Dr Olusola Ayandele (aka Eruobodo) was a governorship hopeful in the 2019 contest in Oyo State. In this exclusive chat with DAPO FALADE, the entrepreneur cum politician speaks on why he stepped down for the then All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Adebayo Adelabu, his impression of the Governor Seyi Makinde-led 17-month administration, his aspiration in 2023 and described the incumbent senator representing Oyo South as the worst in the history of the district, among other issues. Excerpts:
You are just coming out from series of meetings for this interview. What are all these meeting about?
Our consultations have been on going. We have met with the youth leaders, the party chieftains and chairmen in the district. It is now the turn of the women leaders. Of course, we have met with the party chairmen in the local governments. This is the fourth consultation. We are consulting and sensitising, especially now that the party is trying to reconcile and put our house in order.
Now, we have seen that the present administration in Oyo State does not mean well for the masses; this government is a spendthrift. We want to take back what rightly belongs to the people.
What has been the reaction of the people to your various consultations?
It has been very encouraging. We all looked back and we saw that it was a monumental mistake on our part not to have approached the election as a united party. What we are experiencing now would not have befallen the people of the state. It was because we were divided.
I always maintain that the APC did not lose the last governorship election. It was due to the internal dissent within the party. Let me re-phrase it this way: Seyi Makinde did not win the election. It was the benefit of our losing the election that he got. Like I said earlier, if we had presented a united front, there is no way the PDP would have won that election.
As a matter of fact, did we really lose the 2019 elections, apart from the governorship? If you look at it: of the 14 House of Representatives seat, we have 10; out of the three senatorial seats, we have two. So, if you really look at it, we didn’t lose.You said now that you did not loose but we all know that the leadership of any party at the state level belongs to the governor.
By virtue of disunity within the ranks of your party, preparatory to the election, as you said, the PDP became the beneficiary. What can you say is playing out now, vis-a-vis the efforts at reconciling the aggrieved parties?
I know exactly what you are trying to say by talking about leadership residing with the governor. One of the things I will want you to realise is that, as the saying goes, when a woman has not tasted two husbands, she will not know which one is better.
When the late Governor Abiola Ajimobi was alive, we knew exactly what he did in terms of infrastructural development; we knew what he did in terms of environment; in terms of security. All of these, when you put them against what is happening now, you will see that, as a matter of fact, for eight years, we enjoyed governance in the state.
Now, events leading up to the party primary may not have favoured some people and that was the reason they left. But if two or three people are contesting for one position, it is just one person that will win and you cannot say that, because you had lost, you have to go elsewhere.
And in any case, most people that went elsewhere, it was a good thing that they did because they later realised that it was the party that was always winning those elections that some of them had won in the past. This is because they went to other places and they did not win any election. The party did everything possible to ensure that we were together but internal dissent and the fact that, maybe they didn’t like the face of one person or the other, cost us that election.
But, thank God, all the people that were involved have realised their mistakes, so to say, and nobody is gloating over all these; we are all saying that we are brothers and sisters. We have a common destiny and because of that, let us come back together. And that is what is being done now and everybody is embracing it.
Before the untimely death of our former leader, Governor Ajimobi, he caused a reconciliation committee to be set up, under the leadership of former Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala, and I can tell you that the committee is doing a yeoman’s job and the result is beginning to manifest in the cohesiveness that we are experiencing within the party now.
A chieftain of the party and former Minister of Communications, Bayo Shittu, had challenged the leadership of former Governor Alao-Akala. Don’t you see this as a tendency strong enough to scuttle the reconciliation process?
No, not at all. On the contrary, when the former Minister of Communications made that assertion, I guess some things were not opened to him because I later gathered that, within three or four days after making that assertion, he was in Ogbomoso to see the former governor and whatever misgivings he may have had were thrashed out. That is why you now see that he is singing a new song.
