Following the barrage of calls from concerned members of the public and supporters of the Oyo State gubernatorial candidate of Alliance for Democracy (AD) in this Saturday’s election, Engr. Oyedele Hakeem Alao (OHA) popularly known as ‘Allow Alao’ on political parties’ merger phobia gripping the state, he has distanced himself from the various camps springing up.
Engr. Alao, who recalled that his party, AD is a traditional political party, having been one of the three major political parties that midwifed the current democratic experience two decades ago noted that the party is not in the same league with the mushroom political parties that were raised for the purpose of contesting this year’s elections.
Aside, the AD flag-bearer explained that the party has a very robust and rich history dated back to the Action Group (AG) and the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) of the first and second republics respectively, saying, “none of the other political parties can genuinely claim such traditional and historical antecedents which clearly distinguish it from them”.
Equally, Engr. Alao said the motive of individuals coming into the election was quite different from one another as could now be seen in how fast it was convenient for some of his co-contestants to drop their ambitions all in the name of unholy alliance, wondering how was it convenient to drop a well-nursed ambition just like that?
“Certainly, it is glaring that some of my co-contestants abinitio were not seriously in the race to contest, but to use their respective platforms to negotiate for whatever gain, which the now two-week negotiation window between the last elections and those of this week offers them, otherwise, it would have been extremely difficult to abandon their struggles just like that.
“Arising from the above scenario is the fact that I’m not on the same page with any of them. I set out to contest election based on conviction of my mission and vision for the emancipation of the people of my dear state and not to negotiate with anybody or any political party for whatever purpose, either monetary or otherwise”, he stated further.
Engr. Alao said he saw the desperate move for merger by the affected political parties as desperation to be in power at all cost and a great disservice to the people, especially their followers across the state. “I’m mindful of the fact that the people that chose to follow me and my party had numerous choices from which my party was chosen as their preferred platform.
“To now say they should go back to any of those hitherto rejected platforms for my sake, all in the name of merger is nothing but a betrayal of trust and confidence which to me is ashamedly immoral. I can’t be a party to such political shenaniganism. Nobody dragged me into politics, I came into it out of my own volition.
“”What’s more, I’m a politician with a second address and not a professional politician, whose life revolves round politics and politics alone. Those are the class of politicians that under whatever circumstance, they can’t survive without being at the corridors of power which informed why they must merge at all cost so as to partake in their envisaged ‘spoils’ of office”, he added
