Chief Sola Ebiseni, Secretary General, the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere and candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the Ondo State gubernatorial election, in this interview with YINKA OLADOYINBO, speaks on the preparation of his party and governance in the state.
Ondo State governorship election comes in a few weeks, what’s your assessment of the chances of the Labour Party?
Well, the same time counts for all political parties and contestants. The advantage of Labour Party over other parties is that our vision, philosophy and programmes are clear and well articulated. Labour Party ruled this state for eight years from 2009 to 2017. The projects executed within the period are virtually the only ones still seen in every cranny of the state. My deputy governorship candidate, Dayo Awude, is my ideological soul mate and colleague as Commissioners in the Labour Party Government of Dr Olusegun Mimiko.
Are you not concerned that the controversy that surrounded your candidacy has slowed you down and will affect your chances?
With all respect, I am surprised that you expect any political contest devoid of controversy. My candidacy which received affirmation by court is the most solid and reminds me that at the beginning of my political journey in 1990, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) purportedly disqualified and refused to publish my name as the candidate of the SDP and I had to sue the electoral body, even under the Babangida military rule, before my name was published and I invariably contested and won the election as the Chairman of the old Ilaje-Ese-Odo Local Government at the age of 30. In the similar vein, the INEC has now published my name in obedience to the judgement of the Federal High Court Abuja. It is solid and incontrovertible.
But other parties have settled and put the issue of the primaries behind them.
This is a voyage of wild assumptions. On the contrary, there are other political parties and candidates with legions of insurmountable and even fatal crises. In some parties, there are known questionable and scary academic certificates, including deliberate withholding of records which are already in the public domain. There is also problem of mass exits of top-flight aspirants and eminent leaders of the parties while in some others disdain for the quality of the candidate has alienated his co-aspirants from rallies such that recent immigrants are now called upon for rescue, while silence of the graveyard permeates the tabernacles of the aborigines. The next three weeks or so are most crucial; the sun is still hot enough to make clothes dry as they say.
You accused some people of migration but you also migrated from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the LP after losing the former’s governorship primary?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming anyone for his or her political choice. If you look across the parties, all the aspirants who have been in politics at least since 1999 have moved from one party to the other. I am not a recent member of the LP. In the first government ever formed by the party from 2009-2017, I was Chairman of the Ondo State Law Commission, twice as commissioner, nominated as Federal Government delegate at the 2014 National Conference and during the 2023 presidential election, I was the South-West coordinator for the LP OBIDATTI presidential ticket and a member of its legal team to the Supreme Court. Here, I am at home.
The Labour Party today is different from the one that former Governor Olusegun Mimiko used to win election in the state, how possible do you think the present LP can repeat such feat?
On the contrary, Labour Party today is more known, stronger and has the best credentials before the electorate. You were here as the state correspondent of the Nigerian Tribune and will agree that Labour Party in Nigeria and this state before the governorship election that brought in Mimiko was, in terms of electoral presence, only a registered political party. Today, it is one of the three leading political parties in Nigeria and in this state. As I said earlier, the unprecedented achievements of the Labour Party Government in which both my running mate and I were senior members as commissioners give the party comparative advantage over all other parties contesting this election and you know it.
It is not about what I know because I am not the electorate in Ondo State?
Maybe, I am calling you as a witness to the unforgettable feats of the Labour Party government in this state. Our campaigns are strategically tuned to reminding the people that education up to secondary school level was absolutely free with the state government paying WAEC registration fees which the present government refused to pay and created monumental national embarrassment for our state. Tertiary education was highly subsidised such that school fees in our polytechnic and universities are at the maximum of N20,000; it is presently close to N 200, 000. Our mega schools will speak for us, students are not likely to forget that bursaries were last paid in 2016 at the end of the LP administration, parents will remember our free bus shuttles for pupils throughout the state and vote for us. Mothers won’t forget that their deliveries in our hospitals were free of charge compared with about 250 thousand naira today. Our first class mother and child hospitals and other health facilities in every ward and rural communities are the only medical outreaches seen in most parts of the state. Since our departure none has been added to the modern markets we built in the crannies of the state, roads infrastructures, the University of Medical Sciences and other first class facilities attached to it like the Trauma Centre and Gani Fawehinmi Diagnostic Centre all of which have been neglected by the present administration are speaking for us. Incidentally, these projects are easily identifiable with their Labour Party orange colours.
