that I will strive to make more impacts, particularly in my constituency and the state in general.”
Speaking on how he is going to cope in a House dominated by much younger lawmakers, he noted that “Age is really a thing of the mind. By the time you see us interacting, you will be able to understand that politics is about diplomacy. You must be able to mingle with people of different ages because the majority of your constituents and the number of people that voted for you are preponderantly youths. It is a serious rejuvenation for me that I found myself among these people and there are other legislators, who are also relatively old. I feel about 20 years younger now that I am here and that is the way it will continue to be because all of us are colleagues and we will always address ourselves as such and we will relate as such.”
He also spoke on why he didn’t contest for house of representatives or senatorial seat.
“The Senate and the House of Representatives seats were not vacant in my senatorial district and federal constituency. In my own political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the person who happens to be the incumbent wanted to go to the House of Representatives again and, from my observation, people were asking him to contest. From the outcome of the election, you will see that he really won. So, I did not miscalculate. Secondly, if I had wanted to go for the Senate, the limitation was that there was already an agreement when we were coming in that Senator Teslim Folarin [a former Senate Leader] will be going for the election and, as you can see, the rest is now history as the man won the election. As things are, I did not contest the election out of my own volition as my people practically dragged me out of retirement because if you remember, in 2015, there was no representative from the APC in the state legislature from my constituency and the other constituency in Oyo.”
He said he has always been relevant since 1999, adding that “Even life and nature abhor redundancy and that is why when you are promoted into redundancy, you will find a way round it. But I have not been redundant over the years. I have always been active in politics and I know that you have been monitoring my movements and activities closely over the years. You remember that I was a special adviser to former Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala. In 2015, I was the Director General of the Senator Teslim Folarin Governorship Campaign Organisation. After then, I was made the sole administrator of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Oyo State to midwife the congresses of the party. The internal wrangling within the party led us to where we are today. In essence, I rose to a point in the party where I ran its affairs for some period.”
As minority leader, he promised not to derail.
“That is the beauty of democracy. You see, the principle of legislature is different from the executive, though the executive sometimes defers to the political party that supported it to win election. But in the legislature, you are elected by your constituents and so, it is what is happening in your area that will get you into the Assembly, which is different from collaboration at the level of the executive.We have seen it before 20 years ago: we had 30 to two members in the House and we were all friends. It was then an assemblage of people of like minds. So, the same thing is playing out now; all of us see ourselves as brothers. During the inauguration of Mr Governor, all of us wore the same apparel and caps to commemorate that occasion. Even during the proclamation of the House, all of us wore same caps. This is to show that we are interested in one House; we are interested in the welfare of the people.