The issue is that, at least, for now, former Governor Alao-Akala is the highest ranked elected officer in Oyo APC and I don’t think the issue of leadership is actually the problem, right now. The worst case scenario is that we will have a collegiate in terms of resolving leadership issue. Even, if you say it is a collegiate, someone is still going to be up there. So I want to believe that the party leadership have a way of resolving issues and that is exactly what will be done.
You were one of the main contenders in the build up to the 2019 elections, with many saying the race for the Oyo APC governorship ticket was among three of you, Adebayo Adelabu and Joseph Tegbe. How did you feel losing out in the primary?
Like I said before, if you are contesting for any position with some other people, you know your strength and you will be hoping that you will be the one that would win. But then, at the back of your mind, you would realise that, in case it does not pan out the way you expected, that will not make you to leave the party. That was exactly what played out at Adamasingba when the contestants were called out. I came out because I knew what the party wanted. The party leadership, I believe, was experienced enough to advise the other contestants to step aside and work for the candidacy of Bayo Adelabu.
As a human being who has poured in resources, time, money and energy, you will feel like ‘ordinarily, I should have gotten this.’ But again, the candidate that was elected was good enough and I believe that he had a very good show. The future is still there for all of us that contested then to move the party forward.
You earlier said Governor Makinde did not win the election but that the APC lost. All the political parties had their candidates for the election. How would you explain what gave the PDP candidate, now the governor, the edge in that election, if your party is that popular?
The APC is very popular. I told you about the internal dissent that we had in the party then. You will know whether or not you will win an election, even before you go for the voting. You will realise that we lost some people to the ADP; we lost some people to the Zenith Labour Party; we lost people to the Accord Party; we lost some people to the ADC and some to other political parties. All of these people went and formed a coalition with the PDP.
If those people had not gone, that was why I said Seyi Makinde did not win the election and rather that we lost. This is because, if you take away all those that left the APC for the ADC, ADP, ZLP, Accord and the rest of them, there is no way he would have won. That really was what played out.
When you look at it, if you see the votes of Bayo Adelabu, what was the quantum of the votes previous governors used to win the governorship? By and large, the progressives didn’t lose much, but all those fringe parties that teamed up with the PDP were the ones that made us to lose that election. But as you can see, the Law of Karma is coming into play. You can see now that whatever it is that they thought they would gain, they are being ridiculed all over the places. They are not getting anything.
In what way are they being ridiculed?
You know, you go into politics to benefit your people and if you cannot be in government so that your people can benefit through you, then you are being ridiculed. You cannot go back to your people in future to say, ‘okay, let us go and form an alliance with this person again. Good enough, and like I said earlier, those that thought that they are big people and that they could win an election on their own, have found out that they could not. If they had stayed within the party, we would have won together.
Some went to the ADC to contest for governorship, they got nothing, even though they collapsed their so-called structure. But if you say you are popular and you collapsed your structure for the governorship, how about the other elections? Apart from the Senate where they have one seat, it was because of the individual that contested and it is because of the so-called misconception that they had about the individual that contested which made us to lose Oyo South Senatorial District. It would have been a clean sweep for the APC. We won the Oyo North and Oyo Central Senatorial districts.
So, what would you say was responsible for the APC losing Oyo South, the largest senatorial district in the state?
It might be more of an individual thing than the party and that actually had effects on the general election, including the governorship. Like you said, we are talking about the largest senatorial district that is responsible for over 46 per cent of the total votes in the state. If we lost that, definitely it will reflect on the outcome of the governorship election. We have moved on and that is why we are now trying to reconcile everybody. Such will not happen again. We have all looked back and we have seen our mistakes. We hope that subsequently, we will not play into the hands of our political opponents again.You are leaving the realm of governorship position for a senatorial ticket.
What informs your downward political movement, that is, your decision to go for the Senate, instead of the governorship?
Service. That is the most important thing…service. If you are trying to serve your people, if you try it from one perspective alone, then you may not be able to extend it if that position is not available, either because of geographical calculations or otherwise. Talking generally now, Oyo South is dear to me that I am willing to come down from being a governor to becoming a senator because I will be able to serve. It is not an individual or personal thing; it is because of a true desire to serve my people.
