Akure — Mr Rotimi Akeredolu is the governorship candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) for October 20, 2012 election in Ondo State. In this interview, the former Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) President and one-time Ondo State Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General spoke on his ambition to replace the incumbent Governor Olusegun Mimiko. Excerpts:

After your emergence as ACN governorship candidate for October 20 election, some bigwigs in your party like Saka Lawal, Dr Olu Agunloye among others left your party for Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party(LP).


Do you think their defection may affect your chances?

I don't think any bigwig has left the party. Not as far as I know, except you mention names. Most of us have stayed together. But if you talk of somebody like Saka Lawal or Agunloye who have gone to the PDP and LP, none of the two is a bigwig. All I can say about Agunloye is that he has a trade mark. He has moved from the AD to PDP to LP to ACN and back to the LP again. One thing is certain; their exits cannot affect us in anyway. Before he finally left the party, most of his supporters had disagreed with him. In fact, he met a large number of his supporters in the ACN. He met them there and they supported him in his aspiration. So when he was leaving, they told him to go alone since he met them in their party. He is alone now. If he has any supporter now, that means, the one he came with from the LP. The analysis is so clear. And that is what we have been telling our people, that those who came to join your party and are leaving, cannot take you out of your party, the party is yours not theirs.


Many people within and outside the ruling Labour Party are of the opinion that there is no need to change a performing governor. What is your take on this?

Let me tell you, majority of the people in this state know that this government has not done anything to deserve being in government in the first place not to talk of continuing in office. This government has only succeeded in craving publicity and with the help of the media, been able to showcase what I will call cosmetic projects and the majority of the people cannot be fooled. I travelled far and wide in this state during my campaign to be the candidate of the ACN and after I became the candidate and all I can see was desperation for change because there is nothing to show as real development projects. I know, when the election comes people would vote for their preferred candidate. He cannot be fooling all people all times.


What prompted your ambition to become the governor of Ondo State after your exploits in the Bar?

Yes, I am so concerned about the economic development of the state and the well-being of the people. I can see that in this state today, people are disappointed and there is hardly anything anyone can point to as the gain of democracy in the past three and half years. There is no economic activity of any substance that anyone can point to and that has rendered the state comatose. That is one of my driving forces. Another force that is driving me is that there is no judicious use of the economic resources of this state and so because of that, I believe there should be a change and I have the capacity to bring that change.


Are you saying the incumbent governor has not been working at all, despite series of awards he has received so far from different people?

When we talk of awards, these are buyable items in this country. If I bring out my file, I can show you over fifty awards that I refused to buy. You purchase awards in this country. People send it to you every now and then and if you belong to that sphere you fall for those tricks. So if you have state funds to waste and you are the type, you get as many as you want. This government is only buying awards. For instance, how can the body of students give an award to a governor who has not been paying bursary or scholarship stipends to students or confer an award on such a governor? Of course, what happened was that some of their leaders were bought and the award followed. To me, those awards are part of the cosmetics we are talking about.


You recently called on unemployed youths in the state to register in your office here. What exactly is your plan for them?

There are many avenues to engage the youths in productive activities and we are going to explore quite a lot of them. Let me make a correction. What we are doing is to have them registered in their local government headquarters. They fill a form and identify their skills. They are not supposed to come here. Let me tell you, there are so many skills. By the time we come in, we are going to carry out the employment in broad fields but we are keeping the modalities to our chest now. We are certainly going to employ 30,000 youths immediately we come into office.


You were a leading member of the legal team that retrieved the mandate of the incumbent from the tribunal. What really separated you?

I am a lawyer and I did my best as a lawyer and that ended there. I have my own political fortune to pursue and if it is better served with ACN and ACN is an adversary to its own party, so be it. The thing is that both of us want to render service to our people. If he can use the platform of Labour Party and I use the platform of the ACN, I don't think there should be any problem. There is no parting of ways. Yes, political ways, because we are operating on different platforms.


There is apprehension in the land as we move towards the election date. The attacks and the trading of blames by political parties, what do you think should be done to make the state safe and the election peaceful?

I think the tempo has gone down now. I have been out in the field campaigning for the past two weeks and my convoy has not been attacked once. I give kudos to the SSS and the Police for maintaining security. They always stick with us and I think that probably has put the LP thugs in check. But that is not to say the LP thugs are not there. They are there and they enjoy a lot of cooperation, strangely from the police who have collaborated with them in a manner I condemn without mincing words. There are a lot of trumped-up charges against some of our members which the police help the LP engineer. When they get all these foolish complaints, rather than investigating the matter, and because they are working in tandem with the LP, they just arrest our members. They arrest first before coming up with trumped-up charges and every other one is an armed robbery suspects. The complaints are not even recorded in their books before they go for the arrests. They take this to the Magistrate Court which will refuse bail because it lacks jurisdiction. The arrested persons are then put in jail. The idea is to put them behind bars at all cost. A police that is worth its salt and deserves some respect from the people should know that you should not take people to court until they are investigated and found questionable.

Look at what happened in the US, somebody shot people and he was not arrested immediately. It was after an investigation was carried out that they went to his house to pick him. The Ondo State Police command is committing many atrocities in collaboration with the Labour Party government and we have succeeded in taking the matter up with the police authorities. We presented our case at a stakeholders' meeting in Akure recently, I was not there but the report I got from our people was that the AIG who came, Rahman Akano, appeared to be above board in his poise to maintain peace in this state. I was told he put it frankly to the Commissioner of Police that he should provide a level playing ground and that it is not for him to take sides in this matter. Speaking on what we should do to stop the violence and maintain the peace, I think we should campaign against it. The incumbent governor is moving with thugs; he enjoys seeing them around him. Every stakeholder should appeal to him to stop that attitude or else we will meet force with force and fire for fire.


What actually happened on the day of the ACN congress when your supporters clashed with LP at their secretariat?

What happened after the congress was they attacked us first. I was there and I can say it anywhere. That was the day I was elected and because everybody was joyous. Our movement from the venue became a procession of so many vehicles. LP did not believe it would happen like that. As a result, they launched an attack on us. There was this LP driver that was claiming right of way and after several appeals, he refused to yield. That was how the trouble started. I was right there. If they said they were not prepared for us, how did they get the many stones and bottles they hauled at us? But as God would have it, there was a lady who said was selling beer or minerals opposite their gates and unfortunately for her, her empty bottles were right there. The boys simply went there and started hauling back at the aggressors. That was exactly what happened. One of our people was shot in the back and two of the vehicles in the rear of the convoy were seized by the LP thugs. So when we got to our campaign office, our boys went back and secured the release of the two vehicles. That was exactly what happened. If that vehicle had allowed us to move unhindered, I think the problem would have been avoided. You don't have to block the road and say you are claim your right in that situation, I guess the fellow did what he did because we were ACN and he was LP. That was wrong.
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