The Acting Chairman of Agege Local Government Area, Hon. Ganiyu Obasa may be young, but he has been working hard to make things better as the man in-charge of the local government area. Ganiyu had a session with some journalists on his stewardship in the local government in the past 10 weeks. Our correspondent was there. Excerpts:
Tell us about how you started as the Vice Chairman of Agege Local Government…
It was in August, 2025 which was a key period when the WASSCE results started coming out. What I did was to take the three students that did really well; one had 7As, the second had 6As and the thirds had 5As. All of them were rewarded with N1m each to encourage them within our community. Those are the things we have done within that period, when I was vice chairman. Within that period as well, we started the voters’ registration process. I made sure people were able to perform their civic responsibilities. That was when I was vice chairman, to make sure that across the 36 zones in Agege, we got everyone to register and vote. That is a key part of civic responsibilities and the electioneering process. We got people to get people out of their houses to make sure they register and vote.
The health issue of the former Chairman, Hon. Tunde Azeez was a controversial, what really happened?
Anyone can fall ill at any point. He was ill during that primary elections, but we thought it was something small that could be managed. We went to the hospital and he got better. He was available and we did a lot of campaigns together, we were at the Governor’s place in Marina. After the election, we were together during the swearing-in. But later, his health condition got worse, and he couldn’t really perform certain duties. Being a very upright man and the best man that all of us know with the party ranks, he decided to go to the United Kingdom for further health checks and treatment and I was acting. I’m like a son to him. After he came back, he started recovering and he saw that we were doing something positive and he decided that it was time for him to handover and he resigned honourably. We are still awaiting the governor’s approval in all of these things.
What were you able to achieve as acting chairman then?
It was a seamless transition, when I started as the acting chairman in September. I have been here for about 30 years and one thing I noticed over the last couple of months, and years is that people started bringing refuse to the main road, everywhere was dirty. We called a stakeholders meeting and used the month of September was for sensitization to teach ourselves how to dispose waste, and how to keep our environment clean. Those were the things we started talking to people about. We called the CDA, CDC, market women, league of imams and all the stakeholders in the community. The police were invited and we had a good conversation on how to move our community further and make it cleaner.
Can you tell us some other issues you addressed as the number one citizen in Agege?
The waste disposal issue is massive. It took time and we are still on it. We are thinking of how to get a cleaner, greener community, how to create parks and gardens across various locations within our community and we started a lot of strategic collaborations. I went to the state Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, honourable Tokunbo Wahab; I went to the agency in charge of Parks and Gardens and talked about collaborating and how to improve the community. We did signages around the community. If you drive around you will see some of them. I went to the 14 markets in Agege to talk to our ‘Iyalojas’ and ‘Babalojas,’ and our community people. The market is the most sensitive place when it comes to food. Diseases can easily break out from the markets. I met everyone; we had discussions about the way forward for waste disposal. I met with PSPs and LAWMA operators in the community on the way forward. They complained that people were not paying for refuse cleaning, and that they had issues with their operational vehicles. They listed a whole lot of things and I told them that we need to work on debt forgiveness. In September, we focused on the environment and in October, we started enforcement. We got boys from different wards involved, we got our local security outreach; Agege crime fighters involved. We had about 30-40 people every night that went round our community to make sure that our environment is clean. In recent times, we have apprehended close to 85 people and collected N1.8m in fines out of the enforcement programmes that we have been doing. The community is getting better in terms of cleanliness.
What are the other issues things you are doing to make the community better?
We have done a lot on education. We are about to kick off the renovation of seven nursery and primary schools. We have 26 nursery and primary schools in Agege. Also, we have nine junior and senior secondary schools in our area. We are currently renovating seven nursery and primary schools. I’ve been to all of the schools; eight of them need urgent attention. We are also looking at some other nursery and primary schools. We have about three or four in one compound. Seven others are in about three compounds. In the compound, all the students will have access to computers, they will have access to a library where they can read and improve their skills. We are also looking at sick bays in case of any emergency within the schools. We have given out materials to 7000 nursery and primary students in the local government area. About 3000 materials have been shared our nursery and primary schools, and these include notebooks, pencils, biros, erasers, sharpeners and crayons across.
