Stories by Willy Eya

All Progressives Congress(APC) candidate in the November 26 governorship election, Mr Rotimi Akeredolu has said that he is sure of victory next Saturday despite the challenges before him. He said so in an interview with some journalists. Excerpts:
You were in the governorship race in Ondo State in 2012 and now you are back in the race, what has been the motivation for you?
Seriously, when I ran in 2012 by His grace through ‎caucusing in the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), I was picked to run for governor.
Yes, I don’t believe that we lost. We were just victims of electoral fraud promoted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the outgoing governor – hand in glove.
We fought the matter to the Supreme Court as you know. And we believe we were walking on sound ground – we believe our case was good because there were some fundamental errors in the voters’ register.
Once, for instance, we were able to prove that there were some injection of names in the voters’ register, there was nothing left because voters’ register remains the basis of any election, so, if there are errors in it, there was nothing to be substantially complied with.
So, again this time around, I have yielded to the clarion call of our people. I believe they are not having the best as we would expect of an oil producing state. The state capital, there is nothing to write home about it. You need to get to Imo State and see how developed the state capital is and I don’t believe our people ‎had the best. They have been on the wrong side of everything.
So, I am convinced that if given the opportunity, we would turn the lives of our people around; why not give it another shot again. So, I came back.
In 2012, by the grace of God we won in spite of shenanigans here and there‎. And again, moving on we are trusting in God that we will win again. So, we are here.
Between then and now, has there been transformation in your political personality; have you become more of a politician because we see less of you in the courts?
There has been definitely. As you have rightly ‎observed, I have not been going to court that much, particularly in the last one year. I have only concerned myself by handling few cases and at this age, I don’t need more than one or two cases in a year; it is enough for you to live on and the younger ones will keep going to court.
So, because of my political pursuit, I just felt like giving it all because it is the last time.
If I win this election, I would thank God and I will serve my people. If I don’t win, I am back in my practice. This is the last shot in politics except if I am convinced and I want to run for a higher office because I am getting old. So this is my last shot at it, so I am giving it all I have. So, there has been tremendous change, seriously.
What has been your experience in the last four to five years since you dabbled into partisan politics?
My experience has been very nice. I have had good relationship with the people of Ondo State because when I ran, I knew we had our limitations. I came into a political party that was virtually non-existent in Ondo State and I knew that we had to put everything into it; not only myself, we had many aspirants in ACN – all of us made our contributions in one way or the other but when I became a candidate, it became my own sole responsibility to make sure that the ACN is known.
I was ‎coming up as former president, Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). I had that high level of visibility in the country and nobody can deny it. I am proud of my pedigree. The fact that you have risen to that pedestal could assist any political party whatsoever and that lifted the party up.
The votes we garnered in spite of all the riggings was one that the ACN of that time never had one quarter of; or let me be fair to them, they never had a third of it.
So, it has been like that; bringing up a party and being part of that party growing up into APC, which is a bigger party.
My experience has been that people love you – people respect you‎ but there are other low sides of politics that I don’t buy. That is where people get treacherous. Treachery in politics is not one of my ways of life and this is what is happening. And it gets on my nerves as a person that you will see people at the highest level involved in shenanigans and they have no respect for themselves.
They are treacherous people and cannot be trusted by anybody. It is an unfortunate ‎thing but you see it. Though they will think they are playing politics, they are not playing politics, they are more or less going to destroy themselves at the end of the day and we will watch them.
Politics, to me, is loyalty. Politics should be like a love affair in which whatever it is you love you hold on to it. Friendship is something that you take dearly. It’s been my life but this is not so in politics. This is what I have experienced. People that you think are your friends are the people that will stab you in the back.  People you toil for don’t even appreciate it. It is just like people you lay your life down for; you will just be surprised they are the people that will turn their backs against you. I don’t believe it is good experience when I remember what we go through these days and people say it is in the name of politics.
Is that what it is – that they don’t value friendship? Is it politics that you are not loyal to your party?
You just mouth it. As if you are everything; people want to play God but they forget they are men with clay feet.
But by the grace of God, I can assure you they will be washed away.
Have you reached out to those that felt aggrieved after your party primary election?
I am not sure that there were people that are really aggrieved. We went into a primary election, someone emerged from the primary election and some of them were suborned. They knew we had free and fair primaries but because people cannot accept defeat, they suborned about three of us, encouraged them to file unmeritorious appeal; their appeal was thrown away and yet they do not want to stop at that. They still went ahead to encourage them to involve in anti-party activities.