Ladilu of Oyo, Chief Oyebisi Ilaka, has criticised the administration of Governor Abiola Ajimobi for not having the necessary ingredients to transform the state.
Ilaka, who lost the 2015 Oyo Central senatorial district election to incumbent Sen. Monsurat Sunmonu, spoke while baring his mind on the Ajimobi administration in the last six years and sundry issues.
According to the Accord chieftain, “There are two things; we have a very intellectually ineffective and a very lazy government. You are not opening new roads, Oyo state is such a massive place, if you travel wide in the state. All what we have is theft; we have an unseen situation whereby the civil servants are not paid. One point in time the governor talks about restructuring the education sector, it wasn’t particularly such a bad idea, but as usual, it was not done properly. Because he should have met with the original stakeholders before going public with the plan. You need to see the decay that is in education in the state.
“They should have said, first and foremost you have to sit down and ask yourself, what kind of education system do I want? cost it. what other stakeholders can I bring into play to assist in achieving this; it is now a collective dream or agenda.
“It is actually disgusting that Oyo State come around 29th position in school certificate and NECO. Outside Lagos State and the proprietors of private’s schools in Oyo state; if you take them out, we would be like the 36th. Oyo State is supposed to be the education Mecca of this country. When they talk about agriculture, it is a lip service. Even if they say they are the disciples of Awolowo and they believe in rural development, integrated development of rural areas, what have they done?
“Why you do not see too much revolts in Oyo State is because food is cheaper because you have rural roads that was put in place by Awolowo and successive governments.
“People begging for money in Oyo state, half of the time, they want to use it for another thing, not to eat because a lot of them know where they can go and ask for garri and they would give it to them. We need a government where everybody can work together; I think that that would end the administrations that has failed the people.”
Speaking on the rumoured alliances by opposition political elements in the state, he said “everybody has the right to say he want to become even the president of Nigeria, but you know when the time comes, people would begin to make more realistic decisions.
“Let’s remove the individuals and look at the general structure. If you want to see where a party is, then you have to go to the House of Assembly. then, you know whether the party is there or not there. In the Oyo State House of Assembly, APC has the majority, followed by Accord, then Labour; there is no body from PDP and SDP, that is the composition and this are the people representing the 33 local governments of the state.
“But, we also know that our politics is aggressive. The APC is in government now and other parties would want to unseat them. you can’t divorce what is happening on the local scene from what is impacting in the national scene.
“Someone says all the major parties would break up and reform. The APC has the tension that cannot be resolved. In the candidates that come out from Oyo state, for example, if you look at them, and you screen them; when you look at them in different terms, there are people who believe in the power of Abuja to resolve certain things for them and they are those who believe in going to Agodi thinking that things would be resolved for them; and there some people who are hoping that if it just scattered they would be able to grab something.
“On the other side of the equation, the largest people of the PDP belongs to the Makarfi group, those who belongs to the Sheriff group would not openly agree that they belong to the Sheriff group; they would tell you that ‘I belong to one PDP’ and we know what that language means. It is only the Makarfi group that would tell you they belong to Makarfi even in the Oyo state and what we know is that that group is speaking for all other party to form their own grand alliance.
“So, what is on ground now is that there are parties that would be used as a platform; Accord is one of them, SDP, APGA; but the smart would either use the Accord or the SDP; they would be used as new platforms for the opposition.
“But, the opposition would surely get together and there will be no state that would be the best to do that than Oyo state.”
He explained tht Ajimobi runs a minority government because he was voted in by 32 per cent of the people, adding “That is why he doesn’t think about the other 68 per cent. The 68 per cent didn’t vote for him. so you have the dictatorship of the minority. the majority would surely rise.
“I am part of a movement whereby we were talking to ourselves across political parties on the basis that lets forget our party differences; most of us all came from PDP at one time or the other because of different purposes and whatever. So we have to appreciate the fact that unless we operate collectively; there are meetings on different levels to make sure that group come together. I am a realist when it comes to politics, I know that we would not score 100% in bringing everybody together but as long as we score 60 to 70 percent then we have tried,” he submitted.
