Running for Office in 2023
When I wrote this in 2018, if you had told me I’d one day be running for office, I’d have given you a resounding and vehement objection from my core. I fit even vex for you. I was more about being an active citizen and teaching other young people to do the same.
But 22 months down the line, I’d seen a need to do more, I wrote this other article then. At this time, I knew I had to do more for Nigeria and had decided I was going to run for office. I didn’t think it would be in 2023 though. I was thinking I’d take my time and build slowly. I came to realise though that there was no time better than the present to try to #TakeBackNigeria.
So here I am today publicly declaring my intention to run for office in 2023. I will be running for a seat at the state house of assembly in Ekiti to represent the Ikere II constituency.
Why exactly am I running? Two things:
- I believe that the only difference between the poor and the rich should be luxury. It should never be access to quality, basic human needs. I have dedicated myself to reducing this inequality, to reducing this man made problem of poverty. It’s why I started Aspilos Foundation.
2. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing”. I’m sure you very much agree with me when I say this has been the case of Nigeria and most of Africa. We have taken a back seat doing nothing and allowed evil to triumph.
I said earlier I started Aspilos because of my desire to help the poor but doing that by working in the civil/non-profit space in Nigeria was a daily frustration. This was because I saw that we could only at best spot treat issues. The largest institution everywhere in the world is government and it’s the only institution that can bring about change at scale. The work of NGOs thrives only when our counterparts in government are those who are ready to learn and do the work. The work of NGOs is super important and needs to be done but if we don’t have the right set of people in government to listen when we call on them to act right or to provide an enabling environment for us to work in, we will make progress but it will be painfully slow.
Case in point, Aspilos Foundation has 4 AboCoders academies across the country: Abuja, Minna, Abeokuta and Kaduna but the place where we have reached the most people (despite it being our 3rd one) and where setup was easiest is Abeokuta. This was simply because there was one individual in government, an SSA, who when we approached him swung into action and threw the weight of the government behind us by giving us a training space free of charge and helping recruit beneficiaries. In about a month of meeting him, AboCoders Abeokuta was up and running. In other places, it took us months to get off the ground and it’s even still a daily struggle after all this time. Imagine if we had that sort of support in all states. It goes to underscore the point that there is so much we can achieve together when we have the right people in government.
Therefore, combining my passion for the poor and my decision to no longer allow evil to triumph, I decided to switch from NGO to GO. I got too angry that I could no longer sit and watch evil and impunity remain the order of the day without doing anything. So here I am taking the plunge to run for office. Fingers crossed.
