Opposition will form the next government in Ondo State
– Sola Ebiseni
The Secretary General of Afenifere, Chief Sola Ebiseni has declared that the opposition will form the next government in Ondo State. Speaking to journalists at the Akure Airport on his way to Abuja on Thursday, Ebiseni who recently declared his intention to run for the governorship of the state in the election coming up in November this year said the signs are quite clear that the people of the state have rejected the ruling APC no matter who eventually emerges its candidate.
According to the leading PDP candidate, at no time in the history of Ondo has any political party or government been so inept and rudderless as the present situation in Ondo State, adding that the politically sophisticated people of the state are merely tolerating the present uninspiring administration to the end of its maximum eight years.
“Ondo State is unique in the election of its governors. From Ajasin to Adefarati, Agagu, Mimiko and Akeredolu, Ondo State has been ruled by juggernauts; men who rose through the ranks, well bred in learning and their chosen professions and groomed in the crucible of political incubator. Ajasin, Adefarati, Agagu, Mimiko and many of the South West Governors of their era including Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu now the President, were clearly mentored by the Afenifere and their vision determined by its intellectually grounded philosophy. Not many people knew that Dr. Olusegun Agagu was a silent university don in the academic cadre of Afenifere and in fact one of those who computed and synthesised the raw field figures for Ajasin’s victory at the election tribunal in 1983. These men paid their dues in vision and action and you feel proud of them in the comity of other leaders anywhere. That’s the standard by which aspirants will be measured by the people. Governance is about vision applicable in the development of people and the society.
On his assessment of the state government, he said “Nigeria is a federation and notwithstanding the state of the national economy, every state should creatively design its own plans for the welfare of its people. That’s what we are used to in Yoruba land even when for decades we were in opposition at the federal level. Nothing is happening here now, not even with the extra billions released to the state on account of the fuel subsidy removal. All the inherited people-oriented progressive programmes of the previous administrations in health, education, environment and community development, have either been abandoned or barsterdised. The buses acquired by the Mimiko administration for free movement as part of its salutary education policy was misused and abandoned by the present administration and after much public pressure they were recently brought out without the decency of being repainted. The most innovative people-friendly Mother and Child hospitals are gone and the mega schools taken over by weeds and in states of disrepair. I recently visited one of our leaders on admission at the Trauma Centre Ondo and was shocked that such enviable referral centre was a shadow of itself, the entire premises in darkness and we had to lobby for pillows for our patient. Such special agencies of development, like OSOPADEC, established by the visions of the Adefarati administration cannot point to a single project in eight years, our forest resources developed since Western Region and continually regenerated by past governments are continually and wantonly depleted. The truth is that the people are fed up with the APC in its government in Ondo State.
Check our political history, whenever the people are fed up with any administration, they queue behind a notable opposition figure, who meets our standards, to rally the opposition parties including like minds in the ruling party, to mobilise the people for the rescue operation. The process has begun in earnest through the PDP.