Alhaji Moshood Olayide Abas a former local government chairman in Oyo State and the acting state chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in this interview with YINKA OLADOYINBO, spoke on efforts of the party at reclaiming Oyo State in 2007 among other issues. Excerpts:
There has been silence in the camp of the APC in Oyo State, is it because the party is not in government
What type of silence because we have been active? The APC to which I belong has not been silent; we have been doing a lot. There were a lot of crises within the party during the last general election which made us to lose the election, but ever since, and we have been trying to resolve them and bring the party members together
So what has the party been doing to resolve those crises?
You have a chairman on board who happened to be the chairman of the reconciliation committee between 2001 and 2004 for the party, that was the time of AD, AC to ACN, you know what it means if such a person becomes the state chairman, he will know how to handle crises and that is what we have been doing
Are you now saying the crises have been completely resolved?
I won’t say completely, but to a large extent we are now together, my own mission is to bring unity to the party and that is what we have achieved, at least we have the crises resolved to 90 percent.
So when should we expect complete reconciliation in Oyo APC?
There can never be complete resolution of crises in any political party, I just gave a figure of 90 percent resolution, it can even be more than that. However, I have met almost all that are involved, including the gladiators, I have met with them and those that left because they felt they were cheated are all back in the party.
In Oyo state today, there are some top-notch members of your party alleged to be working with the PDP administration in the state. What do you have to say to this?
This is not peculiar to the APC. What I see nowadays is that what we used to call political parties in those days have been turned to markets, not only in APC, even in PDP, people go about for transactions in markets and when they don’t get what they want, they move to another market, but we have been trying to see that all those that have gone to other parties return to the APC fold
Don’t you think that can affect your reconciliation efforts when federal lawmakers have slots in opposition government?
That is why I said we are making efforts to build a party now and not a market, which is normally called a party before, for those that have returned to the party we have made them to see reason to be loyal to the party, what caused that one is because we don’t have party, people don’t follow the principle of party organization. Now there won’t be handpicking or imposition of people in our party, we are not going to tolerate that, everything we want to do will be transparent for everyone to see, not only that, we would have set up a reconciliation process for those that may not be favourably disposed to whatever decisions that must have been made, so that they can move along with us.
There has been the agitation that the Federal Government is not treating the party members fairly well over political appointments.
I can assure you that we have been trying to reverse the trend and definitely the trend is going to change, that is the only thing I can say about that.
Don’t you think some of the policies of the federal government that are inflicting pains on Nigerians can have negative effects on the performance of your party in the next election?
It all depends on the level of those thinking in that direction, Nigeria, before the coming of this administration, was like a building that is collapsing and when a building is collapsing the occupants will have to suffer when the building is to be rebuilt, that is what is happening now. The present government is not doing things so that we will not have hardship, but the present hardship is meant to set the process for the incoming generation, what is being done now is for the future of this country, we have to be patient so that our children and grandchildren don’t face what we are facing now, so definitely we have to suffer a bit, so it is a process of rebuilding a house that is about to collapse
But many have argued and asked that for how long are we going to suffer before the country becomes better based on the policies of the Bola Tinubu administration?
The rebuilding is a process, we have to all bear the suffering before we complete it, if you have a house been constructed and you say the sun is shining on you and the rain is falling on you. But we don’t have to continue to complain about that, is it the government that is unfair? Are we having good citizenship in the country? We should have good citizenship before we talk about good governance. It is not only government that is making life hard for the people, but selfish Nigerians contribute to it.
The opposition PDP has been in government in Oyo State for over five years, what can you say about their efforts to develop the state?
Do we have any good governance in Oyo State since the APC left? If you look at it from the grassroots, I have been a council chairman in the old Ifeloju local government, if you go there you will see me as a model 90 percent of everything there are attributed to me, so any government that doesn’t allow local government to exist has killed the grassroots and that is a major factor contributing to the poverty rate among the people. When I was local government chairman in 1990 to 1992, I built roads, schools and hospitals and they are still there, those of us that have been local government chairmen before know that you can bring development to the local level if you allow local government to function. I am talking about the time we had people like Wole Oyelese, Sharafa Alli and co as chairmen, local government was working then.
But apart from the local government issue, what about other indices of performance and development in a state, what can you say about that?
Without autonomy, without virile local government, you can’t achieve anything. Of all other indices, nothing to show in Oyo State, you can recall when APC was in government you know what was achieved, you can have anything to say about former governor, Abiola Ajimobi but he developed Ibadan and this is not what was happening. About some days ago, the governor went to Eruwa, saying he was commissioning a farm settlement that has been budgeted for over three years ago;
In our own area I can say that there is no government, I don’t know if people are seeing governance in other areas. So you cannot have any development without giving anything to the local government.
After the Ondo State governorship election, the national chairman of your party, Abdullahi Ganduje, said the party is coming to take over Osun and Oyo states.
He doesn’t have to make that Statement before we believe that we are going to win back Oyo State, it is only those that are not in our party that won’t think in that direction, the governor in Oyo State knows he can’t win if not for the crises in APC then, it was the crises that gave him chance because at that time we didn’t even believe Seyi Makinde can win any state assembly seat because we so much have belief in the people with us.
Are you now saying that Oyo APC is ready for 2027 election?
Why not? Not that we are ready, we are winning in 2027, we have done that before, I was privy to it, we took it from them to give Ajimobi victory. And if you see the last local government election you will know APC is more popular in the state and that was why they didn’t allow ballot boxes to reach polling units and they went to write results and declared themselves winners without election. We know ourselves, who is in PDP today that I don’t know? With the caliber of people we now have in the APC around here and those we have outside, I am assuring you we are definitely bound to win and take back Agodi Government House to continue where late Ajimobi stopped.
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