The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Ekiti State, Bisi Kolawole, tells ABIODUN NEJO about the primary election that produced him, his aspiration and plans
The 2020 Ekiti PDP congresses appear to have divided your party. Why has it been difficult to achieve reconciliation?
There was nothing abnormal about what happened. It’s politics and there is no perfect situation. Yes, we have our disagreements, but there has been alignment and realignment within the party thereafter. For example, Lateef Ajijola was Director General of (the campaign organisation for) a particular chairmanship aspirant then; today, Ajijola and I have collapsed all the groupings. Yinka Akerele, who is also from the other divide, is my DG today. Of course, we cannot have a perfect situation, but a greater percentage of members of the party from the two divides are working together to ensure that we win the governorship election.
You were the campaign DG to former Deputy Governor Kolapo Olusola Eleka. How did you feel contesting against him at the last governorship primary?
Prof Eleka came in as the deputy of our leader, Ayo Fayose, who was the governorship candidate in 2014. It was the same person (Fayose), who invited Eleka to deputise, that appointed me as the DG when Eleka contested for governorship. I did what I was expected to do in that capacity. It is only God who knows what the same person, who is the PDP leader in Ekiti State, saw in me; it is only God who knows why he (Fayose) had to change his mind and switch over to me, and the Yoruba will say: ‘kii de ba ni ka yeri’ (when it is your turn, you don’t dodge). It is God’s doing that he (Fayose) zeroed in on me. Prof Eleka had his initial reservation, but as of today, we are very cordial, we have worked things out between ourselves and we are also working for him to be the next senatorial candidate for the South District. It is not about governorship, it is about which capacity are you being considered to do best. Former governor Fayose must have considered my antecedents, my experience in politics before he came up with the idea of endorsing me.
What do you think qualifies you for governorship?
What qualifies me for governorship is far more than what has ever qualified any governor, previous and present, in the state. None of them has ever been a supervisor in the local government, none of them has ever been a legislator, none of them was ever a commissioner and none of them was a party chairman. With all these experiences here and there, it is a familiar terrain; I am very conversant (with the situation of things) because I am an indigenous politician, not a visiting politician. I live in Ekiti, I know where the shoe pinches, I know the people; we are experiencing the situation together. I have all these things far over and above all the governors and all candidates that are contesting against me now. None of them can parade my political credentials. I’m the most experienced among the people that have ever contested or are contesting now.
If elected governor, what will you do differently?
Whatever progress we are going to make in Ekiti or anywhere else depends on the stability of the polity and security of lives and property, which is the basic responsibility of a government. You are to secure citizens’ lives and property and once you are not able to do that, it is better for you to leave because you will not make progress. Today, there is no security in Ekiti State. People are being kidnapped on the roads; obas are being harassed in their palaces; people are running away from farms because of the insecurity situation in the state, where farmers are being attacked, shot or kidnapped. This is very scary. We have to move urgently to address the situation to prevent famine and hunger. We will borrow from the previous experience of former governor’s (Fayose) administration when he was able to use indigenous hunters and other local people to secure lives and property. Kidnapping was almost zero in his administration; the problem of herdsmen sacking farmers in their farms was taken care of then. People came from other states to understudy what he did. We will study that.
We will establish a security-conscious environment; work on the security architecture of Ekiti State to ensure that there is hope, that people are confident that they are safe wherever they are and confident that they can move from one point to the other without the fear that they may be kidnapped or harassed. Once we are able to do that, people will come to Ekiti to invest; Ekiti will be attractive enough for investors. You will start having cottage industries springing up and job opportunities. Without security, you can’t do that. That is why we have to prioritise security. We’ll ensure students can go to school without the fear of being kidnapped for ransom; obas can sleep in their palaces and maintain peace in their various domains. It is only adequate security that will make the state stable. That is when government can generate more revenue and we can focus on infrastructure development, grow our tourism sector, agriculture and of course harness the full potential of the state.
What do you think the federal and state governments ought to do about insecurity that they are not doing?
It is unfortunate. It is about leadership. When Fayose was governor, people came to Ekiti to understudy how he was able to balance the situation between herdsmen and the people. If the leadership is sincere, we can co-exist; we can have a secure environment and live peacefully. But it is like from the head to the toe in this APC government, they don’t care. In those days, if a life was lost, you would see people sympathising, but what you experience today is a situation where they will just tell you were 150 people killed in a mosque and the President will say he is not aware. All the government does is sympathising with the families of those killed; no proactive measure taken. They don’t care about all these things. We are on auto-pilot in Nigeria, nobody is directly in charge, it does not concern them, under this administration, it doesn’t have any effect again when lives are lost. We have never had it this bad.
About two days ago, I noticed a small plane hovering all over Ekiti; I learnt they were looking for some expatriates that were kidnapped, they didn’t know if the kidnappers had even killed them. How do you expect investors to come in? Factories are winding up here and there. The country is retrogressing, a dollar exchanged for around N150 or so when they came to power, but today, it about N600. It is very sad. It has affected all spheres of life in Nigeria. Recently, bandits attacked a train; they went to (Kaduna) airport. Nobody is safe any longer. So, how do you expect me to bring my business to Nigeria rather than pack my load and leave? That is what is affecting our economy. We are retrogressing politically, economically.
Some people have said your failure to make sufficient reconciliatory moves pushed Chief Segun Oni and others to dump the PDP after the primary. How do you respond to that?
