WHAT DOES LADOJA WANT?

For someone who spent three years and one month in power before and after his unjust impeachment and can hardly mention one concrete achievement he recorded while in office, it is baffling that Senator Rashidi Ladoja wants to contest for the position of governor in Oyo State again.

His supporters says his major achievement is that Ladoja paid teachers and workers salaries regularly and even made history by being the first governor to pay leave bonus to its workforce in the state. They also made allusion to what he did in the area of education the fraud called 30 students per class project without constructing more classrooms except to talk about reducing the number of students per class to 30 Aside this, nothing else is mentioned to his credit except to lament that the late Lamidi Adedibu did not give him breathing space to do more.

It is safe to say that since the time of late Chief Bola Ige who governed the old Oyo State with distinction, no governor since that time has done anything remarkable in moving the state forward.

Yet it is only because the likes of Ladoja have been allowed to mount the saddle of leadership in the state that Oyo has retrogressed to the point that there is little or nothing for the indigenes to brag about. In 2003, Ladoja came with so much promise and expectations.

A successful businessman who had conquered the world of business in Lagos , many expected Oyo State to undergo rapid transformation under his watch. This was one of the reasons why his erstwhile godfather turned foe, Adedibu was able to get rid of him easily. A man who achieved nothing and who was a complete disappointment to the Oyo people can hardly expect them to go on to the streets to fight his cause. As far as the people were concerned, there wasn't much to choose between Ladoja and Adedibu.

Birds of the same feather flock together, so the saying goes.

It was therefore no surprise that his deputy at the time, Alao-Akala took his position with glee not caring a hoot about the illegality of the removal of Ladoja by a minority group of Oyo State House of Assembly members loyal to Adedibu.

For a man who had wasted two years doing nothing before he was unceremoniously booted out, a lot of people thought that upon his return to power he would hasten to make his mark as compensation for the people who voted him into power. Instead, he was more interested in a second term. Ladoja spent the remaining months of his tenure fighting tooth and nail for his party's nomination with Alao-Akala, which came to nought when the party chose to hand over the ticket to the latter.

The question then is, if Ladoja achieved little or nothing during his first coming as a governor, why is he desperate to contest again.

Rasheed Olayiwola is a student of The Polytechnic, Ibadan