A few week back, the new Information & Strategy Commissioner in Lagos, Hon. Kehinde Bamigbetan was hosted at the City People Event Centre located at Gbagada, area of Lagos. He was celebrated by the organisation, as family and friends joined him for the celebration. Just before the event rounded up, members of the political desk of City People Magazine held him to a roundtable session during which he spoke about his life, journey into politics and the new task ahead.
Many don’t know that KOK has rich profile, having studied History & Political Science at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo) University), and Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Lagos. Bamigbetan has a track record in progressive politics. He was a member of Students, Representative Council of the University of Ife Student Union, 1984-1985; Public Relations Officer, UNIFE Student Union 1985-May, 1986; Chairman, Vanguard Newspapers Chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists [NUJJ 1991-1993, and a Second Vice Chairman of the Lagos State Council of the Union in 1999.
He cut his journalistic teeth at the Times Journalism Institute, Iganmu, Lagos and the sub-editing desk of The Guardian from where he moved to work at prestigious stables of the print media, such as Vanguard [Deputy News Editor], National Concord [Group Political Editor], The Punch [Head, Politics Desk], The Week Magazine [General Editor], Media Review, [Associate Editor], and The Country [Editor]. He is a 2003 Fellow of the Freedom House, United States (US) and served at The Newsday Newspapers, Long Island, New York State. He was a member of the World Bank Water Media Network till 2003 and participated in major conferences of the network in South Africa, Japan and the US.
His venture into political communications began at the office of the Governor of Lagos State where he served as Deputy Chief Press Secretary to the Governor from 2003-2005; and later Chief Press Secretary to former Lagos Governor Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, till May 2007.
It was his long association with Senator Tinubu that influenced his foray into partisan politics. In October 2008, he was elected Executive Chairman, Ejigbo Local Council Development Area and got re-elected in 2011, enabling him to run the affairs of the Council for 6 years. Highlights of his tenure include: Free meal and free uniforms for public primary schools pupils, universal free drugs, and two new blocks of 11 classrooms for the Ailegun and Aigbaka wards.
Others were first customary court, first modern abattoir, first jetty, a Primary Health Centre each for Ailegun, Ifoshi and Aigbaka wards, a 20-fountain water reticulation project, eight major road construction projects and six public toilets. On account of his tax reforms, he was decorated the United Kingdom Department for International Development [DFlD] GEMS 3 Tax Champion in 2014.
In July 2015, he became a member of the Lagos Executive Council as Special Adviser, Community and Communications. In that capacity, Bamigbetan ensured that community engagement was taken seriously by the Ministry. Consequently, in the last one year, no fewer than 12 monthly interactive sessions were held. While 6 were rotated among the traditional divisions, six were held at the state secretariat.
These sessions enabled the community leaders to have first hand knowledge of the policy direction of the administration and offer contributions as appropriate. It has become an avenue for policy makers of ministries, departments and agencies to test the viability of their plans and programmes and the response of the populace.
In clear recognition of this partnership Governor Ambode, in the last one year, has enunciated and executed community-friendly policies such as integration of the Community Development Associations into all government programmes, handover of 114 roads to the CDAs, handover of the management of generators powering the streetlights to the CDAs, directives to LGAs and LCDAs to ensure that monthly allowance are given to CDAs to power the lights, directives to all LCAs/LCDAs to meet.
up with annual subventions to the CDC inauguration/revival of the market committee comprising the Iyaloja of each major market in the LGAs/LCDAs, appointment of the CDAC chairman, Alhaji Tajudeen Quadri, to the board of the Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Corps to protect the interests of the communities.
Similarly, an improvement was also recorded on the performance of the media segment of the communities. The Monthly Community Media Forum, comprising over 30 print, online and electronic media reporting the communities became a valuable platform for the mass communication of the programmes of the government. A notable landmark in this respect is the advertising campaign of the achievements of the administration in the community media. This took to the nooks and crannies of Lagos State, programmes and achievements of government, riding on the shoulders of the local media.
