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From Priscilla Ediare, Ado-Ekiti
Hon Bisi Kolawole is the flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the June 18 governorship election in Ekiti State.
Kolawole was a former member of the House of Assembly, former Commissioner for Environment and the immediate past Chairman of the party in the state.
In this interview, he spoke on his candidacy, his chances in the forthcoming poll and other issues.
How do you feel being the flag bearer of your party for the June 18 governorship poll?
I feel very good. I feel very happy. I feel challenged that I have a lot more to achieve and it’s been a tough race from the beginning when we started jostling for the ticket of the party but I thank God. It is a good thing to have been the winner and it is a challenge also for me to work harder to bring the others on board for us to achieve success because it is not enough to be the candidate of the party. I think the ultimate is to be the winner of the June 18 contest.
Former governor Ayo Fayose endorsed you as his preferred candidate and ensured your emergence as the party’s flag bearer for the June poll, what do you say to this factor called god-fatherism in Nigerian politics?
Well, you can call it whatever you want, there will always be a destiny helper. There will always be somebody that believes in you. There will always be somebody who has the confidence in you. If you call that god-fatherism, it is okay but all I know is that I have seen the favour of God and it came through him and I appreciate him. He’s been a good brother and friend and he’s been a good leader. My emergence came easy because of his support for me, because of his endorsement of Bisi Kolawole right from inception.
In the course of the primary, Senator Olujimi withdrew from the race, how did you feel and what were your thoughts at that time?
It was her decision to have opted out of the race. She wasn’t compelled to. She is the only one who can tell you how she felt because as far as I was concerned then, I wanted to be the winner and I became the winner. That she withdrew from the race was her personal decision and she is the only one who can explain why she did so. Even being in the race wouldn’t have made any difference if you see the trend of voting on that day. May be she envisaged what was going to happen and she decided to opt out of the game. But notwithstanding, she remains a leader, a major tendency in the party; she is a serving senator and the sky is still the limit for her to attain within the system but her opting out of the governorship race, I don’t think there was anything wrong with that if she decided to and she took a decision that she thought was good enough for her.
Former governor Segun Oni rejected the outcome of the January 26 governorship primary, accused Dr Iyorchia Ayu’s National Working Committee (NWC) and Fayose of selling out the party’s candidacy to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), and following that, Oni and his supporters dumped the PDP. Recall, a similar situation happened in 2018 when Senator Dayo Adeyeye, who had contested the governorship ticket, defected with his supporters to the APC and eventually your party lost to APC in that election, do you see Oni’s exit slimming down your chances in the forthcoming poll?
If I may start from this issue of selling out to the APC, the issue of accusing Iyorchia Ayu, unfortunately, I don’t like to join issues with Segun Oni because he’s a very close friend and a good brother. I will not because of politics start using harsh words on him but one would definitely feel insulted referring to my candidacy as a sell out to APC. As a matter of fact, he congratulated me at the venue, we were there together, it was beamed live and he saw what happened. So, if his non emergence implied selling out to the APC that was his own explanation of it which did not really hold water. Like I said, I don’t want to start attacking him and I will never attack him but that was a wrong choice of word to use. I have never fraternized with the APC, he was the one that defected to the APC, that was eight years ago and he came back to the PDP and he wanted to pick the ticket of the party; some of us were there all along and we have been working assiduously all this while; that he was defeated wasn’t something too strange, because as somebody who has been one of the people sustaining the party within the period when he exited to the APC, even despite the fact that I have never been a governor like him; I was in the House of Assembly when he was the governor, I became the party chairman, I became a Board of Trustees ( BOT) member, I resigned as the party chairman when I wanted to go into this contest; so my pedigree is there for anybody to know that winning that ticket with the endorsement of our leader, a two-term governor, Ayodele Fayose, the endorsement nailed it and if anybody comes up to complain about my emergence, it is just very flimsy. Then accusing the National Chairman of the party, I don’t think that was decent enough, Segun Oni is a very mature person; like I have always said, I will rather believe he was misquoted by the press than just assume that he did so. I am not sure he would have descended so low to that level of accusing the National Chairman and also claiming that my emergence was a sellout to the APC; I think that was unfair, very unfair and coming back to the final leg of your question, my emergence as the flag bearer of PDP, I don’t see how Segun Oni’s defection can affect our chances of winning, and the situation is quite different from the Adeyeye own you said. Oni was in APC as a former governor, Governor Fayemi as a former governor, Otunba Niyi Adebayo as a former governor was there also, so Dayo Adeyeye teamed up with them then and not that they even won the election, but let us assume that they won the election, that must have been because of the coalition of forces and today the forces are no longer there. He, Oni has opted out
of the APC; Dayo Adeyeye is not in good term with the present government, so, they are depleted already. I don’t see how they can win PDP in this forthcoming election; as a matter of fact our situation is still better than theirs. Don’t forget the fact that Segun Oni even came recently and the people he led to APC he couldn’t bring all of them back; the same thing with the people he brought to PDP he could not go with all of them again; so, he must have lost so many followers along the line because it’s not everybody that will go nomadic politically.
