Why Jimoh Ibrahim deserves Ondo APC guber ticket —Odere.

Why Jimoh Ibrahim deserves Ondo APC guber ticket —Odere.

By Kunle Odere

FEMI Odere, an alumnus of Illinois State University in Normal-Bloomington in the State of Illinois, was a publisher of the African Voice, a newspaper publication based in Chicago, United States. He served as media consultant to the Lagos State government when Bola Ahmed Tinubu was governor. On his return to Nigeria country, Odere was appointed by former Ekiti State governor, Kayode Fayemi, as his aide on Diaspora Affairs. He became the Head of Media and Publicity of the Diaspora Directorate of Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council. Odere is currently the Senior Legislative Aide to the Senate President on Stakeholders’ Engagement and Mobilization. In this interview with KUNLE ODEREMI, Odere sheds light on the politics of Ondo State from where he hails.

The stage is almost set for the conduct of primaries by political parties preparatory to the 2024 governorship poll in Ondo State. As a stakeholder, what do you consider as the fundamental issues involved in the election?

The issues are actually multifaceted. But let us treat this conversation from the point of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to which I belong. The party needs to look at the issues dispassionately. After that, we can look at the individuals, that is, the aspirants. From the view of the APC, it should look at the election coming up in Ondo State dispassionately more so because of thee fact there is really no cohesion among the party members in Ondo State. This is because, before the death of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu , there was a serious political divide between him and his deputy, the current governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa. While I am not going to lay claim to what actually transpired, we do know for a fact that things went down between the two. We may not know all the facts about whatever went down. But the fact remains that because of that, there has been a very wide gulf among the APC members and their supporters of the two personalities. So, we do not want to go into this election with the house divided. That’s why I said the APC has to look at the issue very dispassionately. Ondo people, as electorate, are peculiar and to some extent because of their high principle. Once they decide on something, it is very difficult to change them and they may not even mind going into the opposition. Therefore, due to this division between the camps of the incumbent governor and that of the late Governor Akeredolu, there is a need for the APC to present somebody who is not going to further divide the house; a need to present an aspirant, who would stand as a rallying point going into this election. I have said that before and it bears repeating here that if the current governor had actually thought deeply about the interest of the APC, perhaps, he may not have put himself forward to run for the election because it is going to further polarise the party; it is going to further create division among the party supporters and the electorate. We don’t want to do anything that would be tantamount to retrieving defeat from the jaws of victory and this why I said, because he is the father of Ondo politics, father of the political parties, including the APC, he should have actually stepped aside and allowed somebody who is ready to be neutral, who doesn’t have any baggage that could be contested later. But having said that and he decided to run, we cannot take that from him because he has the right to want to contest or otherwise. So, it now goes to the issue of the aspirant who can best secure victory for the APC in Ondo State. And having studied all the aspirants, about 15 of them, I see no other person than the distinguished Senator Jimoh Ibrahim as fitting the bill to actually carry the APC to victory in the November election.

Your party has promised to provide a level-playing field for the contestants. Don’t you consider that promise to have taken care of the whole situation surrounding who should be in the race for the party ticket?

Well, the party must provide a level-playing field; it has no choice because we are talking about a representative democracy, more so, with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the saddle in government. He is a core democrat and he knows what transparent, free and fair primary is all about. So, I have no doubt in mind that the APC is going to provide a level-playing field. Having said that, the onus is still on the party itself, after studying the different as aspirants, to actually zero in on an individual because it is the overall interest of the APC that matters this time round. Just because you want to create a level-playing field doesn’t mean that they should not as a party have a preference in terms of who is going to likely carry the party to victory. So, the party must be interested in that; it can be all-comers going into the primary, but there has to be a signal by the APC that this aspirant is best suited not only to take the party to victory but also best suited to actually protect its interest. Quite frankly, we need to also emphasise the fact that the party must zero in because the South-West is the base of President Tinubu; the zone is his political base and part of all that is going now is about the 2027 calculations too. We as a party have already lost two states in the South-West and that is even bad enough. So, we cannot afford to lose another state to the opposition. That is why I said the APC must look at the coming primary and the election proper very dispassionately and do all it can to making sure that Ondo State is secured; that no more state in the South-West is going to be lost at the poll because it will not augur well for the president if he is weak in his geopolitical base and that’s why I said the APC needs to have more than a passing interest in how the primary turns out.

There are talks about the need for the APC to come up with a consensus candidate, given the fairly large number of contestants for the ticket, to avert what played out in a similar contest in Edo State recently?

