If it is not broken, there is no case for replacement. That is the quiet logic now travelling through Oshodi-Isolo Federal Constituency II, and it is why the endorsements gathering around Hon. Barr. Jesse Okey-Joe Onuakalusi are less a campaign slogan than a constituency verdict.
The man constituents know as Hon. Okey-Joe has spent this term treating representation as a delivery job, not a title.
Roads that residents use every day have been brought into the conversation and, in several places, into repair: Community Road in Okota, stretches linked to the Mushin/NNPC corridor, and adjoining streets including Falana, Kogberegbe, Akinbaiye, Ehingbeti, Abimbola, Cowbell Road, Kamoru Adeyemi and Jimoh Faronbi. Transformers have gone to communities such as Segun Awolowo in Ejigbo and Ajoke Okusanya in Okota.
Solar street lights have been installed across Okota, Ago and other neighbourhoods. Solar boreholes, classroom blocks, desks and learning materials, free JAMB registration, medical outreaches and empowerment support for women and young people sit alongside the concrete work.
None of this erases every bad road or every dark street. It does show a representative who listens to Community Development Associations, traders, artisans and residents, then pushes agencies until something moves.
On the floor he has not been idle either. As a member of the 10th House he has sponsored and co-sponsored bills and motions on local industry, drivers’ welfare, vocational and technical education, child rights and related matters, while serving as chairman of the Nigeria–United States Parliamentary Friendship Group and vice-chairman of the House Committee on Internal Security.
The point is not the count of bills. It is that constituency work and legislative work have run together.
Survey and opinion poll conducted now placed him at about 95 per cent on a community infrastructural development reading of the constituency. The figure is best understood as a local scorecard, not a laboratory index. Even so, the remaining 5 per cent is the strongest argument for continuity, not for a reset.
A 95 per cent record means unfinished drainage, streets still waiting, schools and clinics that can still be improved, and youth programmes that can be scaled.
It also means the method is already known: ward visits, project facilitation, pressure on FERMA and state agencies, and a constituency office that constituents can find. Starting over would trade that method for promises.
Oshodi-Isolo II is a working constituency of traders, transporters, artisans, professionals and young people who measure a lawmaker by whether the light comes on, the road holds, the borehole runs and a child can sit for an exam.
On that measure, Hon. Jesse Okey-Joe Onuakalusi has shown what purposeful representation looks like. The endorsements he is receiving simply say what many constituents are already saying: keep the man who is still working on the last 5 per cent.
-Daily Buzzwire
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