Oyo 2019 : Olowofela Promises to Hold Regular Town Hall Meetings

THE All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for Ido/Ibarapa East Federal Constituency in the 2019 elections, Professor Adeniyi Olowofela on Saturday pledged to hold regular public town hall meetings with the constituents.

Olowofela, who stated this during his community outreach tour to some Communities in Apete in Ido Local Government Area of Oyo state, also promised to have an open door policy to encourage open communication, feedback, and discussion about any matter of importance.

“It has become imperative for me to pe­ri­od­i­cally ren­der account of stewardship as well as in­ter­act with my constituents on di­verse is­sues of gov­er­nance. The town hall meet­ing will assist my re­solve to run an all-inclusive government in which no one or segment of the so­ci­ety would be left behind”, Olowofela said.

The House of Representatives candidate further noted that the forum will also provide a steady plat­form for the constituents as well as other key stake­hold­ers to be part of de­ci­sion mak­ing process in the constituency.

“This, of course, is the haecceity of democ­racy. For any demo­cratic sys­tem to be truly about the peo­ple, it is critical that ev­ery demo­crat­i­cally elected lawmaker con­stantly re­lates with the cit­i­zens on key is­sues of gov­er­nance”.

The ex- Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology also added that the peo­ple re­main the bedrock of democ­racy and as such it is crit­i­cal that their views on gov­ern­ment poli­cies and pro­grammes are care­fully and sys­tem­at­i­cally sought from time to time. With this, it will be easy to work out strate­gic means to de­ter­mine ways of im­prov­ing the qual­ity of the cit­i­zenry’s so­cial life”.

The former council chief of Ido Local Government, who maintained that opin­ions of var­i­ous stake­hold­ers as well as res­o­lu­tions would be help­ful in as­sist­ing him to pri­ori­tise de­vel­op­men­tal plans across var­i­ous sec­tors of the constituency, also stressed that, besides help­ing his office to pri­ori­tise its ac­tiv­i­ties, the town hall meet­ings are equally expected to of­fer op­por­tu­nity for the peo­ple to be briefed about var­i­ous poli­cies and ac­tiv­i­ties of gov­ern­ment on a quar­terly ba­sis.

“This is quite im­por­tant be­cause where ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion is lack­ing, the cit­i­zenry are bound to take ru­mours, false­hoods, half-truths and mis­con­cep­tions as the gospel truth, es­pe­cially in this era of un­bri­dled so­cial me­dia phe­nom­e­non”, Olowofela said.