Senator Phillip Aduda Has Failed FCT, Says SDP Senatorial Candidate Osho

Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) for the 2023 FCT Senate Seat, Olanrewaju Osho, has decried the underdevelopment of the capital city, Abuja, saying the current senator representing the territory, Philip Aduda, has failed the people.

Osho, in an exclusive interview with THE WHISTLER, noted that as the only public official elected by the entire territory, the elected senator of the FCT has to inspire the executive to work and deliver an Abuja that will be a model for other states.

He harped on the need to invest heavily in the transportation, education, health and tourism sectors for Abuja to accomplish its original purpose as the global capital of Nigeria and compete favourably with its peers across the world.

Osho, who reeled out his plans for the FCT if elected, promised to introduce two programmes, ‘Skill-Up Abuja’ – to provide one hundred thousand jobs for youths in 4 years and ‘Sport-Up Abuja’ – to help young people develop their talents, develop tourism and improve recreation all across the local governments in the territory.

“The senator of FCT is not only a legislator, but he’s also supposed to be an innovative executive mover, driver and inspirer. We know that other states have governors which do executive work. But the executive work of the FCT is merely bureaucracy, a minister that comes without a key performance indicator,” Osho said

“You know the governor campaigns, he says I will do this and that, but a minister does not campaign. So he does not really feel connected to the people or their development. So the senator of the FCT is the only elective official in the FCT that is voted for by the entire territory. So if he is someone that is innovative, creative and conscious, he will actually do legislative work and then inspire the executive, push them to work, the current legislator (Aduda) is not doing that.

“A lot of people are relocating to Abuja almost on a daily basis, because of the security issues, and most of them are youths. So we have two programmes for youth, one is called skill-up Abuja, it is a shame that Abuja is a developing city and then most of the people working here come from Togo and the Republic of Benin, our youths can do these works, so we are going to introduce Skill Up Abuja to provide a hundred thousand jobs for the youths in 4 years.

“The second one is Sport-Up Abuja, you know Abuja is a territory that has the national stadium, and then we are not producing sports champions in this place, through that we are going to improve recreation all across the local governments and then help our young ones to develop their talent, then tourism development.”

The SDP candidate who faulted the lack of a landmark tourism infrastructure in Abuja 42 years after its creation promised to build artificial tourist centres.

“I am so amazed that 42 years of Abuja’s existence, we cannot put our hand on anything and say this is our landmark tourism infrastructure. Look at Rio De Janiero you see Corpus Christi, look at Mexico you see Cancun, you see Ixtapa.

“Our Millenium city, a major construction that would have been a state-of-the-art infrastructure that can be compared with Dubai and Abu Dhabi, has been stagnated for the past eight years.

“So we are going to build artificial tourist centres, that can become something that people hear about and say ‘I want to come and see and then we can be able to generate employment for women and youths,” he added.

On his plans for education in the FCT, Osho said he will work with the bureaucracy “to see how we can scale up our educational infrastructure.

“For the past 42 years, Abuja has no government polytechnic or university that is driven by the FCT, University of Abuja is a Federal University. States like Lagos have three state institutions and we have people here who also need education, we have been building FCT Science and Tech University for almost 30 years now and it’s not still done, so we want to make sure that we fast-track development.”

Osho, who promised to ‘bring justice’ to the indigenous people of the FCT, expressed optimism that he will get the support of indigenes and non-indigenes during the polls on the 25th of February, 2023.

“FCT has evolved, the indigenes themselves have come to find out that we need someone that will represent us well, they are my people, I ran 4 years ago, I went to 111 villages in the FCT, I’ve talked to the people, they saw my passion, and they saw that these ideas I’m bringing are brilliant and they are simple things that are doable.For example bringing justice to the indigenous people of the FCT, that’s one of the programmes that we are bringing.

“For the non-indigenes, they know that this city is not supposed to be for a tribe, it’s supposed to be for all of us, that’s why it’s called the unity city of Nigeria, so they want to be able to live in a city that they are proud of, that can compete with at least, Kigali and Accra.

“So they feel my pulse, they hear my ideas and they feel that this is doable, as we are speaking to them every day, we are resonating with them. They want to see good leadership and we feel we have a very good chance,” the SDP candidate added.