How I will break the Oyo second term jinx — Ajimobi

More than three years on the saddle, what has been your experience so far as governor of Oyo State?

My experience has been quite fulfilling, challenging and that of a mixed bag or a mixed basket of fruits, in the sense that we have had our successes in all the areas of performance indicators, similarly we have had political distractions in the sense that even when you have done well, you still see people who will look for fault in what you have done.

I give an example; we believe that Oyo State having been tagged the dirtiest city in Africa or in West Africa, should be cleaned up; first for environmental sanitations, second for health reasons, third for security reasons and lastly for welfare and investment reasons.

In the process of doing that, we had to remove street traders who were disturbing the flow of traffic.

So for safety reasons we had to remove those people and the beauty of it is that we are not the first government to remove people from the streets. The previous governments – between 2007 and 2011, removed people from Iwo Road; between 2003 and 2007, Ladoja’s government removed people from Apeni, Elekuro and some other areas but none of them built shops for them. None of them provided alternatives. We are the only government that removed people from trading on the street and provided alternatives. We provided shops to accommodate close to about 7,000 traders. We also gave them money to trade-in some shops.

So this is an example of what I mean by mixed feelings where you have done well for the people and instead of the opposition to accept, they come back to turn it against you .

Is it true as Senator Ladoja said that some APC leaders came to beg him to join APC so that he would be given the ticket?

He is lying. The man sometimes tells stories that are not true. Our leaders; Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Chief Akinyelure, former Governor Oni, they all met at Baba Obasanjo’s place and the purpose of the meeting was to get all Yoruba together and to appeal to some competing Yoruba to work together and my understanding of the meeting which I was not present was confirmed by different people; was to appeal to Ladoja and some others like him – those who are in their seventies, who have been governors or senators before to play the role of elders statesmen; to step down for the younger ones and that all Yoruba must be one.

That was the purpose of the meeting. At no time did anyone offer him gubernatorial slot of the APC and it will be crazy to do so. He has been there before, he didn’t perform well. I defeated him and I’m performing better.

Performing better

So, does it make sense to you to take an incumbent who is performing well and beg somebody who didn’t perform well and was defeated by that same incumbent to have the party ticket?

And subsequently, one of the elders that was at the meeting came to me and said we should go and visit him that he should come and join us and play the role of an elder-statesman and then we went to his house and at no time did anybody talk about him becoming a candidate.

How can somebody who when he was younger could not do four rounds of boxing now say he wants to do eight rounds when he is older. Will people believe him? So I think that is my answer to Ladoja.

How do you see the Ibadan factor playing out given that four of you in the race are from Ibadan?

I think if you know Ibadan very well, we are very republican. We enjoy competitions and we have always been many whenever we are contesting. If you remember the last time we had many Ibadan that contested; I think about four or five and I still won and the beauty is that, that time I didn’t have the track record that I have now.

It is no longer I will do this, they have seen what I have done, people are wiser and they know there are two main major parties and those parties have presidential candidates in Abuja.

And lastly is the fact that when you look at the political scenario, you will see that like Bola Ige once said, five fingers of a leprous hand, PDP is there, you have Accord from PDP and Accord is romancing the presidency and you have SDP they are romancing the presidency.

In fact, all of them were people who got dissatisfied with the PDP. So they are just the offspring of PDP and for me I see them as one and I believe that with the record that we have now, we are in a very good position to defeat them.

There have been allegations against your government that the recent bond you obtained was to prosecute the elections. How would you react to that?

The more I listen to some of these comments; I just look at them as mischievous comments.

I’d like to believe that the people making those comments don’t know better and I will like to believe that there are intelligent educated people who should know better but in case they have been mischievous.

Breaking the supposed jinx

When did we apply for the bond? We applied for the bond three years ago and it was not approved. They kept asking for this and that.

But at the time we applied, we could not get approval and we kept pushing and pushing and don’t forget we asked for about N30 billion and recently they are releasing to us N5 billion out of N30 billion.

So I like to believe that they are being mischievous as far as the bond is concerned. If SEC was not satisfied, they would not have given us the bond.

What are the factors you think will determine the success of your second term bid considering that there is the jinx that no one ever got a second term in Oyo State?

There is always a first person to do something. I’m the first one that will break the supposed jinx in Oyo State. And there is actually no jinx anywhere. Before, in some states, I think Kano, they never had the second term, Shekarau did it.

In Borno, SAS (Senator Ali-Modu Sheriff) did it. So if in Oyo State they have never had it, Ajimobi will do it. So there is always a first time in anything. So I believe there is no jinx and I believe my chances are very high.

The PDP candidate, Senator Teslim Folarin has promised that if voted he would work to actualise the creation of Ibadan State. How would you react to this?

They will still get Ibadan State even with me. I was one of those that sponsored Ibadan State. I fought for Ibadan and I have done a lot for Ibadan but what we are talking about is Oyo State and if he wants to be the governor of Ibadan State, let him wait until we have Ibadan State.

But for now we are fighting for Oyo State and we don’t need a parochial governor.

We all want Ibadan State but we are not running for Ibadan State now. We are running for Oyo State and I’m saying we will continue to run for Oyo State.

How do you assess the chances of the APC presidential candidate in the coming election?

I can assure you that the way things are going now, everybody will vote Buhari in and you could see from the campaign, you could see from the endorsements and the question is: do we want things to continue the way we are?

If we want change and improvement, vote for the man who represents change. I have always said this, we don’t know whether if we change things will improve, but for things to improve we must change. So, if we want improvement then we change.

Some critics of the APC have said that the party’s presidential candidate is too old to rule Nigeria. Don’t you share their views?

I think my honest position is that it depends on individuals. I have heard presidents in America that were older than Buhari and they did very well and the Supreme Court judges in America are in their seventies.

So it depends on the individual. There are even some younger ones who are not as aggressive and as agile and as intelligent as older guys.

But for me, the issue of age is only part of consideration but is not the consideration. So when you add everything up, it is like me now, when I was younger, there were things I could do, but now there are things I cannot do but I have more wisdom, I’m able to see things from helicopter’s view more than somebody who is not exposed. So, age could be an advantage in some cases and or disadvantageous in some cases.

What is the truth concerning an alleged N500 million said to have been paid into the treasury of the state. Senator Ladoja has denied complicity on the issue.

Any money you have taken and you are refunding has become your personal money. You have government car with you; it has become your personal car. If you didn’t return it when you are going and they now come to say bring it back, who has that one? Is it personal or government?