APC didn’t work for victory — Oyo PDP

APC didn’t work for victory — Oyo PDP

The Youth Leader and acting Public Relations Officer of the Oyo State Peoples Democratic Party, Michael Ogunsina, in this interview with GABRIEL OSHOKHA, justifies the party’s victory in the local government

What are the reasons for Oyo PDP’s overwhelming victory in the April 27 LG election?

I think the major thing that helped our party achieve massively at the polls was the good work of our principal, Governor Seyi Makinde, who is also the Vice Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum. The governor has done excellently well for the people of Oyo State, and he has gone beyond being the PDP leader. He is someone the people and the electorate love. When we went for the campaigns, it was almost like we just had to do a campaign, because the Makinde’s party is popular; a party everybody likes; one that usually would win elections hands down. The truth of the matter is, that in that particular election, the APC was no match for the PDP. And if I should remind you, in the last two elections we had in Oyo State, our party defeated the APC massively. We got over half a million votes, and in 2023, we repeated the same feat. That shows our successes at the polls are not a fluke.

Without fear of contradiction, we are the only party that campaigned across the length and breadth of Oyo State for the LG polls. What the other parties had were rallies and that really had no meaning. Our party went to local governments to campaign and people came out en masse to vote for us. Also, what again helped us was the calibre of our candidates. We chose competent candidates, with good character, capacity, and those the people love. We did not sit in our rooms and then choose just any candidate like the APC did. In many of our local governments, we had a consensus arrangement; we ensured that our leaders, in concert with every major stakeholder, came around and presented a popular candidate.

The opposition APC indicted OYSIEC and your party for deliberately disenfranchising eligible voters through the late arrival of materials at polling units. What’s your response to this?

Well, that is not true. How can APC in Oyo State tell you something and you believe it? Their position on the recently concluded local government election shows their infantile knowledge of politics and governance and, of course, elections. I wonder how they won elections before now. The party did not campaign, had no engagement with the people and yet had the conviction that it would win the election. How is that possible? Even the Bible says the husbandman will partake of the first fruits. We are the husbandmen and we just partook of the first fruits. We reached out to the people, we campaigned and the people voted for us.

How can the APC think that it can defeat a Seyi Makinde party in normal elections? Is this not a pipe dream? The last time the party tried it, its governorship candidate, Senator Teslim Folarin, had just about 250,000 votes. And if you double the figures he got at the polls, it was still not up to the votes that Governor Makinde got at the same poll. Another mistake the APC made was that they made Senator Folarin the central figure in the campaign. I saw a clip of their very sparse rallies, and just a few persons gathered there. They made Folarin the focal point of the rallies and he led their campaigns. And here is someone who woefully lost his campaigns and election. How can such a person lead the campaigns for the local government chairmanship election? If he was that popular, if he was that good, if the people loved him that much, they would have voted for him during the governorship election. How could a man who lost his election be campaigning for other people and you expect them to listen to him?

APC has a lot of integrity problems and that is their lot. The APC said we disenfranchised the citizenry. That is a lie. OYSIEC which conducted the exercise said the election was free, fair and credible. The commission even thanked other parties for coming out to participate. The Inter-party Advisory Council of Oyo State released a statement congratulating OYSIEC on conducting a very seamless election. And, let me tell you that APC members are in IPAC. IPAC comprises members of every political party, and if APC has issues, they should ask their members in IPAC. OYSIEC carried IPAC along in all the activities of the election, therefore the APC should ask their agents at IPAC what they were doing. The election was credible, free and fair, according to OYSIEC.

The Seyi Makinde political clout and people-friendly policies have raised Oyo PDP’s profile and acceptability by eligible voters in the state. Do you see the party sustaining its dominance of Oyo State after Makinde’s tenure?

The truth of the matter is that there is no other political party in Oyo State. Seyi Makinde has become an institution and is so popular that it would be difficult for any party to dislodge his party, the PDP. And let me tell you, we have just started something phenomenal in Oyo State, and we will demonstrate this at the next polls. The PDP would win the 2027 election landslide, the same way we won 2019 in Oyo State, and also won 2023. I can assure you categorically without mincing words that we would do well.

