The people of the 10 Okeogun local government areas of Oyo State will not support any party that doesn’t field one of them as its governorship candidate for the 2019 election.
At least, anybody who wants to succeed Governor Abiola Ajimobi but not from the zone will still have them to contend with if he is to realise his ambition on the wings of the current clamor for power shift from Ibadan to another zone.
National President of Oke Ogun Development Consultative Forum (ODCF), Dr. Zaccheaus Ajuwon, in a chat OYO INSIGHT, insisted that the people of Oke Ogun will not be party to any arrangement, alliance, merger or discussion that is not geared towards producing one of them as the next governor of the state.
According to him, what is paramount in the minds of the indigenes of the area was to produce the next governor of the state in 2019.
Ajuwon while describing it as unfair; the second, third or forth positions indigenes of the area have been occupying in the politics of the state, posited that it is funny to hear that the zone which has 10 local governments out of the 33 local government areas in the state has not been given the opportunity to produce the governor of the state since 1999. He recalled that Ogbomosho, Alao-Akala’s zone, has been opportune to produce a governor.
“Our people are resolute and have taken a decision to stand and vote as a bloc for one of our own come 2019. We are determined, ready and motivated to vote to wrest gubernatorial power peacefully in 2019. Governor Abiola Ajimobi had publicly stated his assurance to support an Oke Ogun person for the governorship in 2019 in order to ‘reciprocate the love’ that the people of Oke Ogun showed to him in the 2011 and 2015 gubernatorial elections.
“There is no doubt that democracy is a game of numbers, we in Oke Ogun may be only one third of the voting population of Oyo state but this is definitely significant since Ibadan with about half of this voting public is not all Ibadan indigenes. There are in Ibadan, indigenes of Oke Ogun, their friends, associates and there are non indigenes of Oyo state in this area as well.
“Oke Ogun has ten (30 percent) out of the 33 LGAs in the state. This position is second only to Ibadan which has 11 (33 percent) of the LGAs. With the exception of the period when Chief Adebayo Alao-Akala, an indigene of Ogbomosho areas with only five LGAs, was governor, indigenes of Ibadan have ruled Oyo since the inception of the state. Oke Ogun has not been treated fairly in terms of human and infrastructural development,” he argued.
