To my newly elected legislator.
Dear Sir,
Congratulations on your inauguration as a house assembly member. I am sure you understand your victory is entirely due to the total dissatisfaction of your constituency with the parties that were previously representing them. It is important to bear this in mind because in 4 years time, they will be called upon to vote again for or against your representation. Would you want them to return you as their representative or is one term good enough for you? Winning in a free and fair election against a non performing party is the easy part. Performing is the hard part.
I cannot say for certain what drives people to seek elective positions but if you read some of my earlier write ups here you will agree with me that there will be publicly stated reasons and also private and secret reasons which only the candidate knows and is often afraid to even tell himself. Be that as it may, I am going to assume that you entered into this fray to amongst other personal objectives to leave a legacy and to amass wealth and to go onto higher office. As I tried to describe in one of my write ups, a legacy is the respect and the influence that you retain when you are no longer in office or even when you are dead. It is inscribed in the hearts of men and not built on atoms or electrons. Simply put, legacy is not just about roads or buildings but about how the life and outlook of people have changed. The legacy of Christ has survived for at least 2000 years. Who remembers the Pharoahs that built the pyramids?
In this missive, I recognize of course the fact that you are not in an executive position and do not have direct control of budget or treasury. You will also have to contend with the many other office holders who are competing to create a legacy, amass wealth and aspire to higher office. What I can promise you is that if you endeavor to leave a legacy, you will also amass wealth and be assured of higher office.
How is that going to be possible you may ask? That is the subject of this missive. Simply put, you will have to either directly or indirectly impact the lives of your constituents in a way that meets and exceeds their expectations. And in doing this you will also amass wealth.
If we recall Maslow hierarchy of human needs, every human has needs that graduate from basic physiological needs to the highest need for self actualization.
You will have to understand this hierarchy of needs to be able to meet and exceed the expectation of your constituency. Your constituencies expectation is for you to greatly impact and alleviate the cost of their meeting the needs across the hierarchy. Since you can’t realistically meet all the needs, your performance will be rated by how much you have reduced these costs.
When we refer to these costs we mean costs in terms of resources expended in the course of meeting these needs. The costs in time, money, effort, goodwill and angst. In your position, you cannot adopt a finger pointing posture but clearly and visibly move heaven and earth to reduce the costs. The resources expended include money, time, influence, goodwill. Funny enough, these are the same costs you will incur in making the impact and exceeding the expectation the constituents have.
Let us start from the basic physiological need of food, housing, clothing, health, water and even defecation. In your constituency today, the cost of food is pretty high. This has come as a result of the decline in food production in your constituency and the high cost of transportation occasioned by the lack of roads. It is a shame that all the Federal and state programs to stimulate agriculture has not reached anyone in your constituency. I would suggest that you use your own costs as previously described to bring these programmes home. This will definitely require you to engage with the implementing agencies, engage with your constituency and all stakeholders to resuscitate agriculture in your constituency. Agriculture will supply food and also raise incomes which has a way of impacting all other needs. Imagine that there is at least one beneficiary of a government agric loan or other agric support in each of the wards in your constituency all facilitated by you?
The roads in your constituency are an eye sore and has been so for a long long time. You will need to attract constituency projects from the state and from the FG to repair and rebuild all the rural roads in your constituency. Constituency projects are for sale at state and Federal levels and the projects going on in Gbajabiamila’s constituency are an example. It behoves you to engage all the communities and all the contacts at state and Federal levels to attract these projects and to partner with the state and FG to build them. I am sure all the communities will be willing to contribute labour and even materials to support government to quickly fix the roads. I must remind you that speaking out will not be sufficient , you have to deploy your own resources ( money, influence, goodwill) to make it happen and to make it visible that you worked tirelessly to make it happen.
Your constituency also has a dearth of functioning primary and secondary health care facilities. And even the ones that exist are outside the reach of the vast majority of your constituents. Once again, you will have to deploy your resources to attract state and FG projects in this area. You will also have to deploy your resources to inspect and monitor the quality of services being delivered and to mobilize your constituency to support these facilities. You will need to deploy your resources to bring the state of health services in your constituency to the notice of NGOs, foreign governments, international organizations like the WHO and UNICEF and notable people in the constituency for interventions and programmes. Every household should be vaccinated, have treated mosquito nets, live in clean surroundings. Houses and environments need to be fumigated at intervals. Everyone in your constituency should be enrolled into an HMO and possibly a group life insurance scheme.