In terms of experience, candidates of the PDP and APC are former deputy governors and that of the APC being the incumbent governor. How do you stand against them?
I don’t like talking about individual personalities; I will leave such assessment to the people. However, I can tell you for free that since Ajasin, Olumilua, Adefarati, Agagu, Mimiko and Akeredolu, the people of Ondo State have set the standard of the quality of the governor they usually elect and they know the current gladiators and our deputies with our pedigree and credentials in the public domain. In addition, they know the offices we held, our behaviours and performances therein. The people are not likely to forget that the roles played by the two deputies of the late Rotimi Akeredolu, to the extent that one of them even defected and contested against him barely two years into the administration. Since the departure of Akeredolu how many of those close to him were retained in government even with over 400 new political appointees? Some top civil servants perceived to be disloyal in the power struggle know that they are only being tolerated till the end of the election. Experiences of Akeredolu in the hands of his deputies are worse than Baba Ajasin had with Omoboriowo. Their chickens have come home to roost and the verdicts of the people will be unmistakably decisive.
The election is coming up in three weeks’ time and your camp seems to be too quiet making people to have the feelings that you are not serious about the election?
I won’t contest your assessment but will consider it a spur to do much better. In addition, as I told you earlier, our modus operandi is not the conventional which appears to be your template for assessment. Ours is the party of workers, artisans and critical stakeholders often seen but not allowed to be heard, yet strategic in the electoral equation. We are not in the business of what you call campaign flag off where you bring your party members to the capital campaigning to them, where official cars and sycophants dominated the space. We are re-engaging the people in our own strategic and effective ways.
How would you describe the impact of the APC government in Ondo State in the last eight years?
A monumental disaster! The obvious good intentions of Akeredolu were subverted by the belligerence and disloyalty of those in government with him. Akeredolu was a man of conviction, prodigious intellectual capacity and stupendous courage of his conviction. He launched the Amotekun Security Corps even when it did not receive the blessings of the Federal Government, he flagged off the Ilaje-Lekki Lagos coastal road, his successor now celebrates award of contract for one kilometre concrete foot bridge. Politics apart, the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway by the Tinubu administration is the most visionary project for the people of Niger Delta. The Ondo State portion of about 100kilometre and longest shoreline, ordinarily stands to benefit the most, particularly in area of coastal investments and management of coastal erosion but available maps of the alignment show that the road may not appropriately traverse the Ondo coastal portion. All efforts by leaders of thought from Ondo State, particularly the people of Ilaje Local Government to ensure justice have proved abortive. The Governor has been indifferent. I personally called his attention to this issue by sending a message to him in May suggesting a meeting with the people like in other places for the attention of the Federal Government. Only in Ondo State has the Minister of Works not held a meeting with the people on the proper alignment of the road. We need a Governor with the proper understanding and clout to make things work.
As the secretary general of the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, don’t you think the organisation is gradually losing its relevance and voice in the country and the South-West in particular?
Afenifere remains the most veritable voice of the voiceless not only in the South West but in the Nigerian Federation. It charted the path of true federalism as the appropriate philosophy of governing Nigeria and its entrenched diverse nationalities. Its established four cardinal of free education, free health services, integrated rural development and gainful employment gave western region the early advantage and remain the template for governance in Nigeria. Check the leadership structure of Youbaland, you will agree that Afenifere is a training institute for leadership directly and indirectly from where most of us have graduated.
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