Nothing is impossible in politics. There is a chance that such may happen, but looking at the closeness of the primary, if a consensus candidate is going to emerge, I believe it would have emerged by now. Again, it is still possible at the last few days or at the eleventh hour. So, the possibility exists and if that happens, I hope that the consensus candidate would be Senator Jimoh Ibrahim for several reasons. He is one politician that stands out from the pack. He is somebody who has articulated what he is going to do and he has said that severally and I agree with him that he is not interested in running down any aspirant and he has not been doing that. He has always been focused on his message; he has always been focused on his deliverables and winning the election for the party. He is a first term senator from the Ondo South Senatorial District. Even with this small amount of time that he has spent in the Senate, he has become a poster boy of the Senate because of his articulation, because of his contributions on the floor of the Senate. Since 1999 that the country started the Fourth Republic, I don’t know if you are aware that Ondo State has the largest deposits of bitumen in the entire country, if not in the whole of Africa. Since then, all our politicians have not been able to do anything towards harnessing that huge mineral deposit in the state. They have not been able to come up with necessary legislation that would fast track the process of harnessing the veritable resource until Senator Ibrahim came into the Senate and he sponsored a bill on bitumen. The bill has passed through the Second Reading in the Senate; it is awaiting the Third Reading and I’m sure that by God’s grace that when the bill is passed into law, it is going to open up the developmental vista of the state because he has said that we can as Ondo State people and as a government leverage on the bitumen deposit without even having paid a dime to all the people who will be licensed to mine the mineral for infrastructural development.

That is not the only thing that he has promised. He has also said that when he becomes the governor, Ondo central senatorial district that has been neglected all along is going to get an enormous facelift. He has something special for each of the three senatorial districts in the state. The Southern senatorial district is not only going to be the hub of maritime and agriculture but also become the hub of tourism because you can imagine if the area is opened up infrastructure-wise. This is his thinking, that it will take less than an hour to get to Lagos. When goods and services are moved from Ondo State to Lagos, because the latter is the commercial nerve-centre of the economic activities in the country, the spiralling effects will be huge and beneficial. There will be enormous multiplier effects that it will have on the economy of Ondo State. These are a few of the huge number of progressive, developmental agenda and vision Senator Jimoh Ibrahim has consistently articulated and encouraged over the years. Not only that, this is an individual who has about nine degrees, with two being PhDs. In fact, he knows his onion and he is an extremely brilliant man and in these days and Age, the 24th Century, we should actually jettison all those politicians who do not have any idea. You and I can treat files; it is just a matter of approving or not approving them. But it is not everybody that has ideas because ideas rule the world, frankly. So, out of all these aspirants, Senator Ibrahim is the only one, in my own estimation, that is brimming with the power of ideas. This is one of the reasons that I share his vision; I believe in ideas too. It is ideas that create a new paradigm. Every leader that you have both in Nigeria and other parts of the world, they are who they are today or who they were yesterday because of the power of their ideas. The late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo is a typical example. The things that Chief Awolowo did for the Western Region and indeed the country are still being talked about; those things haven’t been replicated up till tomorrow. Why is that? It is simply because of his ideas, his uncommon ideas that have stood the test of time. It is the same thing Senator Jimoh Ibrahim represents. He is full of ideas and with ideas, you can move mountains.

The main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) says it was poised to reclaim power in Ondo State in the coming poll. That confidence being expressed by the PDP appears to be giving you and other APC faithful serious worries?

We don’t want to discountenance any political party, most especially the PDP, though the party is limping right now, not only in Ondo State, even across the whole country. Nonetheless, the party can still be considered formidable. We cannot afford to take it for granted just for the fact that it is limping. So, that is why we need to cross our Ts and dot our Is so that we don’t make any stupid mistake that the PDP can actually latched onto. Quite frankly, I don’t see the PDP as a threat. If there is any threat at all, it is within, and not without.

Some critics say since Senator Ibrahim is already in the National Assembly, he should be satisfied with the big task of making laws for the country instead of trying to explore in a perceived contest of uncertainty, that the current battle for the APC ticket is a slippery terrain. After all, the popular saying is that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?

That is a very good question, but the way I would answer it is that politicians are considered to be incurable optimists. Yes, he is a first term senator; one would think that he should just stay in the Senate. However, when you have somebody who has demonstrated capability, who has demonstrated knowledge and understanding of issues, it may very well be that the Senate is a pond to him. So, I don’t see anything wrong if he wants to go to a larger ocean. This time round, it is the state where you can only get so much done. In the National Assembly, even if the Bitumen Bill that he sponsored… is the only thing that he did before exiting the Senate to resume as governor in the state, that alone is very significant. So, you can now imagine somebody who actually unleashed the resources of the state backed by legislation, not wanting to see how those things (bitumen deposits) to be harnessed for the good of the people and the state in general. So, I don’t see any reason why as a first timer he cannot go for the governorship race. Like I said earlier, he is better off to give to the entire people of the state what he has in knowledge and ideas rather than just a small section of the state in terms of his senatorial district. So, it is a good move as far as I am concerned.