Dr. Olusegun Mimiko

Re: Of violence and Ondo Labour Party – Samuel Ogunmola, Tribune

But for the assault it unleashed on the sensibility of the people of Ondo State and the general public, the above titled article, published on page 29 of the Nigerian Tribune of Wednesday 4th April, 2007, ought to have been ignored for what it was; a junk.

With every sense of modesty, who would take serious the comments of a person who described our cherished leaders of tomorrow as “student-thugs”? For the writer to have described our young men who would soon hold high the banner of the state as “miscreants”, all in a bid to please his pay masters, could only have come from the mind of the faceless Gbemi Ogunleye who supposedly “authored” the piece.

The second issue raised in the said article provided some kind of comic relief to the readers. How else could one describe the claim that violence crept into the politics of Ondo State with the advent of the Labour Party? One wonders if the writer is close to Ondo State at all, let alone being resident there.

May we ask our “friend” where he was in May last year when Boluwaji Kunlere, the then State Secretary of the PDP and now the South Senatorial Candidate of the LP narrowly escaped assassination? His outspokenness against the anti-people attitude of his “leader” almost cost him his life.

His wife survived but not without a twisted neck no thanks to the assassins who decided to visit her husband’s “sins” on her. What about Hon. Bamido Omogbehin, a PDP member of the Ondo State House of Assembly, who again by God’s grace, escaped the fiery guns of his assailants?

His “effrontery” almost sent him to an early grave. Was the writer in Ondo State when Bimbo Fajolu, a promising young man of Ile-Oluji/Okeigbo Local Government miraculously escaped assassination, though with indelible machete cuts and gun wounds to show for it? He currently walks on crutches. Can we begin to take a count of how many people have been violently driven to the great beyond in Iju, Akure North Local Government? These are just a few of the brutalities and incidences of assassination attempts on innocent indigenes of Ondo State, even before Dr. Mimiko resigned his appointment as Minister of Housing and Urban Development in December, 2006.

But for space constraint, one would have been tempted to do a catalogue of the terror unleashed on Labour Party (LP) members in recent times. Only last week, confessions from those paid to assassinate some members of the LP were made in the palace of one of the royal fathers.

Of what need is it to the LP, a party with a clear majority in Ondo State, to resort to violence to intimidate, maim and kill its followers? If Labour Party is indeed the aggressor in the fight for the soul of Ondo State as claimed, why then is it that it is only the PDP stalwarts that are daily caught with caches of arms and ammunition?

Perhaps our friend needs to read last week’s dailies which detailed how a leader of the PDP in the state was caught with two vehicles filled with sophisticated guns and other deadly weapons.

While it is true that the political travails of Governor Agagu climaxed on December 14, 2006, when the people of the state spoke with an unequivocal voice, through the unprecedented epic crowd that was at the inauguration rally of the LP, the daily influx of people into the Olusegun Mimiko-led party, has been a source of serious heartache to the outgoing governor’s camp.It is instructive to note here however, that Governor Agagu drew the ire of the people of Ondo State when he insulted them with a second term ambition. This was the person who, both in his private and public campaigns in 2003, promised to spend only one term of four years in office, with a rider that it was only an unserious governor who would not accomplish his objectives in four years. Though he made this pronouncement at different rallies and meetings, the one that readily comes to mind is the Oke-Agbe, Akoko rally where the Late Rufus Folorunsho Giwa was present.

It may serve the writer’s curiosity to know that Chief Giwa lost his life in a ghastly road accident on his way to Lagos after this rally in support of Agagu. It was at the rally where Giwa, as the Asiwaju of Akoko, had gone to present Dr. Agagu to the Akoko people, based on the understanding that he was going to spend only one term of four years in office.

Now that the governor desperately wants a second term, against his voluntary and solemn pledge, the questions the people are asking are, “Mr. Governor, where is thy honour? Where is the integrity of a public office holder? Can Governor Agagu not give some honour to the memory of the late Giwa by keeping his promise? Shouldn’t the living respect the dead?”

Much as the above could be left to our consciences, one would like to passionately appeal that the Agagu-led administration, rather than resort to the employment of violence and barefaced lies in its campaign for a second term in office, should concentrate, in its last few days in office, on how it can dispense whatever was still possible of its avowed promises to the people whose mandate it holds in trust.

Instead of resorting to attacks on the people through wasteful ventures and naked display of arrogance of power in the form of sponsored advertorials and disclaimers; media attacks and reckless gagging of the state-owned media outfits, the outgoing governor should accept whatever fate has in stock for him at the April polls with equanimity.

Afterall, he defeated a much older incumbent governor in 2003. Defeat, such as is imminent in Ondo State should therefore, not be too bitter a pill for him to swallow. If Agagu is popular as claimed, why then does he have to offend our sights with nauseating posters all over available spaces on our walls, including the governor’s office, the Government House and other government properties? How many of these posters did he paste to win in 2003?

Dr. Olusegun Mimiko needs no introduction to the people of Ondo State. He has lived and worked among them. In all material sense, he stands tall in capacity and integrity. He has never been known to be violent. His rising political profile has in it the mighty hands of God all the way. This is why there is this unmatched quest for him to lead the state at this precarious time. Mimiko is a man on a mission to rescue his people from the fiefdom in which they are currently held up.

From all indications, the Labour Party is committed to the promotion of peace and a violence-free electioneering process in Ondo State. However, what in one’s opinion, should be vehemently rejected is the employment of the infamous means of violence, harassment and intimidation, using thugs and miscreants to unleash terror against members of the LP and the electorate in Ondo State.

Every politically active adult in the state should be allowed to freely choose whichever group or political party he/she wants to belong; the people should be allowed to freely choose their leaders.

It must however be noted that any attack on the Labour Party is a direct attack on the good people of Ondo State who have chosen it as a platform for the realization of the positive change they desire and deserve.

http://www.tribune.com.ng/11042007/politics_2.html