Abisoye Fagade, one of the guber hopefuls in the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Oyo State, has revealed that governor Seyi Makinde has returned the state to the pre-Abiola Ajimobi era.
According to the Ibadan-born marketing communication chief executive, who owns Sodium Group, the state deserves a better manager than the current chief executive.
Fagade made this known in an interview with Sunday Tribune.
This was just as he said the crisis rocking his APC is in every party.
“But people are just playing up one more than the other. In APC, we have leaders that are reasonable. They are just charging each other politically. Soon and I mean very soon, they will all sit together and come to a conclusion that Seyi Makinde must go. The leaders as well as the members are united in their determination to see the back of Makinde and PDP in Oyo State. We are coming together very soon because we have a common interest. We have all agreed that Oyo State deserves state manager than we currently have. Makinde has taken us back to the era before Ajimobi in terms of security and environmental cleanliness. The governor is using a populist approach to governance that can’t bring real development anywhere in the world. The governor as the carrier of the vision for the development of the state leader should take the people to where they ought to be. Doing things to please some people is like saying he will do whatever he likes once he gets a second term. That second term will not come because he will be sent out of Agodi Government House at the guber election next year. In your first term, you should work like you don’t want a second term and when you want to leave, everybody will be saying you should come back. But Makinde is not playing the game well. Security-wise, for instance, you journalists knew what the state was under Ajimobi, how people slept with their two eyes closed. But now, the security situation is messy. The peace we enjoyed under Ajimobi, where is it today? People are scared to speak up for fear that they can send someone to deal with them. So, there is a climate of fear. But we won’t allow this to go on. We are addressing our issues in APC to come out stronger and rescue the state from PDP’s maladministration.”
He also spoke on the recent meeting of elders and leaders in the party that he convened.
“It is simple. I feel that the most important thing for all of us is to first of all stabilize our hoe and there is no way to do that than to unite all the gladiators. I am not for anybody because I am for everybody. Many leaders came and those who could not make it due to other engagements sent in their apologies and that was a huge one for the progress of the party. It was like a God-sent meeting. People were happy because leaders that have not sat down together in months sat together at the meeting to discuss and channel a new way forward. I was just trying to broker peace. I am a man of peace and I also took the advantage of the month of Ramadan and we were also just exiting the Lenten period so that there would be genuine reconciliation. Every tussle ends on a negotiation table. What I have done is just for everybody to sit down to negotiate.”
Excerpts from the Sunday Tribune’s interview:
I know what your verdict is going to be, but give us your honest assessment of the PDP government in the last three years.
The scorecard of Governor Makinde and the PDP is there for the people of the state to see. They will say I am in the opposition if I start speaking. But I want you to rate them on security, education, infrastructure and so on.
The governor is building bus terminals and roads, Moniya-Iseyin…
The N20 billion the governor sunk into the bus terminal project would have done a lot in agriculture. My dream is to, in the first year of my governorship, is to be able to feed the whole of Oyo State. When I say feed, I mean we will grow whatever it is we are consuming.
How do you intend to make that happen?
It is very easy. There are low hanging fruits in agriculture. If I sink N10 out of the N20 billion into agriculture, there will be a huge difference. How long does it take to cultivate tomatoes?
About three months…
So, you agree with me that people can start buying tomato that is grown in Oyo State within three months of being a governor. How long does it take to do okro? If I sink the N20 billion spent on motor parks to promote agriculture, there will be food for people.
But government is saying it is working on transforming the Akufo and Fashola Farm Settlements into farm estates…
Let’s see that happen first and as fast as all those motor parks happened. Is transportation a serious problem in the state to warrant sinking such a huge amount of money into it? Are we in Lagos? It is no rocket science. You will see where the interest of a leader lies through his projects. You will see what he is promoting and the people he wants to make happy.
The civil servants say the governor is paying salary, has done streetlights to illuminate the dark places and reduce crimes…
Politicians have made it look like paying salary is an achievement. Workers don’t get their salaries for free. They have worked and they must earn their pay. Your headache as a governor should be how to generate enough funds to push his agenda. That is what a thinking governor should do. If we open up the state for public-private partnership and foreign direct investment, government can generate a minimum of N10billion as IGR monthly.
Can APC as currently constituted unseat Seyi Makinde in 2023?
Governor Makinde is already on his way out of office and everybody, including members of his party, can see that clearly. You can see desperation in some of the things he has been doing lately and once you are desperate, you can do anything. The little that remains of what you guys call his popularity is not enough to make him retain his job as governor. All those in the coalition that brought him to government are now with us and even people in his government who are not happy are discussing with us in APC. What Oyo APC has taken from Seyi is more than what you think he has taken from us. People are joining us in APC now, not because they want to contest, but because they don’t want Makinde to return as governor. He is losing people with credibility in PDP to us in APC.
There are fears that implosion will occur in APC when it is time to choose from about six people who are eyeing the guber ticket…
The fact that we are many eyeing the ticket in APC means our party is very strong. Those who want to be governor in APC are big shots with a lot of political weight. This shows we have a better party. What we are going to do as a party is to look at Makinde and see what we can do to knock him off. Who is the best man among all of us that can do the job? We have too many options of strikers. We have Ronaldo, Messi and what have you. We will sit down and put our best foot forward. Once the party decides who the best person is, all of us will back the person as long as we all agree it is the person
