Ondo residents are tired of APC government —Kunlere

Senator Boluwaji Kunlere, who represented Ondo South Senatorial District in the National Assembly between 2011 and 2015, is a governorship aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He speaks with ‘YOMI AYELESO on the chances of the opposition in the election coming up in the state, among other issues.

 

THERE were reports recently that aspirants from Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo State, including you, have dropped their governorship ambitions for one of you. How far is this true?

By implication, out of the five aspirants from the local government area, we are now left with three aspirants. The shadow election that was purportedly done will not be binding. I was watching people displaying their characters in this game. The truth of the matter is that we are in the race. The people that you will see tomorrow with a sitting governor are the ones saying people should go and vote for a particular person. When you see some people, you clearly know where their political interest and the office they represent lie. You should know the permutation will be that maybe they should bring out somebody that will not be acceptable to the people of Ondo State so that their own candidate can win.

 

Do you see your party defeating the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the October governorship poll?

You are aware that even as an opposition, we defeated the sitting government in the 2019 general election; the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won two seats in the Senate and three in the House of Representatives. We lost two due to carelessness and another two narrowly. The PDP won the 2019 presidential election in Ondo State with a margin of 38,000. I know some people will say it was because there was crisis in one party but the fact of the matter is that the registered parties in Nigeria were over 80, so it does not lie in the mouth of anybody to say that because some people contested in another party, that made the PDP to win. The other time, with a sitting governor of the PDP extraction in 2015, APC won and they celebrated it. The state is ripe for PDP to harvest if we are able to put our house in order. The party can make it if we can get our acts together and the candidate emerge in a transparent and credible manner and the people cooperate, it will be easy for us. People know their condition in 2016 and now; the matter speaks for itself. But that might not be enough because people must ensure that their votes count. What happened in Edo and Osun states where somebody was coasting home to victory and his mandate was snatched in the daylight should not happen here.

 

What are the things you will do differently in the area of governance if you emerge as the governor of the state?

Firstly, if you remove greed and arrogance from act of governance, almost 50 per cent of the problems will be solved. What I mean is that, for example, if a star project should ordinarily not be more than N1.5 or N2 billion but you say it is N5 billion, you have murdered your state. A transparent government must be able to come out after the State Executive Council (SEC) meeting, where such a monumental project was approved, to announce that ‘we are going to do this project, to last for so and so months and at the cost of so much, given to XYZ’. If a project in the education sector should cost N3 billion and you put it at N5 billion, you have shortchanged the sector and that is why you will see continuation of renovation and building of schools from UBEC and the cooperation of the state government.

In the same vein, you go to the health sector; how are the hospitals? What is the recent ratio of the doctors and nurses to patients? What is the situation of things with the mother and child hospital? What is the essence of a government destroying the solid structure of the State Specialist Hospital? Why not go to another location because of the expansion of the town. These are things that we will bring on board by equipping our hospitals with modern equipments; schools will be updated with good facilities. In the agriculture sector, I will definitely not be a governor who will be talking about agriculture without having a farm. The size of jobless youths the sector can employ is enormous. Our own agricultural policy will be in such a way that we will consider it a thing of shame that Ondo State with the longest coast line will be going to the neighbouring states to buy cat fish.

 

Are you saying the APC government, in the last three years, has not touched these sectors you mentioned?

I am taking it on sectoral basis. As a result of the counterpart fund from UBEC, you will see renovation of schools although over-bloated. But even when there are schools, where are the teachers? We will not only improve on school structures; we will improve on training and ensure the competency of teachers so that they can produce pupils and students that can compete nationally and internationally. Agriculture still remains one of the biggest areas that can provide job. I am talking about policies that will encourage able and willing young men and women to take up agriculture as a business. We will encourage them and they will be employers of labour and as well feed their families.

As for the roads, government is making efforts because it is continuation. But these roads are not stone-based and, as such, they will fail very soon. The question will be, are the cost of these roads with ones that are stone-based on equal scale? In our own case, if we get to power, each kilometre of road will be of good quality and good standard and the people of this state will get value for their money. Every section of the state will get their dues and the agitations that a particular zone should produce the governor will be laid to rest, once and for all.

 

So you don’t believe in the agitation of some people that the next governor of the state should come from the southern district?

It is not stated in the PDP Constitution that the governor must come from a zone or area. It was a mere convention that, for the first time, somebody from Central became governor for eight years. It moved to the North where somebody was there for four years and another for another four years there now. It is the position of people from the South, where I come from, but we let them know that it is not automatic. They have to work for it because anybody that is going to emerge as the next governor must have the support of the majority of people in the 18 local government areas of the state before he can lay claim to the position.

 

The six local government areas in Ondo South alone cannot produce a governor; ditto the six local government areas in Ondo Central and in Ondo North respectively cannot produce the governor alone. There must be cooperation and synergy.

 

In the last few years, the off-season elections have gone the way of the APC. Are you not worried that the governorship poll will follow same path?

Ondo State is different from other places. The political sophistication of the people of the state will not allow that to happen. What the old men and women in the villages are saying is that they are tired of the APC and they believe that the party just came to deceive them. You saw the reports of all the observer missions and I will just advise that President Muhammadu Buhari, who is going on in his last lap, should write his name in gold like former President Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan became an international ambassador for allowing a free, fair and credible election, even as a sitting president. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should also not play any hide and see game in Ondo State. The people are well civilised and politically-conscious: they can take the decision of their lives to change the government in place with their thumbs and not with guns and not with money which is now being called voting buying in our political lexicon.

 

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