The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi has disclosed how late Aare Arisekola Alao and former Lagos governor and national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, lured him to support the candidature of Governor Abiola Ajimobi in 2011.
Oba Adeyemi, who spoke at the Abiola Ajimobi Roundtable, in honor of Ajimobi’s 69th birthday, in Ibadan on Saturday, confirmed that in the course of his reign, he has interacted with 13 of Nigeria’s Heads of State.
Theanchoronline.com.ng quoted the monarch as saying“Governor Isiaka Ajimobi is the 20th Governor I am working with.”
The event has as theme: “The Imperatives Of Building Institutions For Lasting Legacies”
According to him, “Bola Tinubu, Arisekola and I met and we discussed. They told me who they wanted to become the Governor of Oyo State and I said won ma lo stubborn (they said he is stubborn). Tinubu looked at me and said ‘Baba wa, eyin naa ma stubborn’ (our father, you are stubborn too). So I gave my support”.
Facing the Governor, the 80-year-old monarch said “Ajimobi, I congratulate you. You are a lucky man, you are alive and you are being celebrated”.
The monarch did not leave the podium without speaking on Governor Ajimobi’s succession plan. “I led about 30 traditional rulers to the Governor to ask him who he wanted to succeed him. He said ‘go and find somebody for me’. I told him there and then that I am not a politician. He said we should go and pray to God and that whoever God chooses, we should come and tell him. And I said he should look at the system used in Lagos by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, because the monumental achievements of this man will go to blazes if the right person does not succeed him as Governor”.
The Alaafin also confirmed his preference for progressives as he asked “do you want what this great man has done for Oyo State to continue? Do you want continuity? Then vote for APC”.
Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon also congratulated Governor Ajimobi, who he has known since the 1990s. “By all standards, he is an accomplished man. I was Chairman when he was a Director at National. Between then and now, Abiola Ajimobi has passed the proverbial seven rivers and seven hills to become who he is and get to where he is”, he said.
