Ibadan People rise in defence of Alao Akala
Alao Akala
Overwhelming majority of the people of Ibadan Land are solidly behind the Governor of Oyo State, Otunba Christopher Adebayo Alao-Akala and will give him their total support in the coming elections.
The Forum of Political functionaries comprising all the elected and appointed office holders of Ibadan heritage took stock and made the declaration in a statement issued in Ibadan this week Wednesday.
Reacting to the flurry of criticisms against the state governor by some politicians in the city, the forum posited that the baseless criticisms and attacks were a direct result of the complete failure of four Ibadan born politicians to illegally and unfairly hijack the leadership of the party form the present Ibadan people who have been running the party successfully from 2007.
In the statement signed by Professor Soji Adejumo and AlhJI sina Alabi , the Ibadan political office holders said that the people of the state would not be deceived by the antics of these politicians as it has become well known that they were merely fighting for a selfish an unjust cause.
For almost two years now, there had been a heated struggle for the soul of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) in the state before it was finally put to rest on Monday with reports in major newspapers that the national executive of the party had conclusively dropped the idea of dissolving the executive committee of the party in Oyo State.
“it is obvious that the likes of Senator Teslim Folarin, Senator Rasheed Ladoja , Wole Oyelese and Lekan Balogun went on the offensive now because they have failed woefully to hijack the state executive committee of the party through unjust and illegal means.
“They have further confirmed by these recent, ill motivated attacks that all what they want is the soul of the party they had for the past four years tried hard to destroy. This shows clearly that these politicians are not fighting the cause of Ibadan people but rather selfish and anti people agenda.”
“It is however gratifying that unlike in the past, people of Ibadan, politicians and non politicians alike are no longer deceived by the false claims of these politicians that they were fighting for the people.
“ the people of Ibadan Land have come to know them in their true colours and this is why , all of them are now virtually without any followership. For Ladoja , all the key politicians in his fold including the highly respected chairman of the group have left him. All the young elements too in his fold too have abandoned him. The case is the same with the other three including Senator Folarin who never had any political structure not even in a ward in the state. In addition, Senator Folarin since almost eight years even as Senate Leader has not brought any federal project to any of the eleven local government areas in Ibadan land.
The statement pointed out that apart from the fact that the illustrious present governor had surpassed all his predecessors in office, Alhaji Lam Adesina and Senator Rasheed Ladoja in particular in terms of provision of both physical and social infrastructure in Ibadan Land, the unprecedented peace and growth recorded during the tenure of Otunba Christopher Adebayo Alao-Akala showed that, the present governor is more committed to Ibadan than the two put together.
The Ibadan political office holders said that they were not unmindful of the intent of the perpetrators of the latest attacks to cause disaffection , disturb the peace prevailing peace and distract the governor from his noble duties maintained that the governor through unprecedented modern administration have put in place functional machinery in place that would ensure flow of governance unimpeded.
They therefore urged the people of Ibadan land and Oyo state in general to continue giving their good support to the government of Otunba Akala promising that the governor and all the political functionaries are resolute to ensure that wicked and self centred people with penchant for vengeance and violence are not allowed to into government again.
“ what did we witness from 2003 to 2007? It was the worst period in the history of Oyo State brought about by inept leadership with clumsy governance “
They had done it before when they put all sorts of landmines and booby traps including spurious allegations to prevent Akala from becoming the governor; they also sponsored over ten cases against Akala and PDP, ask them what did they achieve, ? failure. They have failed to take the party and they will continue to fail,” the statement added.