The Lasting Legacies Of A Senator

By Dimeji Daniels

In a little over a year in the Senate, Senator Babafemi Ojudu has come to distinguish himself, through his lasting projects, as a radical departure from the usual order. On being inaugurated as a Senator, the first thing he did was to initiate the Initiative of Babafemi Ojudu for Leadership Development (iBOLD). The objective of this is to groom a new generation of Ekiti leaders  the state and the country would be proud of, and to achieve this, he instituted an annual essay competition for youths in the state, the first edition of which was held in February.

The top 5 that emerged from the competition were given huge sums of money as scholarship and brand new laptops to aid their learning. Currently, the overall winner, Adeyanju Abiodun, is using the money to fund his law school education while the student that came second, Ayedun Taiwo, is in Israel in furtherance of his medical studies. Definitely, these youths can never forget Ojudu’s impact in their lives.

In a similar fashion, Ojudu last  Friday, 27 July, commissioned a women development centre, named after his mother, in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital. Besides giving grants to women, the centre will address all issues affecting women and will also serve as a research institute for those conducting researches on women and women-related issues. This centre also has a medical unit which will be operating as a mobile clinic that will be paying periodic visits to local governments in Ekiti Central to offer free medical consultation and care to women. This is taking into cognisance the stress a woman goes through on a daily basis, especially rural women who do all sorts of strenuous work without bothering to go for medical check-ups, either because they cannot afford it or they consider it time-wasting and irrelevant. The medical unit of ROWDEC, apart from offering free medicare, will enlighten the women on why and how to take their well-being seriously.

According to Babafemi Ojudu, the centre is not just a delivered campaign promise, but an institution that will outlive him. Already, the centre has a board of trustees that will ensure its growth and see to its smooth running.

On the same day that the Raliat Ojudu Women Development Centre (ROWDEC) was commissioned by Senator Oluremi Tinubu, wife of ACN National Leader, 570 women (10 from each ward) were given grants to start small businesses in line with the objectives of the centre and to prove that it is not just another on-the-pages-of-newspaper project. By this, Ojudu is blazing a new trail of lasting projects, as opposed to projects that do not last for a year, not to talk of a four-year term. Ojudu is simply distinguishing himself as a politician who would rather teach people how to fish, one who believes in building lasting legacies.

As is commonly said, when you empower a woman, you are building a prosperous future and by extension, empowering a nation. For a woman, her children are the pivot of her life; whatever she has, she dedicates to grooming them into successful adults. Whatever empowerment she enjoys is invariably transferred to her children, and these are the ones that would later take the reins of leadership.

This awareness was the basis of Senator Babafemi Ojudu’s empowerment initiative for women in his senatorial district. True to his promises, Ojudu built and commissioned a women development centre, and on the same day he doled out grants to 570 women in Ekiti Central, running into millions of naira.

The women could not hold back their joy. It was too good to be real! Adorned in ankara attires bought for them by the lawmaker, they were ferried down in buses provided by Ojudu to the State capital where the event took place. One after the other, they collected their empowerment funds after they had been lectured on how to start small businesses with the funds.

Speaking at the event, Senator Ojudu told the women how his late mother, Raliat Ojudu, trained him through the sale of garri which was financed with micro-credit loan. He told them that their dream of training their kids into successful adults is realizable through self-discipline, endurance and hard-work.

Also speaking, wife of ACN National Leader, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, enjoined the beneficiaries who were selected from all the 57 wards in Ekiti Central to let discipline be their watchword as they trade with the grants.

US-born motivational speaker and an expert in women empowerment, Mrs Patricia Omoqui, while speaking on the occasion, promised to use both her national and international contacts to ensure that the centre grows into an enviable institution of repute.

The women development centre, like the Initiative of Babafemi Ojudu for Leadership Development, is another lasting legacy of the Ekiti Central representative in the Senate. We hold our breaths to see what he does next!

 •Daniels wrote in from Ekiti. E-mail: [email protected]