What Paddy Iyamu’s House of Reps Membership Means for Oredo People
By Hassan Otinau PhD, Mass Communication, UNIBEN
Oredo is not just a place.
Oredo is the heartbeat.
It is Benin, where the crown sits, where markets sing, where culture wears bronze and smiles, and where the dreams of our youth rise like morning sun over Ring Road.
In a city that holds the soul of Edo, silence is too loud.
Oredo deserves a voice. Not a whisper. A voice that resounds in the marble halls of Abuja.
If Hon. Paddy Iyamu bears Oredo’s banner to the House of Representatives, then let the drums roll.
It means Benin’s story will no longer be told in the margins. It will be written in the budget.
It means when the nation’s purse is opened, the roads that carry our mothers, the Federal Secretariat that employs our sons, UBTH that treats our sick, and the palace that guards our heritage will sit at the table of remembrance.
Oredo will not be an echo. Oredo will be the hand that signs.
It means light in the eyes of the young man hawking at Oba Market, and strength in the hands of the woman arranging her wares at Ekiosa.
It means the graduate in Ugbowo will no longer send CVs into the wind, and the artisan in New Benin will see tools turn into trade.
Skills will come home like rain after drought. Grants will knock and stay.
NDE, NITDA, BOI, SMEDAN, will learn the name Oredo, and spell it with opportunities.
Jobs will walk our streets. Hope will feel like a neighbor.
It means a voice that can call down the clouds of ecological funds, that can beckon on the Ministry of Works to mend our broken paths, that can walk with NDDC until Oredo’s roads no longer drown when the sky weeps.
It means movement without mud, and business without barriers.
It means our citadels of learning and healing will breathe with new air.
UNIBEN, College of Education, UBTH, jewels already on Oredo’s crown.
Now picture more scholarships dropping like blessings, more bursaries finding poor but brilliant children, more machines in UBTH saving lives, more federal health care reaching the last street.
Education will wear new clothes. Health will walk with dignity.
It means peace will be planted where fear once grew.
In the busy veins of Oredo, security cannot sleep.
It means federal hands joining ours for community policing, youth programmes that turn energy to enterprise, and a Benin where traders close late and students walk home unafraid.
A city alive, not just surviving.
And oh, our culture.
Oredo is the keeper of Benin’s memory, the guardian of bronze and beads.
With the right voice in the House, the Benin Royal Museum will shine, our arts will travel, and tourists will come with cameras and leave with stories.
Jobs will bloom from our history. The world will see Oredo as we have always known it — royal, rich, radiant, and ready.
This, at its core, is about bringing Abuja to Ring Road.
About ensuring that when the national cake is cut, Oredo is not given crumbs, but a full portion.
The measure will be in laws written, in projects planted, in oversight that watches, and in a bridge built between government and the governed.
But hear this clearly:
With Paddy Iyamu in the House of Reps, Oredo will not just be represented.
Oredo will be heard. Oredo will be seen. Oredo will be felt.
