From: Laide Raheem, Abeokuta
A socio-political group, Ogun West Elders Forum (OGWEF), has vowed it will reject any attempt to manipulate or impose any gubernatorial candidate from Ogun West extraction, on the people of the zone in 2019.
The group, which declared its main objective was to work with other leaders in Ogun East and Ogun Central, to present a credible governorship candidate, warned that imposition of candidate by any group or individual will be resisted vehemently.
OGWEF, however, flayed the Ogun West Elders Council, over a statement credited to it, that former Governor Olusegun Osoba, opposed the zone from producing governor in 2019 and described the statement as “untrue and feeble attempt to tarnish” Osoba’s image.
The group, speaking on Tuesday, through its chairman, Hon. Mufutau Ajibola, at a press conference in Abeokuta, alleged that the Council, by casting aspersion on the personality of the former governor, was playing the script of the state governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun.
He declared that the said elders did not have the mandate to rubbish Osoba, whom he said, remains committed to good democratic ethos and ideals.
Ajibola, flanked by the immediate past Commissioner for Cooperatives and Community Development, Samuel Ayedogbon, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress in the state, Olu Agemo and other members of the group, said the Council never represented the generality and yearnings of Ogun West indigenes, but acted alone.
He said: “As a tested democrat who had contested, won and lost elections, Chief Osoba is firmly committed to good democratic ethos and ideals and those against him on the issue of letting the people of Ogun West and indeed Ogun State have a say in who governs them from Ogun West in 2019 are enemies of democracy and oligarchs who feed fat on playing the politics of exclusion and imposition.
“We note that Ogun State has a long standing tradition of democratic practice and meritocracy. Our governors have always emerged based on the wish of the people and the popularity of the candidates and not through the machination of an individual or group of few individuals.
“We in Ogun West Elders Forum believe that to achieve victory in the 2019 agenda, we must present a candidate that has wide acceptability and appeal across the state.
“We will therefore oppose any machination towards an unfavourable and predetermined answer that could hinder us from actualizing our goal in 2019. Any such move would be rebuked, resisted and condemned.”
He, therefore, pointed out that the Elders Council, was in no position to refer to any governorship aspirants from the axis as “Tekobos” noting “the so called elders are merely acting as pawns in the hands of their paymaster to attempt to exclude a particular Ogun West gubernatorial aspirant from Ogun 2019 race”.
Ajibola, who served as the chairman, State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) in Ogun State between 2011 and 2015, expressed optimism that the zone will produce the next governor in Ogun State since 1976, stressed the group was working hard behind the scene to encourage all political parties in the state to field their gubernatorial candidates from Ogun West in 2019
“We therefore passionately and humbly appeal to our leaders in these parties to tow this line in the interest of equity, justice and fairness. This way, the state will re-enact the glory of 1999, when in the interest of justice in Nigeria the two major political parties fielded Yoruba candidates to achieve a desired democratic outcome,” Ajibola submitted.
Equally speaking, the former state chairman of Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Olu Agemo, explained that Osoba was not against Ogun West as being insinuated by loyalists of the incumbent governor.
According to him, some leaders serving the interest of Amosun were creating division and propping aspirants outside Ogun West to derail the Yewa-Awori cause.