Former governor and candidate of the Action Democratic Party, ADP, in next month’s governorship election, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala, has said that he has more strength than President Muhammadu Buhari.
Alao-Akala in an exclusive interview with Punch, said since there is no age limit, he has the right to contest.
When told that he is the oldest of the governorship candidates, he had said: “What do you mean by age is not on my side? What is age? Is there any pegged age that you have to be the governor?
You can recall that Buhari complained about age that he would have performed better if he had become president much earlier?”
This is just as the Ogbomoso-born politician said that he doesn’t have the same gene with Buhari. “I am more active than him. In fact I have some people that are of his age and more active because they don’t share the same gene. We are different. I went to Baba Ayo Adebanjo the other day, at 91 he is still fit. He saw me off to my car, very fit. So, don’t compare people, age is nothing. In fact, age is wisdom. That is what I’m flaunting; age and experience. You can’t just come and say you want to rule Oyo State if you don’t have that experience. And that’s exactly what I’m flaunting. Age is an asset to me.”
Alao-Akala said management and business experiences doesn’t have anything to do with governance.
“I am talking about people who have been involved in governance; somebody who have been involved in making people happy. I am talking of people who have been managing human beings; how to manage people is not easy. Government is not a business that you have to run to get profit. You are not looking for profit in governance. What you are looking for is how to make life more abundant for the people of Oyo state, Period!”
Asked why he is contesting, after close to 8 years of his exit from government house, he said “it is my inalienable constitutional right to spend two terms of eight years. Two, don’t forget that a lot of things are going wrong. I didn’t come back on my own volition. People came and asked me to come back because they are not getting the good governance they expected from the present government. And as such, they need somebody that can correct all those things the present government is doing wrongly in order for the people of Oyo State to be happy. If you look at things now, people are not all that happy about what’s happening in Oyo State.”
He said he wouldn’t want to go back to some projects he left behind. “I want to go to the things that I will do that will make people happy. A lot of things were done when I was in the office. If I’ve not performed very well, it would have been difficult for me to tell people that I want to come back. They would have asked me, “when you were there, what did you do?” Nobody can ask me that type of question. I’ve been going round now, nobody has ever asked me that “when you were there, what did you do?”
He explained that “I don’t need to tell you if my own is better or not, but I want you to ask people, then you will understand what is happening. If I had not performed the way I was supposed to perform when I had the opportunity, I wouldn’t have had the audacity to say I want to go back to the Government House.”
