Aregbesola brought calamities to Osun – Senator Olasunkanmi Former Minister of Youths, Senator Abdulrasheed Akinlabi Olasunkanmi, is one of the frontrunners for the governorship ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party in Osun State. Olasunkanmi who fielded questions from newsmen after collecting his nomination form at PDP national secretariat was emphatic that the administration of Governor Rauf Aregbesola is the worst thing that ever happened to Osun State in living memory. MIKE ODIAKOSE reports that Olasunkanmi vowed to revisit some of the controversial policies of Aregbesola if he gets the mandate of the people at the polls. Excerpts: May we know why you are here? My mission of coming this morning is to obtain my expression of interest and nomination form of our great party, the Peoples Democratic Party, to contest for the gubernatorial election of Osun state coming up on 9 August. That is what brought me here. There are reports that an aspirant, Senator Iyiola Omisore, has been adopted by the Osun state chapter of PDP as its consensus candidate. What is your take on this? The beauty of democracy is participation – majority will have their way while the minority will have their say. But as you know, our party gives opportunity to every individual to aspire to any position of his choice. Even Mr. President has said it that several times that it is only in the PDP that people like him can be given an opportunity to reach the highest position in the land. In PDP I want to assure you that anybody can claim anything but what I know is that I am obtaining my expression of interest form and nomination form to participate fully in the gubernatorial primaries that our party has slated for April 5 this year. You are from Osun state and there some many media reports suggesting that the incumbent governor is doing very well like Governors Fashola and Godswill Akpabio. What gives you confidence that PDP stands a chance to upstage the governor? Thank you very much for that question. Let me start by saying that it will be uncharitable of me to say that Rauf Aregbesola has done nothing in Osun state. But what he has done is it commensurate with the allocations he has gotten from the federal government and the internally generated revenue in the last four years. Is it commensurate? That is number one. Is his level of performance also commensurate with the debts that he has accumulated for the unborn in Osun state? That is the yardstick we should be measuring Aregbesola’s performance. Somebody told me and I also saw it too that Aregbesola, the governor of my state, commissioned a primary school about two weeks ago. A primary school for God’s sake! When he was two years in office I challenged Aregbesola to mention any project that he has successfully completed and commissioned. At that time he told me that it is not his style to be commissioning projects but few weeks later the first project Aregbesola will commission in Osun is what he called Omojokun Park on Ibadan-Ife expressway. The Opon Imo you mentioned, that project has been hyped even more than the benefits. He promised 150,000 computer tablets until this moment he has not distributed 2,000. Even by their own admission they said they have distributed 5,000 out of the 150,000 that he promised. Is that what a governor should showcase in three years, going to four years, as his achievement? What has happened to those who got the Opon Imo in the last one year? Has anybody done any research to find out what has become of the ones he distributed a year ago? I want to tell you that Aregbesola, even though he said he is doing projects in Osun state, he cannot do more than his best. Most of the projects he is doing, especially road construction, he has concentrated on federal roads which cannot be completed in the next two, three years. He has opened up a lot of federal roads. What I want to say in conclusion about Aregbesola is the he doesn’t have that managerial competence like the other governors that you mentioned because if your resources is N1000, for example, you should not go and embark on project of over N100,000. That is why he has not been able to complete any of the projects that he has opened up. You are talking about Opon Imo, we have been hearing about Opon Imo since four years ago when he started but tell me any concrete project that he commissioned. Yes, he commissioned a primary school about two weeks ago. That is not the type of governor that I want to be when I take over the reins of government in November his year. You mentioned the issue of debts accumulated by the Aregbesola’s administration. Please can you throw more light on that? You see, one thing that I find very annoying and disturbing is that the people of Osun don’t know how much debt Aregbesola owes. Anytime we ask him they will turn to abusive language. They will be telling us that we should go and find out here and there. The thing is that it is the right of every Osun indigene to know the finances of the state. I don’t know whether it is because they don’t have the records or that they are so ashamed to let us know about it. Nobody outside that government can tell you precisely that this is how much Aregbesola is owing because they have not been able to disclose to the citizens of Osun state how much debt he has accumulated on their behalf. That is not the kind of government that we want. We want a government that will be for the people, a government that will carry the people along in everything that they are doing. That is why my people have asked me to come and serve them. I served as a member of the federal executive council from 2007 to 2011as a minister in charge of youth development. That is throughout the life of Yar’Adua/Jonathan’s administration. I was appointed by the late President Yar’Adua in 2007 and retained the same portfolio when President Jonathan took over. In the life of that administration out of the 70 ministers that served in the life of that administration I was the only one that retained the same portfolio throughout the four years. That means that I must have done something right in that ministry in charge of youths, the future of the country. I am very proud about my achievement there because out of over 70 ministers in that administration I was the only one that retained the same portfolio throughout the four year tenure. Again, I want to translate my performance, my record of service, which is impeccable, to transfer it to Osun state, to serve the people of Osun state. If the PDP in Osun state decides to go for consensus candidate would you abide by the decision? Consensus candidate or arrangement on its own is not a wrong way of choosing a candidate. I want to be very clear with that but there should be a template of objective criteria that should be used in choosing a consensus candidate. One of the criteria I can tell you is that all the aspirants must agree to that consensus. Secondly, that the person that you want to put forward as a consensus candidate must be a loyal member of the party. He should not be somebody that is threatening to go to APC today or to decamp to ANPP tomorrow. He must be a loyal member of the party and his loyalty should not be in doubt. Thirdly, whoever you want to throw up as consensus candidate must be a financial member of the party. You must have been seen to be contributing to the growth and progress of our party before you can say you want to be a consensus candidate. You have to be contributing financially to the growth of the party. Fourthly, we can now be thinking of the educational qualification, your experience in the job, on service and how impeccable your record of service has been. Most importantly, you must not be a controversial aspirant. If all these