Speech made by the Guest of Honour/National Chairman of ACN, Chief Bisi Akande during the commissioning of Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s Lagos Central Senatorial District Office, REHOBOTH HOUSE at 293, Herbert Macaulay Way, Yaba, Lagos on June 12, 2012.
I feel pleasantly honoured for being invited to this occasion as the Guest of Honour and for the commissioning of this building. I have always known Lagos to be a land of unlimited opportunity for the progressive party. In April 2011, Senator Oluremi Tinubu was elected as a distinguished ACN member in the National Assembly to represent Lagos Central Senatorial District in the Senate. We all know her to be a devoted Christian. She created this place, this Lagos Central Constituency Office, and she is now naming it REHOBOTH. In the Bible, Genesis 26 verse 22, in a place called Rehoboth, Isaac said: “Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land’’. Generally, among Christians, Rehoboth is a place of enlargement and flourishing.
In all representative democracy, the polity is usually subdivided into geographical units within which the electorates elect their representatives. These distinct territorial sub-divisions are constantly christened electoral divisions or districts. They call them ridings in Canada, electorates in Australia and New Zealand, or constituencies in many democracies including Britain. We also call them constituencies in Nigeria. They are also usually called wards for the purpose of municipal elections. In Nigeria, however, the constituency of a Senator is also called Senatorial District. Therefore, Lagos Central Senatorial District Office is the same as Lagos Central Senatorial Constituency Office.
In the US, through the district or constituency offices, elected representatives spend much of their time serving the voters and residents within their constituencies many of which may be 2,000 kilometres away from the Congress in Washington. While still working on legislation at the National Assembly in Abuja, to facilitate better service to constituents in Lagos Central Senatorial district, Senator Oluremi Tinubu is now establishing an office that would be staffed suitably to handle complaints, on her behalf, from the people of this constituency.
Senator Oluremi Tinubu has, first and foremost, been known as a loyal and pretty wife to Senator Bola Tinubu in Lagos. She subsequently became a devoted mother in Tinubu’s family. Those who interacted with the couple in exile and back in Nigeria, in the last eighteen years, will agree with me if I describe Senator Oluremi Tinubu as a generous chef and a smiling steward to all guests in her home. We began to appreciate her mobilisation efforts when she assumed the position of the First Lady of Lagos state. At the centre of her love were the promotion of the education and the welfare of the youths – some of whom became a “One-Day Governor” of Lagos State, sharing the same desk with her husband.
It has not been surprising or unexpected to most of her admirers, therefore, that Mrs Oluremi Tinubu eventually became a Distinguished Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. With the opening of this Senatorial Constituency Office, Senator Oluremi Tinubu is trying to demonstrate that being a woman can still enhance the possibility of creating REHOBOTH – a place of enlargement and flourishing opportunity for progressive politics in Lagos state.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are fortunate to have a woman of this irrepressible capacity for noble deeds in the ACN and I am praying that Lagos state, indeed Nigeria, will be blessed with many more of Oluremi Tinubu for the service of humanity. With your support and cooperation, I am most proud to hereby commission this building – better known as Rehoboth House.
May God bless the aspiration of our Lady Senator.
May God bless you all.