Your party has inaugurated a reconciliation committee to reach out to aggrieved aspirants and members, can you tell us about it?
It is an internal arrangement. If you are talking about the party at the local level, you know politics is local; we have set up reconciliation committee at the various levels of the party, from the ward level to the local government and to the state level and we are working on them; aside from that at the national level, there is Senator David Mark -led nine-man reconciliation committee. I believe they are working silently and I believe they will make their findings and everything public with time but as at today, I want to tell you that committee is in place and by the time they conclude what they are doing, everybody will know that PDP remains a united party, a very large party and I am also proud and very happy to tell you that we have a very good conflict resolution mechanism within the PDP and that is working for us and it will eventually end well.
Olujimi and her supporters recently mulled their exit from the PDP; is your party doing anything to prevent this?
If it’s not a predetermined thing, we have a very good conflict resolution within the PDP; I have said that earlier. I am sure at the national level, they will achieve something on that, we are trying locally too. She is a party person herself and I am sure she will not want to demolish a house she has been living in over the years. She is part of the family and she will not want to disrupt or destroy the system but it is a free world anyway, you have the right to associate with whoever you wish to associate with, but, I see my dear sister, distinguished Senator Biodun Olujimi as a party person that will not want to rock the boat because of the governorship primary because there is always tomorrow for everybody.
The talk in some quarters is that you are not popular to wrestle power from the ruling APC, what do you say to this?
I don’t know what they mean by that, if someone, a grass rooter, who had been a Supervisor in the council, someone who had been a member of the House of Assembly when Assembly was Assembly in Ekiti State in the days of 13-13 and by the grace of God I was a major gladiator and I stabilised the House for Oni as governor then; he can always attest to that. I also want to tell you that then I was not even a principal officer but I was able to achieve that; it is a story for another day how we were able to sustain that government, how we were able to achieve a lot even despite the fact that we had the Speaker, we had 12 members on the floor of the House and 13 from the other party, we were still controlling the House despite that fact. It was due to the efforts of some people like me and I was the major brain behind the success of that period.
Some people have read meaning into the recent romance between Fayose and the state governor, Kayode Fayemi, saying Fayose is likely going to compromise the forthcoming election for the candidate of the APC, what is your take here?
I wonder why an average Ekiti person reasons this way. We are all brothers and sisters in Ekiti. Because you are in APC does that make you my enemy? I have very good friends in APC. I have people that are closer to me in APC than even in PDP. So, if two brothers – former governor and current governor relate, what is the crime in that? What are we insinuating? Why are we so mischievous? Do they want them to be perpetual enemies? Is it not reasonable for them to team up and ensure we progress in Ekiti? That is just from mischief makers. When the going was very rough and tough, Fayose was there as the lone voice in PDP. He was the only one fighting Baba Buhari; when they said PDP was dead, he was the only one that was putting life into it. Just because a former governor and current governor threw banters, then he attended governor Fayose son’s wedding and they met somewhere, has that made you to compromise your integrity or the interest of your party? I don’t see it so. It is just funny and cheap and mischievous for us to reason that way. It is not true.
How would you rate the current government of APC in the state?
Well, it is not only in the state, they have failed totally. The major priority of a government is to protect lives and property, I mean the lives of the citizens but they are not able to protect us because on daily basis they kidnap, on daily basis are sad news here and there. In the past when we heard of disaster, it was always something that was touching us all, something you felt was abnormal but today, it is almost normal when you hear that 50 people have been killed in one mosque, just like 50 fowls roasted, so, it is nothing strange again. It has become part of this government to throw us into danger, lives are no longer secure; they don’t care about the citizens, kidnappings everywhere, ritualists everywhere, our roads are no longer safe, people can’t sleep with their two eyes closed, high rate of unemployment, they don’t pay salaries, no project; nothing good is going on, they retrench workers here and there, life has been so miserable for the people, prices of things go up everyday, people can hardly feed under this government, their policies are not improving the lives of the people. The latest is the fuel scarcity, I remember they were blackmailing PDP then, now they should perform their magic. Nothing good is happening, everybody is sad. I just wish Governor Fayemi well, he will do his best and leave the rest but they have performed below expectation and that is the truth.
