Mar 12th, 2007
Why I Dumped PDP – Mimiko
…Gov Agagu seized party register, first kept it in his office, later in his house By Kayode Fasua Sun Publishing
For one widely known as Iroko, a personification of the resilient king of the wood-Iroko tree-Olusegun Rahman Mimiko walks with the strides of the sure-footed. Mimiko, Ondo State governorship candidate of the Labour Party (LP) and a medic, now contends with crowd of supporters and admirers, which have been thronging his Ondo countryhome since last year, when he gave breathe to his governorship ambition.
Until he joined the race to Alagbaka Government House, Akure, Mimiko was the Minister for Housing and Urban Development under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Federal Government of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Conversant with grassroots politics, Mimiko, before his brief stint as Minister, was the Secretary to the Ondo State Government (SSG) under Governor Olusegun Agagu.
Before then, he had served twice as Commissioner for Health in the state, first under former Governor Bamidele Olumilua of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) and afterwards in the Alliance for Democracy (AD) administration of ex-governor Adebayo Adefarati. In this interview, Mimiko unveiled real reason for his defecting from the PDP to the LP. He also explains why he wants Agagu’s job through the April 14 governorship elections.
Excerpts:
I will like you to enlighten members of the public on the circumstances that led to your leaving the ruling PDP and how you became the governorship candidate of the Labour Party?
Thank you very much. I left because the leadership of the party (PDP) at the state level sabotaged the internal mechanism for democratic change or for a process for emergence of alternatives within the party. Even, during the review of membership registration, he did not only make it difficult for people he perceived could be loyal to any other prospective gubernatorial aspirant…
You mean the governor?
Yes. The governor. And the register of the party, which was supposed to be in the custody of the party Executive, he actually kept in his office, later in his house. Nobody had access to the register. There was no way a level playing ground would have been provided in the PDP. We complained about this situation. There was the reconciliation committee of Admiral Murtala Nyako (rtd). People with tendencies other than that of the governor made representation. He was instructed to release the register so that people could register. He kept on. He kept to the register. He did not release it.
Even the chairman of the party (PDP) and the state secretary of the party, who incidentally are in Labour Party, now, had no access to the register (laugh)
So, in that type of ridiculous situation, there was no question of trying to engage in any form of competition with the governor. And we decided to leave. Our leaving was essentially to prevent a major crisis within the party.