Oyo state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has posited that history would remember Governor Seyi Makinde as one who strangulated the growth and development of the state between 2019 and 2023 when he held sway as the executive governor after he would lose out in the next year general election.
This statement came against the backdrop of the determination of Oyo APC to dislodge the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) from power in 2023 when the opposition party hope its gubernatorial candidate, Senator Teslim Folarin, would defeat all other parties’ standard bearers at the poll and thus put paid to the reelection bid of Governor Makinde as well as the aspiration of others such as Mr Adebayo Adelabu of the Accord Party.
In a statement issued on Friday and made available to journalists in Ibadan by its Publicity Secretary, Olawale Sadare, Oyo APC took Makinde to the cleaners for allegedly making himself a negotiation tool in the hands of his colleague in Rivers state who was fighting a battle of life in the PDP.
“Ordinarily, we at Oyo APC should be glad that Governor Makinde has made our job easy as an opposition party desirous of sending him packing from office but it is not a thing of joy to us that the four-year period of 2019-2023 would go down in the history as the worst time when the governance was most uninspiring since the man at the helms of affairs strangulated the growth, progress and development of the state due to his incompetence, lack of focus and ego issue.
“How would an average citizen of the Pacesetter State explain to his children in the future that he had a governor who travelled out the state 23 times in six months neither to attract foreign investment nor attend to issues of interest to his state but rather to be on the entourage of his colleague governor who was fighting a political war with a superior clique within the cantankerous PDP which they all belonged?
“How would an average citizen of Oyo state tell the story of his governor (in future) when notes are to be compared among those who ruled states in the federation between 2019 and 2023 while it would be established that the likes of Governor Sanwo-Olu of Lagos delivered blue rail line and massive rice production at a time his counterpart in Oyo was siphoning funds through fictitious projects such as junction improvement and invisible gas project?
“It is on record that Governor Dave Umahi and Alhaji Atiku Bagudu of Ebonyi and Kebbi states respectively have something to show for huge investment in local rice production while Governor Makinde could not deliver his promise to export maize to Botswana. The present PDP administration has failed in all the key sectors of the economy as the sad manifestation could be seen in collapsing education, vulnerable security architecture, deplorable infrastructure, and zero agricultural plans among others.
“Governor Makinde lost it completely at the inception of his administration when he succeeded in edging out virtually all the principal actors among the coalition partners and original PDP leaders who assisted him to power. He dubbed them parasitic and never-do-well people who were not fit to move close to him as the governor of the state. Therefore, the same person (Makinde) should bury the thought of securing the confidence of any established force to rally around him in 2023 because he is now the most talked-about ingrate in the Nigerian political space”. APC said.