Programmes that have benefitted include. Light Up Lagos, 114 roads, Bridges, traffic decongestion works and the massive roll-out of security structure to increase the resilience of Lagos as a megacity With the focus on adding value and enhancing delivery of efficient communications, the Office of Communities & Communications also inaugurated the Monthly meeting of Local Governrrnment Information Officers.
This forum established basic equipment that must be provided for information offices of LGA and LCDA and engaged sole administrators and Heads of Administration to ensure faithful execution. Other projects successfully executed include social media services such as Facebook and Twitter to sensitise more residents, using mobile platforms to receive complaints, the re-definition of information officers as Information & Complaints officers and the training of information officers in the management of modern mass communications.
A grassroot politician and human rights activist, Bamigbetan, has co-founded many Civil Rights and non-governmental initiatives, such as Journalists for Democratic Rights JODER, Journalists Against AIDS UAAIDSJ, and the Centre for Legislative Studies [CLS]. He is the author of a book, ‘Teacher, Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’ and co- wrote with Segun Ayobolu a book entitled: ‘Alake: The Writer as Strategist’.
He has also contributed to several academic and civic publications including Osun State: ‘Work in Progress’, published by Osun Development Agenda; ‘Asiwaju: Leadership in Troubled Times’, edited by Tunji Bello and Segun Ayobolu.
He is married to his sweetheart, Fatimah, and they are blessed with 3 children, Omokorede, Olumide, and Bamikole. Below are excerpts of the interview.
How has it been settling down as Information Commissioner?
I must say that it’s been a gradual process. Its not a strange environment, having been Deputy Chief Press Secretary, and Chief Press Secretary, and just recently a Special Adviser on Commission and Communication so it’s not been too strange. Secondly I have been in the cabinet and have been witness to many of the development that the ministry of information had to deal with either at the Executive Council meeting.
It has also made it easier for me and of course because of the principle of Collective Responsibility, which means that the Ministry is actually disseminating the work of the Government as a whole and I have been part of the Government. So all those have eased the process of settling down, but then coming in fully also has its own challenges, looking at the department, looking at the bureaucracy and trying to see yourself to the in-house culture, and see how you can transform it. So those are the basic things, but I think I have settled down now and we are set to roll.
Many don’t know that, you have been in Government since 2003. How have you been able to sustain your interest in all the various appointments you’ve had since that time?
I think my key Strategy is Creativity and Speed of Delivery in everything I do, to think outside the box, to offer what has not been offered before and to deliver in such a way that I can do better than others. That means I put myself under a lot of stress to standout. In the first place. I got into Government because they had issues then with Asiwaju in cartoon on refuse.
The idea was how to find a way on how to develop a kind of mutual relationship with cartoonist that would enable us to pass the message across that we are doing something about it, and I consulted on that project and it worked, we are able to convince cartoonist that we meant well and at that point in time, the PSP was been introduced to solve the problem permanently and so it worked, and that was the window through which I was asked to come on board.
So it started with been creative in solving a problem and as the deputy Chief Press Secretary we tried also to come up with various ideas to position our principal then Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu to position him first as a regional leader in South Southern Governors forum thing, and used that to move him as a national leader, and because we also had a client who had the energy and who believes in creativity,
it was easy to work with Asiwaju, the projection and attraction was excellent. So for me, I would say I’m one of the people who fought for this democracy and we have responsibilities to make sure that we deepen democracy, we make it from libra democracy of the Elite and turned it to popular democracy of the masses.
For us to do that, my coming into Government was not therefore in standard manner, but to radicalize politics, and handover politics to the hand of the people, for me to be able to do that, there’s some initiative that we have to do. That would hot be in a normal run of politics. The other thing of course, was the innovation of free meal for all the children in primary schools, not just that, we started giving free Uniforms in the first 30 days of our coming into office, all those things show that you are doing something extraordinary, we want to stand out from the rest, so all along, I look for what has not been done, think outside the box and deliver with speed.