There are complaints about bad roads in the main and inner roads; how are you addressing these?
Road infrastructures are crucial to development. We are working on about 11 roads and drainages within the local government. We see the problems the residents are going through and for us, we need to provide solutions to the problems and make life better for them. I want to be a service provider and problems solver for our residents. We are not here to tell them that we are here and they should look at us like we are putting ourselves on a pedestal. Abroad, the local councils serve the people, they even provide housing. They are very powerful to the extent that in the United States of America, local council elections are more important to the people than the presidential election because they are able to have access.
Tell us about your efforts on healthcare delivery
We have seven wards, and we are looking at to get healthcare across all the wards and zones. The prevalent disease the people go through in our country now is cardiovascular disease, which relates to blood pressure, and stroke. People have diabetes, malaria, and they need immunization. Those are the things we have had issues with. What are we doing to solve those problems? Across the seven wards, we have 36 zones. We are trying to have healthcare across the zones. You can check your blood pressure at any time in the zones. You have a booth right in front of you that you have access to. That’s what we are trying to do across 36 points, but now till December, we can only provide 10. By next year, we want to complete all of the 36 points so that people can check their blood pressure, sugar levels, and they can treat malaria right from the roots. The booth will communicate with the health centres which are the primary health centres. Some women can’t give birth naturally, so when it’s time for caesarian section, they start running helter skelter. So, we want to build operation theatres at the centres to solve this. We have provided in the short term, insurance policy for our people, especially for poor and vulnerable people. You can have access to this insurance in collaboration with LASHMA; which is ‘Ilera Eko’ scheme. We are trying to renovate our health centres. We currently have one that is very standard.
Agege community has some restive youths and some areas are believed to be trouble spots, how are you addressing security in the area?
We have had peace and security stakeholders meetings and we discussed with our people. We tell them that if you see something, talk about it. Don’t hide information; don’t feel like you have to protect someone. Peace and security is also linked to drug abuse. That is common in our community, and it’s something we all have to frown on. It destroys lives, and communities. We have started fight against drug abuse, and we have written letters to the zonal head of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in Ikoyi. They have come to do a lot of raiding and to sensitize the communities about drug abuse. We are working with the DPOs in the area on ways to resolve the issue. We have had peace and security meetings even with the Dopemu community. We have increased the salaries of the operatives of Agege Crime Fighters so that we can motivate them to see how to secure our area. One of the ways to improve security is street lights by making sure that many places are bright at night and people can walk freely. We started the proof concept to test the quality of the light our vendors want to give us.
Also, the state government is helping us with street lights across the eight major roads in and out of the community,. Before the second week of December, a lot of street lights will come up across our communities.
The CDA and CDC have been doing great works with us. We now have community policing. If you go round Agege in the night, you will see people with torchlights walking around and making sure they check there are and they report any suspicion. People have seen a lot of improvement in our security architecture.
What about the dirt on the roadsides?
We started sweeping our inner streets. Lagos cleans about 15 major highways in and out of Agege, but we said we need to do something about our inner streets. Currently, 150 inner streets are being swept on a daily basis from Monday to Saturday. By December, we will be on 200. We have 324 inner streets in Agege and by February, we believe all the inner streets will be swept from Monday to Saturday. We employed people in the local sweeping initiative
What is happening at the centre for technology in Agege?
There are lots of innovations in the centre; we have introduced a lot of new courses. They are learning how to plant rice, produce drinks, and hair creams. So many products are coming out of that place. It’s an opportunity for young people in the community. We partner with them, they go there and work, earn a lot of money and they gain a lot of experiences in learning from all these. We just want to engage our youths to let them see their potential.