Have you consulted your people, the stakeholders and leaders of your party, especially in your senatorial district?
Our meeting today, apart from the reconciliation process, is sequel to all the consultations that we have made. We met with the party leadership; we met with the chairman of the party in Oyo South; we have met with the chairman of the party in my local government area; we have met with the youth leaders and today, we met with the women leaders in all the nine local government areas in my senatorial district.
Of course, like I said, we are talking about reconciliation as part of our bid to move the party forward. You can see the lamentation of our people now that really, “a ti wo one chance” with the present administration in the state. There is the need for us to take the government back. So, we are consulting.
How formidable is your structure?
Again, it is not my structure but the party. An individual will not win election. Yes, the character, pedigree and demeanour of the candidate will matter. But then the ideological posture of that party and what it stands for will influence the voting populace.
I have a foundation; the Olusola Ayandele Foundation. Basically, we are premising our service on infrastructure, security, education and empowerment. If you put all these four together, we believe that we will able to emancipate our people from shackles of economic slavery.
You are seeking to contest for the Oyo South Senatorial seat, are you not satisfied with the performance of the incumbent?
I think you are abusing the word, performance, by ascribing it to the present occupant of the seat. I don’t know about you, but I live here in Oyo State and if you are talking about performance, there is nothing like that in my senatorial district, with the present occupant of the seat.
For me, it will be better for us not to even have a representation in the Senate now; it is that bad. Nothing has been achieved; we have not been that lucky with some of our senatorial representatives. The present occupant will rank as one of the worst. I mean, forget about the fact he belongs to the PDP; the truth of the matter is that he is just one of the worst.
What makes you to think that you will do better than him, if you get there?
Without sounding immodest, I was a public servant; I was a teacher and now I am an entrepreneur. I am involved with a company that is employing over 3,000 individuals, the hub of which is in Oyo State. In terms of employment, without being in government, I have been instrumental to getting citizens of the state into gainful employment. Some empowerments are being done.
When you think about what the people of Oyo South want, you will be talking about security, economic emancipation and education. It is a known fact that virtually every Yoruba man or woman know the value of education. And we looked at all of these…I know because I had operated at the federal level before now, and I know how to get some of these things to benefit our people in Oyo South.
You earlier spoke about the successes of the eight-year of the APC administration in the state. Don’t you think that it will not be fair to be comparing such an administration with another one that is just one and half years old in office?
Well, there is this Yoruba saying, paraphrasing it, that morning shows the night. When Governor Ajimobi started, it was not sudden; he was prepared for governance. You could see the systematic approach to governance which reaches crescendo by the time he left office. There is nothing like that right now. What we have now is a governor that prefers to govern through the newspapers; a government of propaganda.
For the eight years of late Governor Ajimobi administration, our external debt, I think it was pegged at over N90 billion; I don’t have the figure off hand. However, because of the level of our indebtedness now, I dread to open the newspapers because the next thing you will read is about a loan being approved by the state House of Assembly.
In all honesty, I will not blame the present government. Rather, I will ascribe what is happening to this dictum: you cannot give what you don’t have. You cannot give because you are not prepared to be governor…yes, you made noise in the past that you want to be a governor. Even, if you look at his cabinet, really its member are not up to the third 11 that will come from an APC-led government.
The Ajimobi government of eight years was largely seen as an administration without a human face. The Seyi Makinde-led administration came in and people are beginning to see a government with human face…
Which human face are you talking about? What happened in Monatan where there was this filling station that was just destroyed overnight? About three months ago, along Oje-Gate Road, some Park Managers went on rampage, slapping and beating people because they were not doing what was expected of them.
