Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Jones vows to beat Amosun for Ogun State Central seat

By Seye Olumide
13 February 2019   |   3:54 am
Despite the internal crises rocking the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ogun State ahead of Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections, the party has also a formidable opposition from other parties. For instance, the candidate of Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP) for Ogun Central Senatorial District, Olumide Jones, has said he would trash the…

Despite the internal crises rocking the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ogun State ahead of Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections, the party has also a formidable opposition from other parties.

For instance, the candidate of Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP) for Ogun Central Senatorial District, Olumide Jones, has said he would trash the incumbent governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, who is also contesting the seat.

In an interaction with The Guardian, Jones said he is contesting on ANRP platform for the Central Senatorial seat because the two major political parties and their representatives have failed the Nigerian people.

According to him, “There are no dividends of democracy of any kind in the zone despite collecting huge amount of constituency project’s allowance in the last 20 years of democratic rule. I have the vision to bring in functional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in every facet of professional field that would contribute to the development and growth of the zone apart from the constituency allowance if elected.

“Ogun Central has a history of having the first church and a great relationship with England through the Church of England or what we call the Anglican Church, yet we have not leverage of those relationships.”

Although, Jones conceded that to defeat Amosun in the race might look impossible, the prevalent rate of hunger and poverty associated with APC’s style of governance “has distanced the electorate from the party and therefore makes it vulnerable to be beaten, which I hope to cash in on.

The fact is APC has made deliberate attempt to make our people live below poverty level since 2015. Several interactions I have had with our people show that they want a change from the status quo.”

He also hopes to deplore his experience in technology to impact positively and engagingly in constructive legislative business on behalf of Ogun Central Senatorial District people if elected.

Jones, however, said the only way the old political order could be changed is for the people to get actively involved in voting and also standing by their votes on Saturday.

While he expressed confidence in the leadership of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), saying, the leadership means well, Jones said, “There are some bad eggs in the commission who may likely compromise the system.

“INEC has built a robust back end for polls but it needs to update the front end of both their Card Reader system and realtime updates of results. The umpire is not there yet but there is room for improvement.”

On what he plans to achieve, Jones said, “For the first time we are talking to our people, identifying their needs and making them know their allocations from the government. Most citizens of Ogun Central Senatorial District do not know what resources are allocated to their district. For example, they are entitled to N530 million, which runs to billions of naira in four years. This can achieve major projects. Apart from the fact that electricity is a general challenge in Nigeria, I discovered that the issue of good transformer is a big problem in that district, but we are promising that any bad transformer would be replaced not lesser than 14 days if information gets to my office.”

The ANRP senatorial candidate also promised to embark on local enterprise projects to help the people. He also plans to facilitate emergency hospital intervention fund to the area.

0 Comments