Ajimobi: Demystified

Reacting to this then ,Ajimobi said: “Those of them saying Ajimobi is not accommodating, which of them can say God did not use me to elevate them? Some of them are angry because they wanted a second term, but I felt I should give opportunities to others, some are annoyed because they are regular fighters.”

Apparently referring to Shittu, he said: “As for the one, who is a regular fighter, he always fights those who help him. That was how he fought with our past leaders like late Chief Bola Ige. Even if he becomes the governor, as he desperately wants to, he would carry placards against himself forgetting that he is the governor. He wants to become governor of Oyo State”.

Ajimobi had many wars he was fighting with different groups and people in the state, with some boldly saying they regretted voting for him in 2015.

Days before the election after its postponement, hundreds of traders, artisans and professional bodies from the 33 local government areas in Oyo state on Wednesday 20th February 2019, declared that they are now regretting their support for the second term aspiration of Governor Abiola Ajimobi of the state in 2015, and they will make sure he loses his bid to become senator.

The angry men and women said that they regret the use and dump syndrome infected with the myriad of unfulfilled promises and marginalization of its members by the Abiola Ajimobi-led administration.

They expressed their displeasure during the swearing ceremony of the state executive officers of Itesiwaju-Oyo Coalition Movement which was held in Ibadan, the state capital.

The artisan however went ahead with their threat to deny him the senatorial seat he yawns for.

Adeolu Akande, a Political Science lecturer at Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo, was Chief of  Staff to Ajimobi during his first term in office.

Akande said  recent actions of the government suggest that some elements in the Ajimobi-led administration had  forgotten that the administration emerged in 2011 with a promise to protect the welfare of the people.

“Many recent actions of the government are at variance with its disposition at inception in 2011.

“This suggests that some forces who are not privy to the pledge of Ajimobi to the people have made ascendancy in the government to the detriment of what the government stood for at inception,” he said

He said  no administration  without the element of compassion would go down in history as  successful.

Akande said  that the primary responsibility of any government was to protect lives and property, adding that  the sacredness of private property comes after preservation of life in terms of importance.

“A government has a duty to make all necessary measures to protect the property of private citizens just as it has a duty to protect their lives,” he stated.

He said that the furore generated by the demolition of the property of  Yinka Ayefele, a popular musician,  must have demonstrated to the government by now that it was an unpopular decision.

“Government is about the people and not the anger and emotions of the people in government.

“ The Yoruba captures this truism when they say  a ruler rules with wisdom and not with stubbornness.

“The Ayefele saga has once again brought to the fore the need for the governor to rethink his government and review its personnel and focus  as he embarks on his homestretch so that history can be kind to him,’’ he said.

Akande said he  was pained that the lofty ideals that endeared the governor to the people in the early years had  been abandoned and replaced with practices that could  wipe out such achievements.

“It is more painful that many of the personnel who encourage controversial government decisions and actions claim innocence in private conversations and never identified themselves with those decisions, even in public,” he said.

He recalled how the governor directed all government agencies to protect Ayefele’s building from demolition in 2012 during the dualisation of the Challenge-Toll Gate road in spite of persuasion from some forces to demolish it.

He advised Ajimobi to extend the same sense of compassion to  the handling of the  subsisting issues at  LAUTECH and the closure of tertiary institutions occasioned by the reduction in subvention to the institutions.

“I make this appeal because the governor is on the homestretch of his administration and there will not be such auspicious opportunity for him to etch his name on the positive side of history.

“Those who encourage the governor to embrace hard-line positions in his last months in government are not his friends and do not mean well for him and Oyo State,”  Akande, a governorship aspirant, said.

Political observers are of the opinion that Ajimobi was the cause of his own political demystification, because he was fighting so many wars with his people, including students, both secondary and tertiary students with his policies that was against the populace.