As the forthcoming governorship election draws near, former governor Rashidi Ladoja has said that he does not support the call for power shift from Ibadan, the state capital, to other zones.
In a recetn interview with Nigerian Tribune, however, said that picking the chairmanship of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, from Oke-ogun, doesn’t bar the people of the zone from emerging candidate of the party in 2019.
“What do you mean by power should shift? That is not true. We have not zoned the governorship to anywhere. Anyone can come out to say I want to be the governor of Oyo State. If he can convince the delegates, we will pick him,” he said.
According to him, nobody gives anybody what he deserves in politics unless you fight for it.
Hear him: “I don’t subscribe to people saying things just for asking. You have to fight for it; you have to convince others. If someone wants to be governor from Oke-Ogun, it is not only his people that will vote for him and he is not only going to rule Oke-Ogun people. So, it is not a question of because someone is from Oke-Ogun, then he is qualified to become the governor in 2019. It should be about being qualified because he could lead all the people of the state and he has been accepted by all the people in the state. That is what we should talk about. So, having a chairman from Oke-Ogun has not foreclosed the chances of that region producing the governorship candidate of the PDP. We just have a chairman from there.”
On the non-conduct of local government election in the state, he said that “we have been having concerns for over six years now. During the first time of Governor Abiola Ajimobi, he said he was going to conduct the local government election, but he didn’t do it; did we die? The truth is, he is looking for an opportuned time when he thinks his party will be able to win and that time has not come; it will never come. So, even now, I don’t think he is going to conduct any local government election. What has he done? Was he not the one engineering people going to court to stop election? The government is always looking for distractions.
“One day, he woke up and said he was creating the Local Council Development Authority (LCDAs) and he said he was basing it on the referendum done by Lam Adesina in 2002 or 2002, did he mean that since then, things have not changed? That means that decision was a distraction that he engineered, which people took to court. And then he felt since nobody was talking about the local council matter, he would only do the election in the 33 local governments. Was that not clear that in one hand, he created the LCDAs, in another hand, he cancelled them? When that one was dying down, he decided to start the chieftaincy palaver, which he planned to extend to Oyo and Ogbomoso, such that anywhere there is only one king, he would create more kings and make them become like Igboho or Igbo Ora. He is just creating instability in the state; it is just distractions that he is looking for. And that is just to tell you that he has nothing to show for his eight years in office, but he always gives enough things to talk about.”