The same strategy of attracting investments from state, FG, NGOs , World Bank and other international organizations can be deployed to provide basic decent housing for every family in your constituency. By energetically deploying your resources, you can have a huge impact on the basic physiological needs of your people. Properly done, these will be long lasting impact that cements your legacy and makes re-election a foregone conclusion.
And each of these interventions opens opportunities for you to invest and reap significant rewards. If you attract agric intervention, you can also setup an agric enterprise that can benefit directly or indirectly. A produce trading company can be an off taker of the agric products and make significant gains by reselling or processing the agric output enabled by agric intervention. A transport company will benefit from better roads. And of course landed property will quickly appreciate.
Security of life and property is next in the hierarchy of needs. Security here does not just mean security from brigands but also security from oppressors and from agents of the state. Hon Akin Alabi in Oyo State has established a free legal representation service for his constituency with lawyers on call to bail them out from unjust arrests and to provide them with legal defense against both the state and oppressive neighbors. This is a great example to follow and you can always get volunteer lawyers as well as NGOs to support this. You can also spearhead the organization of none lethal security apparatus in your constituency in collaboration with the various towns and villages. None lethal security apparatus provide intelligence, alerts and surveillance. For instance a none lethal security apparatus can quickly raise alarm if towns and villages are attacked or there is a plot to disturb the peace. You will have to also deploy your resources to create partnerships with your constituency, the state and federal security agencies to enable them properly police and patrol the constituency. I doubt if there is regular security meetings in your constituency. I know there is no formal or informal way to report security incidents. I cannot recall of any instance when your predecessor in office engaged with your constituency all through the period of Fulani invasions and unknown gunmen invasions. You will have to be different.
Security also includes health which we have discussed and financial security. Financial security starts first from financial literacy and then extends to hedges against loss ( insurance ) and opportunities for further earnings. I will advice that you invest your resources in bringing these to your constituency. Financial literacy programmes run by NGOs especially targeting women should be held on regular basis in your constituency under your auspices. Pension schemes and life insurance schemes and health insurance schemes should be made available to your constituency under your auspices. Your constituency should be aware of all government interventions and programmes in these areas and bringing in NGOs to run supportive programmes will be required.
Your constituents have love and social needs, or more importantly they need to feel that they belong. They need to feel they belong in their communities , in your constituency, in the state, in the country and in the whole wide world. How can you make them feel they belong? That their voices are heard? And that they are seen at all the levels. The first thing to do in my opinion is to have a constituency office in every ward. Use these constituency offices to accept petitions, suggestions, applications and to create a continuous engagement with the people , not just stake holders. You have to become the man of the people and not the man of the party or the man of the stakeholders. This is critical. Opportunities will come for people to be employed or to receive scholarship or to enjoy any of the discretionary benefits that come from time to time from government or her agencies. It is your responsibility to spread those benefits beyond the circle of relations, party members or stakeholders. You will also need to hold audience to hear your people and to bring them feedback and update on your projects , your efforts and also the functioning of government. You will need to gather their input into your debates in the house and also educate them on the decisions of the house. You will also invest in bringing them into the sporting, cultural and other activities of government. Getting delegations of your constituency to meet with the Governor or commissioners or other heads of MDAs or to sit in during debates and hearing in the house will also help increase the sense of belonging. So will sponsoring or co-sponsoring constituency wide cultural and sporting events. A cultural dance competition. A football competition. A schools debate competition. All these enhance the feeling of belonging.
At the highest level, your constituents need to fill the need for self actualization. The need to be able to aspire to your position or even higher. They need to be able to aspire to higher economic levels and higher educational levels. How are you going to help them? You will have to promote people from your constituency to positions within the party, within the government, in the state and federal civil service, in the state and federal educational and research institutes. You have to aggressively target and count as your accomplishments the entrance and rise of people from your constituency in as many positions and in as many industries as possible. You for instance should invest in teaching people how to prepare their CVs and write application letters. You should become a source of information on vacancies, source of information on bids and general purveyor of opportunities for self actualization for your people.
Like I said at the beginning, if you build a legacy in the minds of people then you have a shot at immortality. I have only given you a brief insight on how to do it but I am sure you get the general gist. This has to be intentional and organized from your side. I am sure you know that deep down people will know who is truly their representative and who is just a waste of their vote. And as Gov Ugwuanyi of Enugu State found out, they will show it when they have a chance.
Congratulations once again.
