A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State and chairman of the state Broadcast Media Group, Kunle Adebayo, puts the blame for the crisis rocking the party in the state at the feet of its national leadership. He maintains that the state governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, will survive the imbroglio. Excerpts:
What is your assessment of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu’s performance in office so far?
Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu has creditably discharged on the mandate given him by the people of Ondo State. One is, in fact, tempted to ascribe to him attainments which have surpassed the promises he made. This is because in a spate of two years, the plethora of deliveries is overwhelming and answerable to four years of other chief executives elsewhere in the nation whose performance rating is described in superlatives.
At a deeper level, I think the tangible success of Akeredolu must be viewed in terms of his politics and governance ideals. I think what Akeredolu has brought into politics, which stands for him, is integrity. Far more than the experience of the preceding years, the people are beginning to witness and believe in the bond between word and intention. At least, people now know that this governor will not lie to you. His word is his bond and he says what he means and means whatever he says.
In every sense, this is critical, defining and antithetical to the leadership tutelage that once ravaged this place.
The governor has been in the eye of the storm with the Presidency and national leadership of the party on matters bordering on anti-party activities during the last general elections. Isn’t this a factor against whatever achievement he can lay claim to?
Narratives in politics are dynamic and, sometimes, a struggle of evil and mediocrity to suppress excellence. In other climes, truth is constant and stands tall with a capital ‘T’. But here, politicians put a condition that all truths are according to who is saying it and at the pleasure of the listener.
All the furore you talk about is about the politics of 2021 in Ondo State. It is about struggle for power. It is about supplanting the governor so that other preferred candidates can be installed. And if you look deeper, you would see that this is an unpopular but well organised and highly coordinated machination which seeks first to gain oxygen and confidence by puncturing Akeredolu’s popularity with the people of Ondo State as well as among party members who are proud of the deliveries of their government to the people.
But there are allegations that party members are dissatisfied on account of neglect and lack of patronage to the extent that many have vowed to vote against him at the next primaries. Is this not also true?
That is strange and laughable. Of course it falls in the category of the wishful thinking of those who do not wish our party and state well. Against the background of resources available to the state, this government has created baskets of patronage for members, in terms of appointment, economic empowerment and employment opportunities. A sizeable number of young people have been appointed into key offices in government, while some hold federal appointments. A large chunk of the empowerment programmes has attracted opportunities for women and youths as well as other strata of the party.
No doubt, more can still be done. There is also problem of leadership irresponsibility by group leaders who are supposed to take the largesse to the grassroots. Limited exposure, greed and self-conceit by a few leaders are regrettable. But all these must be taken in the broader context of managing institutional challenges within a young party. And let me tell you, there is never a party which members are 100 per cent happy. But I know, as the head of the Strategic Development and Policy Planning Committee, which helped produce the Government Policy Blueprint, that Mr Governor has a deliberate, staggered and progressive plans and programmes to elevate patronage and satisfaction laterally.
How do you defend the allegation that the government sponsored candidates in the Action Alliance (AA) to the detriment of President Muhammadu Buhari and other APC National Assembly candidates?
Protagonists of such theory are dishonest and mischievous. They gave themselves away as bad democrats and pretentious leaders who must never be trusted. They rationalise coercion and imposition as democracy when it pays them and de-market people’s will when it defeats their cunning.
The truth of the matter is that our party did not do well in Ondo State and many others, including Osun and Edo, because of failure of its leadership to respect its own laws and internal democracy.
It was a matter of national disgrace that primaries of our party across the nation were fraught with irregularities and allegations of fraud, imposition and manipulation. It was embarrassing and frustrating that candidates were freely imposed from the national secretariat of our party, while results of genuine primaries were manipulated with impunity. This, undoubtedly, led to serious crisis in many of our strongholds, with attendant effects on the election results.
You see, people trivialise common sense by assuming simplistic explanations for matters of conscience and emotions. The narrative that Akeredolu sponsored Dr Tunji Abayomi and a few others to join the AA to undermine the APC is calling the dog a bad name in order to hang it.
