2019: Ogun West Elders Forum warns against imposition, manipulation

A group, the Ogun West Elders Forum, on Tuesday, insisted that no one or body can impose any governorship candidate on the people of the senatorial district, in its quest to produce the next governor of the state in 2019.

The senatorial district had in the 42 years history of the state, had not been changed to produce the number one citizen of the state.

Members of the Forum were leaders of the senatorial district who have held various political and public offices in the state at various times.

Addressing newsmen in Abeokuta, the chairman of the Forum, Chief Muftau Ajibola, bemoaned the position of another group from the senatorial district believed to be loyalists of Senator Ibikunle Amosun, for labeling a particular aspirant as “tekobo” which literary means stranger.

They said that the so-called Elders Council had no moral justification to call any sons and daughters of the senatorial district as “tekobos.”

The Forum submitted that all past governors and the present governor of the state could all be described as “tekobos.”

“For us in Ogun West, we see this deprecatory ‘tekobo’ labeling as a ploy by ‘these elders’ and their paymaster to divide Ogun West people and break our resolve in supporting some aspirants who are already very popular among the mass of our people to create the much needed space to force their far unpopular candidates on the good people of Ogun West and by extension Ogun State.

“All well-meaning Ogun State people including Chief Osoba have condemned this divisive stratagem and we in Ogun West Elders Forum boldly state that none of our sons and daughters would be excluded from the gubernatorial race of 2019 on the basis of a ‘tekobo’ appellation.

“In any case, all previous governors of the state including the incumbent, Governor Ibikunle Amosun can be rightly be described as ‘tekebos.’ ‘Tekobo’ has never constituted a barrier to contesting elections in Ogun State, it will not start now,” it said.

The Elders Forum described Osoba as a firm believer of the “Yewa Agenda” in 2019, insisting that the former governor had sometimes supported Ogun West persons for Governor in the past.

The chairman, who was the former chairman of the State Universal Basic Education (SUBEB), under Senator Amosun’s administration said, “what is being misinterpreted for selfish reasons by the partisan Elder’s Council is the insistence of Chief Osoba that the people of Ogun West and Ogun State should be the decider of who represents of Ogun West for Governor in 2019 against the wish of an individual or few individuals to impose an appointed person for the possible perpetuation of personal aggrandizement.

“As a tested democrat who had contested, won and lost elections, Chief Osoba is firmly committed to good democratic ethos and ideas 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.”

In his remarks, a leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Olu Agemo, said the Forum would not allow any group of people to divide the district.

He said some enemies are at work to thwart the quest of the senatorial district aspiration in producing the fifth democratically elected governor of the state.