WAKE UP: How we took Ondo State into ‘One Chance’ supporting Rotimi Akeredolu as Governor

By BASHIR ADEFAKA

“March 9 is state House of Assembly elections.  I call on the APC leadership to as a matter of urgency work out a working partnership with any available party contesting even if it means PDP working  in the blood of APC to fill the State’s Legislature with lawmakers whose loyalties are to the State but not Saraki or Judiciary Corruption.  That is all I can say for now.  The rest will be concluded within the APC caucus and, as smart politicians, they know better than I have said. I apologise to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.”

I hope those of us who fought from within and afar to ensure Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu win the Ondo State governorship election of Saturday 27 November 2016 have not taken my father’s home state of Ondo into a one chance? He assumed office as elected Governor of Ondo State on 24 February 2017.

‘One chance’ is a yellow commercial bus-like vehicle used by armed robbers to rob unsuspecting passengers in Lagos State.  That menace is however getting cleared from the Centre of Excellency, thanks to sustainable security measure put in place by successive administrations of the state from Military Administration of Brigadier General Muhammad Buba Marwa, improved upon by successive civilian administrations of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) and Mr. Akinwumi Ambode of late.

Whereas we that supported Akeredolu at the expense of our reverence for Asiwaju Tinubu did so because, one Ondo State is our place of birth and indigeneship.  I particularly owe a duty to protect Ondo because I am not just an indigene but largely a prince of Isolo community ruling class within the Akure Kingdom encompassing the state capital.  It is the reason I don’t mind whose ox is gored whenever it comes to defending the royalty that gave birth to me including that of the Deji of Akure.

What was Tinubu’s offence that attracted my attention?  In 2012 while campaigning for this same Rotimi Akeredolu as Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) Governorship Candidate, he made derogatory and unguarded comments on Chief Olu Falae, who any non-bastard Ondo State person would protect like one’s biological father.  I felt insulted to see Tinubu campaign in Ikare Akoko during one of the Akeredolu’s campaigns at that time issuing those unkindly words at Falae for supporting Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, who was vying for a second term in office as Labour Party (LP) governorship candidate.

Tinubu was not the only problem.  Akeredolu himself proving to be religious bigot was part of it.  He had boasted that without the Ondo State Muslims he would win free, fair, and squarely.  I was speaking, I remember from both the newsroom of Vanguard Newspaper where I worked at that time that “This man Rotimi Akeredolu will not win.”  It wasn’t as if I was trying to claim the prophethood that I am not qualified to be.  But, against many insincere claims by people who pretend not to know that it is because of religion that we exist in this world, my connection to religiosity is not in doubt to anybody who knows me so well.  Good to note here that even my Editor-in-Chief of Vanguard, then, Mr. Gbenga Adefaye, not only loves me for being serious as a Muslim but also as committed Akure, Ondo State son.

Therefore, whereas Tinubu offended us in Ondo State because of his relegation of Chief Olu Falae, my father’s in-law and husband to younger sister of my father’s good friend and Afenifere Leader Chief Reuben Fashoranti, Akeredolu incurred our wrath for relegating the Ondo State Muslim Community as meaning nothing in the state.

By the time Akeredolu, in 2016, after having emerged from the controversial governorship primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC) held in Akure on 3 September 2016 precisely on my birthday mark, he had been miles apart from Tinubu.  The situation from the angle of usual Yoruba way of “bo’ba o paa; bo’ba obuulese” (meaning: if you meet him kill him; if you don’t meet him, take his foot print) and particularly at a time Tinubu and his other Yoruba supporters were making a claim we hate to hear that, “Tinubu singlehandedly installed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015”, this formed part of the grievances and we needed to prove that “once Baba Asiwaju has noticed that President Buhari indicated that he had interest in capturing Ekiti and Ondo and he was keen about who would emerge as governorship candidate of APC, he should have come down to work with him for the successes to be achieved.”  We therefore took the Akeredolu’s problem with Tinubu to mean persecution for being one of the Abuja Boys and we needed to prove a point.

However, whereas Chief Olu Falae let us down by dillydallying with a party we all agreed had failed Nigeria and dragged us in the mud of corruption, insecurity and economic backwardness, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu caused us the painful damages of letting that same PDP take charge of our fathers’ state due to his own self-centredness, to the extent that we now see him not for once being a Buhari’s loyalist as thought.  Akeredolu, we can now confirm, is mainly a loyalist of the man we just successfully ensured his downfall as enemy of Nigeria, Bukola Saraki.  No need to me to begin to tell what offence did Saraki commit.

Yes, the last APC primary elections were not without huge rancorous.  But Akeredolu was not the only one affected.  Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun, Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha, Zamfara State Governor Abdulaziz Yari, Minister of Communications Abdulraheem Adebayo Shittu were also affected in the injustice they claimed to have been caused by Tinubu using the National Chairman APC, His Excellency Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, to perpetrate against them.  Those other governors Amosun, Okorocha, Yari and Minister Shittu have delivered their bases for Buhari and other APC candidates but Akeredolu, the man on whom President Buhari invested much in term of capacity, ensured that the President not only lost presidential election in Ondo State but also, National Assembly legislators that should make the work easier for his Federal Executive Council and Presidency – away from atrocities of Saraki who we now know Akeredolu to be loyal and working for – he made them lose to PDP.

It is so bad that whereas I, along with others, delivered not only my polling unit in my wife (Basirat’s) Ogun State where I relocated to vote on Saturday 23 February 2019 but also went on delivering the Ward, Local Government, Federal Constituency and State for President Muhammadu Buhari, I am still unhappy seeing the results of elections coming state of my crown.  That is despite that I, along with others, also delivered my place in Lagos.  Akeredolu has now completely ruined my joy of Lagos where I live and Ogun where I work hard to make my wife proud for me as he made my joy turn sour over Ondo State in the elections outcome.

My findings show, “That Akeredolu’s attitude is not unconnected with corruption in the judiciary and the roles played by many Senior Advocates of which he is one and also a past president of the NBA. Sincerely, most of those who have been President of the NBA in the last 10 or 12 years are not clean at all.”

Through another investigation I gathered that Akeredolu’s anti-party activities were on the high side ahead of this ongoing general elections.  Not as if Amosun and Okorocha did not openly declare support for a smaller party to score a point with Tinubu and Oshiomhole, but they did not allow their personal interest to cost the collective interest of ensuring Nigeria is retained in the hands of President Muhammadu Buhari as against PDP’s Atiku Abubakar.  Not so of Akeredolu, who decided that he would not work for APC senatorial and House of Reps candidate like Tayo Alasoadura, Borroface and the rest of them.  Therefore, he closed his two eyes to the consequences throwing both the bathwater and the baby.  Too bad!

But Akeredolu will pay dearly for this.  He should have known that President Muhammadu Buhari is our collective project in Nigeria.  He is a professional law person.  But we, professional journalists in a bid to make Buhari succeed in keeping on with fixing the Nigeria of our father, pushed professional barrier aside and worked hard to push for PMB. Rather, from what I gathered, Governor Romiti Akeredolu, who President Buhari singlehandedly pleaded with Ondo State people to vote for even against the interest of some other APC leaders, has shown PMB that he can do it alone and he is doing it now to the best of his own personal destruction. He must pay dear for it. 

March 9 is state House of Assembly elections.  I call on the APC leadership to as a matter of urgency work out a working partnership with any available party contesting even if it means PDP working  in the blood of APC to fill the State’s Legislature with lawmakers whose loyalties are to the State but not Saraki or Judiciary Corruption.  That is all I can say for now.  The rest will be concluded within the APC caucus and, as smart politicians, they know better than I have said.