As a new Commissioner in-charge of your ministry what specific areas are you looking to project your Principal better?
You see, one of the things we’ve done is to get feedback from the masses, and one of the things people says is that we have not been talking enough and you will see that since I took over, I’ve been talking on as many platforms as possible. we realized that 22 million people needed to know what we are doing.
So the idea is to keep talking and keep engaging people, let them ask questions and let them know how far we’ve gone and how far we still know where we are going, that way people come to realities and we don’t want to starve people of Information. We also recognise the role of social media in the dissemination process, and we know that right now we still have a long way to go to get more followership, we are going to grow it massively and aggressively in order to have a good social media presence. We have 12% of Facebook followership and that is about 2.9 million people that open their Facebook account everyday. So we have to get through to them.
And what about the Market Women. Of course we have Radio Lagos, that can serve them. We also use TV for middle class elements, we are using so many Channels to access people, because we know that we have to convince 22 million people to support our policies. It’s only when they are informed and convinced they will pay their taxes, only when they are convinced they will support us and obey the Government and obey our Laws.
So my business as the Commissioner for Information and Strategy is to break the challenge of annihilation and ensure the governor and the government comes together into a symbiotic relationship in which they can speak with one voice, as his Excellency Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode declared very clearly that he wants a government of inclusion, a government in which all hands are on deck, a government in which no one would be left behind, and he has demonstrated this in his character of his policies, going as far as Aboru to give them roads, moving as far as Ijedodo to give them road, making sure that in across Lagos State, there are 114 roads, making sure that our primary health care centres are well taken care of. There is no maginalization in his government, and that means I have a template to run on.
We have worked on markets, we just did market campaigns, we went into the market to disseminate government programmes in the market, and we are able to get feedbacks. For example, when we are talking of Lagos State employment trust fund, we took it to the market and we got the feedback from the market about how much should be the interest rate on Lagos State trust fund, so we are a grassroot people,
I’ve always been a grassroot person, I started as a Student Union activists of Ife, I moved into journalism I became Chairman of National Union of Journalist from there I went into libra party politics, and today I can tell you that when you enter Ejigbo, I’m a major grassroot force in that environment, so I’m bringing all this skill and experience into this job, and I can tell you Lagosian will have a better time, understanding government policies and supporting government policies. Governor said, this year Logosians will enjoy interrupted power supply.
Can you tell us about his plans towards achieving that?
You will agree with me that the disco have been operating but they are not delivering as expected of them. Just because the power that is generated for them to transmit, they made it very clear that if they have other means of generating power, they would be in a better position to transmit more energy and more electricity to us. So we started thinking on how to solve the problem, and because Lagos State has already embarked on Independent Power Project, presently Alausa is not powered by Nepa, it’s powered by a separate utility called, the IPP, including many of our hospital, court e.t.c are powered by IPP.
We have tested the capacity of Independent Power Project and we intend to generate power, to pass on to disco for them to distribute to the masses, especially the Artisans.
Your wife spoke about your strength and energy. What really makes you different, and keeps you going?
Because I do not define what I do as work. My work is my love. I took to my passion. So its not work for me. I love what I do, political communication, talking to people, understanding people, managing people, creating mutual relationship between public Institution and their public, I have always love to do that and I thank God, I have passed through so many people who have been able to show me the way, Mr. Dele Alake for example, when he was commissioner, I worked directly with him, so I know the type of Governance, I’ve worked with PR gurus like Uncle Jimi Disu, etc.
I have worked with so many people which has enable me to gather much knowledge and experience putting into this job.
So the first thing is for one to recognize his or her passion, so what I do is no work, its play for me… The only thing is that I need to try and rest making sure that the passion does not take too much of my strength, though my work is a challenging job yet I still love it. I always think of how to create a solution to challenges and that has also helped my brain to develop faster.
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