The governorship candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the Osun State governorship election, Olajide Esan, has pledged to return governance to the people if elected on August 15.
Esan made the promise during the Arise Television town hall for governorship candidates ahead of Saturday’s election, where he outlined his plans for improving accountability and citizen participation in governance.
The AAC candidate said Osun had suffered from a lack of genuine leadership despite having many politicians, arguing that leadership should be centred on service rather than the exploitation of the people’s challenges.
“Osun state deficient of leadership. Even though we have too many politicians, but we don’t have leaders because leadership is all about service,” Esan said.
He accused politicians of exploiting poverty and other challenges confronting the people, saying his administration would seek to reverse that pattern by giving residents a greater role in governance.
“If I would be going into my vision, what is important to me is to give governance back to the people, because instead of leaders to be serving the people in Nigeria, especially in Osun State, it is the people who are serving the leaders,” he said.
Esan said his administration would establish an Osun Resident Database to provide government with accurate information about residents and help in planning and delivering services.
“Part of the plans we have, we have what I call Osun resident database. This database will give us the opportunity to have the information of Osun residents and to also be able to put the right things in place for Osun people,” he said.
He also proposed a financial dashboard that would allow residents to monitor government spending and demand explanations where public funds were not properly accounted for.
“Financial dashboard will give Osun people the opportunity to monitor and to track government spendings, so that if one error happens, they can call me that youth governor. Where is our one naira?” Esan said.
According to him, greater transparency and accountability would discourage politicians from treating governance as a business venture.
“Accountability is very important. Because the lack of accountability is what is making politics a lucrative business to career politicians,” he said.
Esan added that the proposed measures would ensure that government became more responsive to residents and make it difficult for those seeking public office for personal gain to continue operating as usual.
“Once these things are there, it will no longer be business as usual for those who actually want to serve the people,” he said.
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