Abayomi contested for our party’s senatorial ticket, but the powers-that-be ensured that the primaries never held. They boasted and imposed a candidate who never went through legitimate primaries. They announced, in a very crude and blatant manner, a winner in a contest that never held.
It was not only in Ondo State that such deprived and humiliated aspirants like Abayomi defected to AA and other parties to test their popularity. And now, they looked for a scapegoat for the mess they created. Does the temperament of Abayomi, as we all know him, or any true Ondo State man, accommodate a remote control by anybody on what to do with his frustration? Is Abayomi a child or a simpleton? Was he and others not members of the APC? Does he have rights to be angry and take personal decisions, if he feels insulted, cheated, robbed and humiliated?
Is it true, as alleged, that the governor openly campaigned for and financed AA candidates?
I have always argued that in Nigeria, there is nothing a politician will not do to win election. Let’s face it, people just love to spew narratives which defy common reasoning and which diminishes the humanity in other people. The inability of some of our leaders in APC to allow democracy work, without helping it for personal reasons, is a big challenge in our nation’s party democracy.
When crisis of confidence, frustration and anger happen in a party, shouldn’t a genuine and humble leadership activate a mechanism for appeasement and genuine reconciliation? Where this was not done, does it mean the governor must carry the blame? One would never have expected that a political party this endowed and talented would be run like this.
It will be interesting to see their evidences of those who alleged beyond mouthfuls of words.
Some have argued that the manipulation that put Akeredolu in office in 2017 is the cause of the wide division in the party. Is that not so?
The background of organisational challenge which affected the fortunes of our party in the last elections was laid in 2016 during our governorship primaries. Those, like one Bola Ilori, who are now promoting sycophancy, think people are naive or oblivious of history. Everyone remembers that Akeredolu won the primaries, in spite of our national leader, Bola Tinubu’s open partisanship and preference for Dr. Segun Abraham.
It is no news that Lagos deployed all possible resources, including funds, power, threats and manipulation of documents, to control the process. It was common knowledge that dollars and other hard currencies were freely expended to induce voters for Abraham who eventually lost.
For an election conducted by very eminent and respected party leaders, headed by Governor Mohammad Badaru of Jigawa State and which our party publicly adjudged as freest, fairest and most transparently done as of that time, the open attack, vehement denigration and letter writing spree from Tinubu against the then chairman Odigie Oyegun’s forthrightness showed that some people are bad losers.
Loyalists of Akeredolu have also alleged that Tinubu was masterminding his travails, with the aim of blocking his nomination for a second term. What is your view on this?
Those who have said that find its logic in the dangerous undercurrents since 2016. Was it not before our very eyes that three of the aspirants (Olusola Oke, Abraham and Borrofice) suddenly made a U-turn to challenge the winner, Akeredolu, whom they had earlier embraced and congratulated? Was it not an open secret that Abraham was co-opted into litigation against the winner, while Oke was inserted into the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to contest the election in the desperate bid to stop Akeredolu, thereby working against the interest of their own party? Have we forgotten that Oke was heavily and openly supported by Lagos through the Governor Rauf Aregbesola, who literarily took over the campaigns through Bola Ilori? Ilori was reported by the media, on September 3, 2016, to have openly announced that Tinubu instructed them to go to AD and that they would go to any party, including AA, if Tinubu said so. Did anyone pillory Tinubu, Aregbesola and many others for these nauseating anti-party activities? After the failed excursion and Oke became stranded in AD, did they not bring him back into APC; did the heavens fall?
The point I am making is that the seed of disaffection, injustice, instability and manipulation were sown in the party since 2016. It failed then; resurgence is happening now. It will fail again, because God hates pretenders to His throne.
Will Governor Akeredolu defect to another party, should he lose APC’s nomination?
Our party is strong and reliable. We respect our leaders and all of them are men of tested reasonability. In spite of all these democratic activism, I do not think our conversation will degenerate to that level you insinuate. What is going on is conversation about power and politics. They are internal contradictions in the party that are useful in interrogating our strength and resilience. We will resolve and Governor Akeredolu will lead the state for another four years.