Sunday 28 October 2012

Mimiko Leads Onslaught Against ACN In S’West

MIMIKO
How Yoruba Leaders Helped Governor’s Re-election
 INTENSE politicking and intrigues for the soul of the Southwest played some major role in the strategies and organisation that shaped the outcome of upper Saturday’s gubernatorial election in Ondo State.
The re-elected Governor Olusegun Mimiko is being primed to lead the onslaught on retrieving the Southwest from control of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
This is one of the planks on which the leadership of the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, mobilised support for the return of Mimiko to office.
The Guardian learnt that the
Afenifere leaders were quick to see the Ondo election as an opportunity to pay back Tinubu for his alleged marginalisation of their rank and decimation of the political platforms — the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and Democratic Peoples Alternative (DPA) — they once converged under in the region.
The strategy is for Mimiko to first aim at Ekiti State in the next election, as the state and Oyo are regarded as the soft underbellies of the ACN in the Southwest.
“In the new revival effort of Afenifere, Mimiko is willing to assist in funding, in the coming months, to get ready for Ekiti State in the next governorship election there due in 2014,” an Afenifere chieftain said last night.
“This is to act as a counterforce to the powerful political machine of Asiwaju Tinubu that has accused the same Mimiko of gross ingratitude and betrayal,” the source added.
Indeed, the political legwork for the said revival has begun, as Mimiko was at Ile-Ife last Friday to see the Ooni of Ife, HRM, Oba Okunade Sijuade.
As another political leader from the Southwest explained: “It was so easy to rally round the political leaders from the Afenifere group that assisted Mimiko in Ondo because, in the current leadership in the Southwest, there is so much tiger without tigritude; so much heat and no fire.
“There is not much content to the current vaunted leadership in terms of standing, selflessness, intellectual rigour and robustness of thought consistent with the history, tradition and profile of the accustomed Southwest leaders from Awolowo to Ajasin, to Abraham Adesanya and Bola Ige.”
That was why besides Abuja — the Presidency and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) headquarters — which allegedly mobilised support for the governor’s re-election; the Afenifere leadership energised the grassroots to stop the ACN from its avowal to capture the lone Labour Party (LP) state to its fold.
It was gathered that in the run-up to the election, the big players in the House of Oduduwa stormed Akure pre- and post-Saturday, October 20, 2012.
Most notable Yoruba leaders and stakeholders that could not secure hotel accommodation in Akure that Saturday, stayed in Ado-Ekiti, a neighbouring state controlled by ACN.
What is more; the LP strategists consisted of many elders and followers of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo that are opposed to the Tinubu style of politics “that have bruised and wounded the socio-cultural group, Afenifere and, indeed the AD, the then mainstream party in 1999 when democratisation process began in Nigeria.”
The AD then controlled the mainstream in the Southwest until 2003 when the ruling PDP swept the region in the polls except Lagos State then ruled by Tinubu.
Thus, the following big guns played big roles in the victory of Governor Mimiko: Chief Olu Falae, who openly campaigned for Mimiko; Chief Olu Adebanjo, an unrepentant follower of the late Chief Awolowo; General Alani Akinrinade (rtd) and Dr. Amos Akingba, a major stakeholder, who was traumatised by the Abacha junta for his role in organising NADECO, the political organisation used then to fight for democracy. Incidentally, Tinubu was one of the major funders of the organisation.
Others include Chief Ayo Fasoranti, who also campaigned with Chief Adebanjo for Mimiko in the state; Chief Segun Adegoke from Ondo town; Prof. Olu Agbi and many political leaders from all the Yoruba-speaking states.
It was not clear whether the Awolowo family, headed by Mama HID Awolowo, played a direct role in the election, but matriarch of the family from Ikenne was said to have sent words to the Ondo people that Mimiko was the candidate of the great political family.
Analysts interpreted this development to be a payback time for the interest that reportedly denigrated the family sometimes last year in a publication that resulted in a big visitation to the Ikenne home.
It was said last night that the Awo family that responded vehemently then might not have forgotten the allegation that was reportedly denied then.
Which is why a congratulatory message in Mrs. Awolowo’s her hand, and delivered to Governor Mimiko in Akure by Chief Tokunbo Awolowo, daughter of the late icon, speaks the obvious. The Guardian published a-photo news of the message of congratulation last week.
However, sources indicated that there were more nocturnal visits to Mimiko, “who personally drove some of the special guests around the state, in unmarked cars, to see why the ‘invaders’ from the old and new capital of Nigeria should be prevented from capturing the state.”
That way, Mimiko was said to have won the hearts of the big guns from the Southwest he pleaded with to see the politics of capturing Ondo beyond the narrow interests of the small Labour Party.
Nonetheless, many of the Yoruba campaigners reportedly worked for Mimiko not for the love of the governor or his so-called performance, but to prevent the ACN from taking over the state.
As a respondent noted: “Most of us went there (Ondo) even in the night and pledged our support and gave him strategies to prevent a capture of the last entity standing in the Southwest from falling either to Lagos or Abuja.”
It was also gathered that the old factions in Afenifere and the AD group did not manifest their divisions during the campaign to retain Ondo for Mimiko and the Labour Party.
Guardian

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