‘Oyo gov election will be based on personality’

Ladoja lacks moral right to accuse any govt of wastage, says APC 

A RETIRED Army General and the former boss of Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), Ajibola Togun yesterday declared that the next month governorship election in Oyo State would not be based on political party partisanship, but on personality and ability to deliver.

   Togun, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state, gave this verdict in his Saki, Saki-West Local Council Area of the state country-home in a chat with reporters after playing host to the state gubernatorial candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the next month’s election, Seyi Makinde.

  The SDP governorship hopeful was on his campaign of the entire Oke-Ogun area of the state during which he was visiting all the critical stakeholders ahead of public rallies in the communities.

   Togun, who served during the administration of the former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) said the job of rebuilding the state was not about any political party in particular but  about the person who could do the job.

  He said he had found Makinde capable and competent for the job having listened to his programmes for the people of the state and his contributions to the socio-economic empowerment programmes so far, using his God-given personal resources.

   He reminded his visitors of what happened in 2011 when the candidate of the PDP for the presidential election, Goodluck Jonathan won with land slide in Lagos, the home base of the defunct ACN.

  According to him, “voting pattern in Nigeria today is beyond party affiliation”, adding, “the competence of individuals will determine how the people will perceive them during the election.

Only the SDP and its candidate had contacted me for support and I hereby promise to give total support to the party and its candidate.”

  Makinde’s campaign train also visited Ago-Amodu and Sepeteri, both in Saki-East Local Council where thousands of party supporters received the team just as the team was received at Oje-owode.

  At the palace of the traditional ruler of the serene and agrarian community, Oba Abdul Rasheed Oyinloye gave his royal blessing and admonished the party to help in the rehabilitation of his palace and the abandoned transmission station for the state radio station.

    Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state has declared that the gubernatorial candidate of the Accord Party (AP) and its leader, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, lacked the moral right to accuse any government of wastage, just as it described the former governor a serial liar whose political gambit is to confuse the people with unsubstantiated lies as a way of getting cheap place in their hearts. 

  The APC in its reaction to the allegation of wastefulness and project abandonment levelled against it by AP said that it was either the AP was being mischievous or naïve.

  In a statement by its Director of Publicity, Olawale Sadare, the APC said Ladoja and AP “are either too naïve to realize the country-wide economic recession which is incapacitating all states in the federation from achieving their lofty aims or it is too blindfolded by its politics of hate to know that Oyo State, as much as it tries to swim out of this economic issue, is not an island.”

   Stating that the Government House banquet hall, which was constructed almost three decades ago, needed to be rebuilt so as to save the state the exorbitant cost of hiring event centres for government activities, the APC said that when government put the further reconstruction of the hall side by side payment of workers’ salaries in the state, it opted for the latter.

  “Today, our state is not owing December salary to any of its workers, it is on the verge of paying them the January salary. The Technical University too had to be suspended because our partner in Texas expressed reservation about the state of insecurity in the country,” the party said.

  While maintaining that the famous maxim that he who comes to equity must do so with clean hands, the APC said that while Ladoja was in government, he had a history of abandonment and shoddily executed projects.

   He added: “When Ladoja claims that he had a history of building factories, he forgot to add that they were poorly conceived and became a drain on the state purse. For instance, the burnt brick factory he claimed to have constructed at Oloba area of the state had no access road to it and the refurbished machines brought to the site grounded to a halt barely months after commissioning.

  “Again, the fruit juice factory he sited at Oko as governor never produced a droplet of juice till today because the processing line is non-existent and had substandard laboratory equipment. In the same vein, the so-called garri processing factory he brought to Igbeti never produced a grain of garri for a day because the oven that was constructed for the exercise was not lagged and became very risky to operate. Oyo State lost billions of naira on an expedition of futility of the Ladoja government due to his shallow understanding of industrial construction.”