Now, let me dwell on the people-friendly policies of Governor Seyi Makinde in Oyo State. In the history of this state, no other governor in Oyo State has done the number of roads the governor has done; no governor has invested so much in education, youths and sports, human capacity, and agriculture like Seyi Makinde. Even in Ogbomoso, they can mention the huge impacts of the governor on the people. You want to talk about LAUTECH; the Moniya-Iseyin Road, Ogbomoso-Iseyin Road, Oyo-Iseyin Road, Oke Igana that would start very soon, the ongoing J-Allen-Oke-Ado-Molete Road, Ibadan Circular road, the recently inaugurated dualised 12.5 kilometre Challenge-Odo-Ona Elewe-Elebu-Apata road, renamed Theophilus Akinyele Way, and still counting.

You would expect that a second-term governor would catch a second-term bug and so would not be active, but this is not the case with Governor Makinde. If you pass through Iyaganku road in Ibadan, you will notice that Ibadan is going through an outlasting urbanisation process; you see new estates springing up everywhere; and new businesses coming to the city. And just last week, the governor travelled to London to sign a deal with Shell Nigeria Gas (SNG), to start gas production and distribution in Oyo State, and that would be the first in the South-West. How then would the people of Oyo State, our very wise electorate, see such developments and not support the government?

Seyi Makinde has become a model for good governance in Nigeria and Africa. He has become a model for meaningful governance and a model for significant governance. Makinde should open a school of leadership where state executives and even aspiring leaders can benefit from his administrative ingenuity. Let me tell you, Oyo State APC cannot even conduct party congresses. And, in the last election, the APC had four factions, only a faction participated. APC is not a new party in Oyo State; we tasted them for 96 months. They were in the saddle in this state from 2011 to 2019, and within these 96 months, APC did not construct up to 100 kilometres of road in this state. I said it, and you can quote me anywhere. In 96 months, they owed retirees and pensioners, and so we inherited a state that was struggling to barely survive.

But when the Oyo PDP took over the saddle in 2019, the state started witnessing a boom in the economy, agriculture, infrastructure and, according to available statistics, Oyo population has shot over 12 million compared with the population of the state, four or five years ago, and many people have moved to the state because of the ongoing developments. I can tell you about ongoing projects in every local government in the state, and what the governor is doing in all the local government areas. And so we are not scared of the next polls; we are expecting the party to start their congress, pick our candidates and then we hit the campaigns. There is nothing to fear as 2027 and beyond fully belong to the Oyo PDP.

Political pundits have pointed out some lapses in the LG election conducted by OYSIEC. What’s your assessment of the conduct of the election?

There is no human system that is 100 per cent perfect. However, compared to the previous elections we have had in the state, OYSIEC has very much improved. I said that because for the very first time, every political party participated in the election, and I know this because I was also on the field. This was largely due to the efforts of the OYSIEC Chairman, Prof Isiaka Olagunju (SAN), who went around the headquarters of all political parties in the state and engaged with them in preparations for the elections. He also went to the office of the APC. And for this particular election, there was a huge turnout of voters. If OYSIEC is put on a scale of one to 10, I would easily give the commission a 7/10. Apart from the APC and AAC, no other party is complaining about anything.

How would you describe a free, fair, and credible election?

A free, fair and credible election is an election that is free of saboteurs, that is not sabotaged and allows people to freely participate and vote for their preferred candidates. I voted in Ward 8 in Ibadan North Local Government, and there were some units in my ward that APC won and they were counted. Nobody stopped them, nobody harassed them, nobody even beat them up. So, an election that is free and fair is any election not sabotaged by any of the state’s political actors or politicians. An election that is free and fair counts, and it is free of vote-buying, manipulation of figures and similar practices. For us in Oyo PDP, what we had on April 27 was free, fair and credible. However, as I said earlier, no human system is perfect

What should the grassroots hope for from your party in terms of the development of the interior, since to whom much is given, much is expected?

Everybody knows the Oyo PDP as a party which emphasises the dividends of democracy. We chose candidates with character and a proven track record. We would make sure that just as Governor Makinde has been positively impacting the people, our chairmen at the grassroots replicate the good works of the governor at that level of governance. I do not doubt that the grassroots would be better for it. Meaningful projects are already ongoing at every local government, and these projects would be accelerated because we strongly believe Governor Makinde meant well for the people.

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