conditions are met then you can be talking about consensus. But let me say if anybody is saying that he want to be a consensus candidate that means he wants to come through the back door. Some people have been nurturing this party for two to three years ago, and somebody cannot just come out a week or two to the primary and say you want to organise a consensus arrangement. I know that Mr. President is a fair-minded person, our new national chairman; Adamu Muazu is a fair-minded person who believes in true democracy. They will not allow that kind of consensus arrangement. I have been working in the past two years developing programmes, I have done so many weekend retreats, formulating my policies and programmes on how I want to govern Osun state using a different approach from the person that we have in there now. So I am very ready, I have prepared myself and I want to transfer my impeccable record of service, my unblemished record of service from being a senator to being a member of the federal executive council and honourable minister in charge of youth development, that is the record of service I want to bring to bear on the citizens of Osun state. If you have the opportunity of getting elected in Osun what are the things that you would have loved to do differently from what is going on in the state now? I have partially answered your question earlier on. My programme is going to be partially focused on education and employment generation. When I say employment generation I mean sustainable employment generation not the kind of employment of using graduates to cut grasses and sweeping streets. Like I said earlier on, am eternally grateful to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and current President Jonathan for putting in charge of the ministry of youth development when I served as a minister of the federal republic of Nigeria. It has really opened my eyes to the problems confronting this country and it is the problem of unemployment. I think you saw what happened last weekend when our youths went for the Immigration recruitment. Unemployment is a time bomb that all serious-minded aspirants or governments must tackle in this country. I have made education the focal point of my administration. How am I going to achieve that? Number one if you are educated you easily adapt, you can be easily trained in some other areas where you can be useful to yourself and to your community. After education employment is my other focus. Like I said, I have demonstrated it at the federal level. My major concern is to emphasise technical education, skill acquisition and vocational training so that all these out youths will be employers of labour rather than looking for the white collar job that is not there. I said sustainable employment-let me give you an example. If in Osun youth development centre where students are learning to skill acquisition they will be practically demonstrating all those skills that they want to go and be practicing. If it is poultry farming, for example, they will be rearing chicks, chicken and eggs. What will they do with the eggs and the chicken – they will be selling it in the market. The proceeds from that demonstration will now be used to sustain that particular centre so that we will be training our youths free of charge from the proceeds of what they are generating from that particular centre. I intend to open at least nine centres throughout Osun state apart from the technical colleges that we have that I am going to emphasise. I am also going to emphasise agro processing value chain. Let me give an example of cassava. If you plant cassava you are going to be processing it, storage and processing are problem which I am also going to emphasise. What I have realised is that we have a lot of post harvest loses in so many of our agricultural produce but if you can tackle the problem of storage and tackle the problem of processing, I believe most of these challenges will be overcome. That is what I want to do – pay serious attention to skill acquisition and vocational training and not using graduates to sweep the streets and cutting grasses. There are reports that former Governor Isiaka Adeleke joined the race for PDP ticket last week. What is your take on this development? Let me say that it is still at the realm of rumour that former Governor Isiaka Adeleke entered the race because, number one, we are from the same senatorial district and, number two, we have mutual respect for ourselves. Adeleke is one of the leaders I consulted when I wanted to come out for this governorship race. He gave his blessing that I should go ahead that he will go for the senate and we mutually agreed to support our aspirations. He is an honourable person, I am not sure he will come out because he has not told me he is going to come out. He has already given me his words. As a matter of fact there was a day he gathered all his supporters and told them that this is his candidate that they should all support. I have people from his constituency here in my entourage. What they told me is that former governor Adeleke has not told them that he is going to contest for the governorship of Osun state and I am sure he is not going to contest because he is an honourable person and he has already given me his word that he is supporting my aspiration. Following the merger of schools in Osun state there was spontaneous reactions that led to religious crisis within the state. If you emerge as governor how are you going to tackle this problem before the entire state is engulfed in religious crisis? That is one of the calamities that Aregbesola has brought to Osun state. He has introduced a religious dichotomy to the politics of Osun state, something that hitherto we never experienced. Let me remind you that during the immediate past PDP government of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola there was no religious issues then because at that time, if you recall, we had a Christian/Christian ticket. The governor was a Christian and his deputy was also a Christian and they governed Osun state peacefully. It is only the time Aregbesola came that he brought religious issues into the politics of Osun state. I can assure you that when I take over the reins of government from him come this November it will not be difficult to bring our people back to the past glory that we know Osun state to be. There wouldn’t be issues of religion at all when I take over. One of the reasons why Aregbesola could not perform was that he brought a lot of controversies to the governance of our state. He spent the first two years debating about nomenclature, whether our state should be called Osun state or the state of Osun. For God’s sake how does that affect the growth and development of our people. Whether you are called state of Osun or Osun state he spent the first two years debating that. After he left that issue then came the issue of religion. When I take over from him in November this year I am going to revisit all his unpopular programmes and reclassification of schools is one of them because Osun state cannot be different from all the other states in the federation. I want use this opportunity to appeal to INEC and our other law enforcement agencies that they should monitor Osun state election properly because Aregbesola depends on electoral malpractices as witnessed in the sending of 183 Osun state indigenes to Anambra in the guise of being election monitors. That is what he wants to perpetuate in Osun come August 9 but I want to advise INEC to be very vigilant and enlist the cooperation of other security agencies so that Aregbesola will not perpetuate the electoral fraud that this APC governments are known for.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 17:37:12 +0000