Sometimes, the hallmark of leadership is for you to be able to take a decision that you could see immediately as not being that popular but eventually beneficial. And that was what happened with the Ajimobi-led APC administration. I am yet to be controverted in the sense that the infrastructural development that we witnessed is still second to none. The peace and tranquility that we enjoyed is still second to none. During that period, we didn’t experience all this insecurity that we are experiencing almost everyday now. Some hard decisions were taken, but eventually, they became very beneficial to the people.
I don’t know whether taking N100 billion loan is human face or whether the N800 million that has just been approved by the state House of Assembly is human face, when I know that my great grandchildren would still be paying such loan.
Why are you critical of the state government taking loans when you know that the APC-led Federal Government has been taking loans?
Those loans you are talking about, you can see the physical structures in place. For example, you can see the Abuja-Kaduna Rail; you can see the Ibadan-Lagos Rail. By the time the Lagos-Ibadan rail is concluded by the end of this year, it will take you less than one hour to get to Lagos from Ibadan. And it is still continuing.
I can tell you that these loans you are talking about are not just given like the ones the governor wants to take in Oyo State. The locomotives that are being brought are part of the loans. If you hear that the Federal Government has taken a $5 billion loan, it is not as if the money is taken to the Central Bank. More than 75 per cent of the money must have been used to purchase equipment and thousands and thousands of our people are being employed. But the governor is saying he wants to take N100 billion loan. To do what?
He said he wants to use it to construct roads, for farm settlements, reconstruct the Lekan Salami Stadium and many other projects…
In all of the sufferings of the people, do you think the next thing for him to do is to go and refurbish or reconstruct the Lekan Salami Stadium? Apart from that, all those projects could be done without loans. We have seen governments do projects without resorting to loans. If he is taking that much now, I wonder what would happen before he completes his first term of office.
You are talking about the amount involved in these loans being taken by Governor Makinde, but how would you compare the exchange rate now with what obtained during the era of the late Governor Ajimobi who also took loans?
It does not work like that. It is relative. What was happening then is different from what is happening now.If you had won the election in 2019 and you are the governor now, what would you have done differently or better?Well, in the first instance, I would have continued with the programmes and policies of the APC government, led by the late Governor Ajimobi…
You mean you would have continued with policies described by many as having no human face?
You are the one that called it policy with no human face. I would have continued with massive investment in education; massive investment in infrastructure development; massive investment in security and massive investment in economy, through increasing the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
We would not over-labour the people. Once you are able to invest in infrastructure, you open up the economy, especially the agriculture sector. Everybody knows that the Oke Ogun axis alone can actually feed the whole of Nigeria, if properly utilised. When we were doing our campaigns, we went to some villages: the cows, the bulls there could be compared with the ones in Ohio in the US. If you are moving from one place to the other and you mistakenly drop a corn seed, go back there two weeks later, you would have seen it grown. That is how fertile the land there are.
And when you are talking about this farm settlements thing, I do not know what they could have taken into cognizance. But you have to get foreign direct investments…
Your party was in power for eight years, we are now talking about farm settlements. That eight-year period was good enough to bring into reality your projections about an ideal farm settlement. What happened during that period?
But we still had farm settlements. Governance is all about priority. We didn’t have all the infrastructure in place. That was the first thing that the late governor faced. Security was a big issue in that period. Education; yes, we had some challenges, especially the Ladoke Akintola University which would have been approached, if I had won in 2019. I was a university lecturer; I know exactly what can be done. I would have put all of these together, if I were the governor.
Look at what Senator Bola Tinubu did in Lagos State. Immediately he became the governor, he brought in the likes of Professor Babs Fafunwa, the late Olikoye Ransome-Kuti and other eggheads. They had their plans in place. In the first six months, nothing really happened. But by the time they put everything together, they had a 25-year roadmap for Lagos State. That is why it will be easy to govern the state today because there is a master plan.
You said you are out to serve the people, would you have taken up the offer, if Governor Makinde had invited you into his cabinet to tap from your experience?
I will not say I will and I would not say I will not. The reason is that I will look at the plan he has for the state and how he is going to implement it.
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