The Abesan Estate Residents Association has been crying out to the government and security agencies to assist it in addressing the security challenges bedeviling the community. It accused the Executive Chairperson of Mosun-Okunola Local Council Development Area, Princess Olabisi Adebajo, a.k.a Abisko, of frustrating the community’s security efforts. In this interview with MAYOWA SAMUEL, the LCDA chairperson gives her own account of the insecurity situation in the community and the steps she has taken to address it.
Residents of Abesan Estate allege that you haven’t been supportive in their efforts to address the community’s insecurity despite the several cases of armed robbery, kidnappings and other crimes. How would you react to this allegation?
True, they are experiencing some security challenges; so I called them for meetings. There are certain people that call themselves AERA, that is Abesan Estate Residents Association. Meanwhile, we have CDAs, we have about six in that Abesan.
They came to me as AERA, we fixed a date for a meeting where they complained about the Okada riders, Korope and the people coming in the afternoon to steal within that community. I said let’s set up a committee to look into it.
But they are accusing you of being against the profiling of the drivers of these Okada, Korope and the likes because you don’t want to lose the stipends you are collecting from them. Is that so?
I was the one that said we should profile the Okada riders; they gave us the number of Okadas they wanted. We now said we would do that together, that we would get their addresses, get somebody to reference them so that anybody would not just be plying that route and we all agreed. We asked them to sign, but they refused to sign. They now came up with their own memo of what they wanted from the local government.
I called on their president and told him, ‘you can’t continue with this, let’s sort this out together. If you are not ready to comply, we will leave it like that.’
You mean you left them to their fate with the security threat posed by the influx of the Okada riders because they were not cooperating with you?
No. The Okada riders at the entrance, I told them, we don’t want you here again because, even the profiling was not working. I had a meeting with their boss and the man said that he was also tired. He said all these Hausa men, they did not know where they were coming from and that any little thing, they would create problems. I wrote a letter to the Task Force Office and told them we wanted them to evacuate (these people). It is not as if I’m folding my hands and looking at what is going on. I’ve written to the state and sent a reminder but I have a feeling they want to eradicate Okada riders in Lagos State, I think that’s the reason they are holding on. The chairman said I should not worry, that something would be done. When Okada riders that you don’t know where they are coming from go into the estate to kidnap, you won’t know where to trace them. When it is 6 ‘o clock, you will see them at the gate. Even for a car to ply that road is a problem because they would have blocked everywhere.
One day, I came down and warned them that we were going to chase them away, but the next day, they had even doubled. They think I’m the one encouraging them because of the stipends; I don’t even want them in my local government at all. The community is the one encouraging them.
They can’t be there without the support of the community. We have our evidence; they have given them receipts and jackets. That’s why we said if we are here working, they can’t be paying you. When their roads are bad, I fix their roads but they said I did that because they had written a petition. I told them, ‘you can’t be talking like this’, but thank God, at least we’ve fixed it. There is no way you can please people, but at least, we are trying our best.
” They locked the gate one time, causing traffic; people were complaining that how can they be locking the gate? This place leads to other areas. They want to have their own parallel government as if there is no government in place, we can’t tolerate this. I went there myself; I asked the engineering department working with me to remove the padlock”
They also claimed you spoilt the padlock to the gate so as to give the Okada and Korope unhindered access into the estate because you think the residents want to be collecting your stipends from them. Is that the case?
No. We later found out that they had already started collecting the revenue from those Okada riders and ‘Korope’ buses. Do you want to kill the local government? No matter the stipend the local government is getting from these people, it’s still something and this is not what we are using to maintain the roads in that estate. They insisted that if that was the case, they wanted to be locking the gate but we said they could not be locking it, that the estate was not a private estate. We said, ‘if that is another problem that you think is an issue, let’s profile them like we’ve always said. If you don’t want them, we can send them away.’ They said they didn’t want it to be done like that, that they wanted to handle everything. I said ‘there is no way you can handle it on your own; you can only work with us.’
There was a sticker that was given to us by the state government that all gates should be left open and only locked around 10 or 11 at night. I told them that if the problem of paying security men was their issue, they should not worry, that we would put our own security men there, but they said no. They locked the gate at a time time, causing traffic; people were complaining that how could they be locking the gate?
This place leads to other areas. They want to have their own parallel government as if there is no government in place, we can’t tolerate this. I went there myself; I asked the engineering department working with me to remove the padlock. This gate leads to Opeki, which leads to Ipaja and this gate leads to Oke-Odo and other local governments, so they can’t be locking it.
What has been the reaction of the CDA in that community?
I told them that they should come and register as a CDA because we don’t even recognise just an association that is not registered under the local government. If you register as CDA under the local government, your name will be at the state level too, so that we can be working together, but they refused.
What they are trying to do is run a parallel government and this has been on even before I assumed office as the Chairman. We have the letters of the AERA people; even those from the former AERA Chairman are with us. They were even trying to bring our government down, that we were not doing anything. Abesan Estate is not the only estate in Mosun-Okunola; we have Gowon Estate, Jakande Estate and other estates. About four, five people in the association are the ones writing petitions against the local government; they are petition-writing specialists.
There is nowhere they don’t know them, at the federal level, the House of Assembly, the Governor’s Office, everywhere. We all know we have security challenges, so we must work together to fight it.