We did everything we could, but once your mind is made up or your supporters are saying that you must move, I think that was the case of Oni. Once upon a time, we were very close politically. He defected to the APC and you know what happened to him in the APC; he was sacked in his ward, some of us encouraged him to return to the PDP. On coming back to the PDP, he wanted to grab the head of the whole thing again after abandoning us for about seven years. It is not done. Despite that, he was able to contest in the primary in a level playing field. He congratulated me at the venue of the election; he saw the whole process as free and fair. The following day, as early as 9am, when we went to visit him as a leader, we were not allowed to enter his house. He did not allow for peaceful resolution because he had made up his mind then to defect from the PDP. I guess his plan: ‘If I am not able to get the head, I will go elsewhere to get it’. That has always been the story of his political journey, moving from one party to the other once he is unable to get what he wants. It is no fault of the party, from the national to the local level. We tried our possible best to dissuade him from moving away, but his mind was just made up for that. That is why I call some people nomadic politicians.
What are your expectations ahead of the June 18 governorship election?
The election will go in our favour by the grace of God. We are working assiduously; we are working very hard. Don’t forget the fact that in 2014, this was how Oni defected from the PDP to the APC to join Adeniyi Adebayo and current Governor Kayode Fayemi, who was in the saddle then, that was when we thrashed them 16-0. And I see another 16-0 looming. Oni’s journey from the PDP to another party will be more detrimental to the APC from where he moved his people to PDP and left again with the people. Although some PDP members left with him for reasons best known to them, they are not as many as those people he brought from the APC. His deputy governorship candidate is from the APC. The PDP family remains very united and we are working very hard to ensure that we carry the day.
If the PDP wins, what are the first political steps that you will take?
There are many things that have been done wrongly by Governor (Kayode) Fayemi. I pray for him to end his tenure peacefully and well. Fayemi made some very disastrous steps like sacking workers in the Ekiti State University as if they don’t have families to take care of, like retrenching 2,000 workers engaged by the Fayose administration. They were employed on merit, but he sacked them. We are going to readdress all these immediately, we are going to attend to all these issues of promoting workers without monetary backing, we are going to see to all these reckless deductions, we are going to look into the matter of the pensioners who are suffering. These and others are what we are going to put in place and ensure we put smiles on the faces of an average Ekiti man. There are situations we have to revert, like in our education system; we were always coming first here and there. We will quickly address the many things that the Fayemi administration has done wrongly. If the APC government did many wrong things to Ekiti people and the party is still coming back to contest election, then it is left for Ekiti people to reject them completely.
What if PDP loses – will that mark the end of the party in the state?
The PDP cannot lose this coming election. Whatever happens, we are not God anyway, it will not mark or mar the performance of the PDP elsewhere. The situation is very good for us in Ekiti and at the federal level, I assure you, the PDP will win this election because we have worked hard. Ekiti has never had it this good, having a politician that is so experienced as a party candidate. It has never happened like this. They have always hired people from America or Lagos, they make little change and they come and trick Ekiti people; you call them experts or magicians and all that. With Bisi Kolawole as the candidate of the PDP, I think Ekiti people are just lucky to have one of their own.
When you were in the House of Assembly, the relationship between the executive and the legislature was kind of frosty. Why was that?
That was the most balanced House of Assembly one can ever experience anywhere in the country. We had 13 PDP and 13 ACN members. I was not a principal officer, but I protected my party and we ensured that the state made progress. We were able to maintain stability. We saw ourselves as brothers trying to ensure that Ekiti move forward. The situation was very tense but God took control and we were able to stabilise. God used me and a few others to stabilise the Assembly under Governor Oni then and that was why he could last that long without being impeached.
What do you think an ideal executive-legislature relationship should look like?
Even when I will encourage them to be very friendly, I will equally believe that too much of friendship may be seen as compromise. Legislators must be very objective; the important thing is to protect, to perform the duties for which they are voted in. They have to coexist peacefully because it will be in the interest of the generality of the people of Ekiti State to see everything moving smoothly without conflict. But there should not be compromise from the legislative arm; nothing should be taken for granted by the executive arm. If they are able to balance that, one would expect a smooth relationship so that the state will progress. They should always do things in the interest and for the progress of the state.
Do you honestly believe that the PDP can send the ruling APC packing from Aso Rock in 2023?
It is obvious that this current government has failed beyond repairs. We experienced 16 years of the PDP, we are experiencing almost eight years of APC. The APC came with change mantra but they have changed things for the worse. Nigerians are intelligent enough to make a smart choice, having seen how the APC has messed things up. Nigerians can compare their experiences under the PDP and the APC and decide which one is better in terms of everything – security, economy, etc. Everything has nosedived now, everything has crashed now. All these will work well for the PDP to win the 2023 general elections with some efforts. Nigerians are waiting for us to take over Aso Rock and Ekiti people are waiting for us to take over Oke Ayoba here.
What should Nigerians consider when electing the next president?
We should no longer elect a President that will go to bed 4pm and wake up 1pm the following day, work for an hour or two, and they say the President is resting. We need someone who is agile, who can do the work, who has good antecedents and not all these incompetent military generals like Buhari who was presented as a Messiah or the man who would redeem Nigeria but plunged us into the most unexpected situation. We expect a smart, brilliant and an experienced politician who has good antecedents from wherever he is coming from, someone who understands the situation, the problem of Nigerians.
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