Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu


A former governorship aspirant of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Ondo State, Dr. Olu Agunloye, said at the weekend that the candidate of the party, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu, does not have   voter’s card.

Agunloye, who stated this in an interview with journalists in Akure, however said “such person that did not have any structure, network and even voter’s card at all in Ondo State cannot win an election.”

Agunloye said, “ He (Akeredolu) has never voted before in Ondo State and he is neither known well in any part of Ondo State.

“People remember him as a lawyer with white beards. On the political terrains, he is not even well known in Owo.

“So this shows that the proprietors of ACN had selected even a very weak candidate which gives impression that they were not really targeting winning the election.”

Agunloye alleged that the national leadership of the party has a political business model it was experimenting in the South-west which would not work in Ondo State.

He said: “The ACN has a political business model for Ondo State and once they put their minds on that, every other thing they do will not go right.

“The business model, they think they have perfected it in Lagos, Osun, and Ekiti States. They are giving it a trial in Oyo, Edo and Ogun

States and it is not looking very successful. It will be vehemently rejected in Ondo State.
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Agunloye said the ACN lost its chance of producing the next governor in Ondo State since April this year when the leaders of the party in the state met to review the strategies being adopted by the national leadership.

He said: “As at the middle of April, we held a meeting where we concluded among ourselves that the Labour Party would win the election as at that time because the ACN was not ready for election.”

The former chairman of the Federal Roads Safety Commission (FRSC),  explained

that the inability of the leaders to integrate properly, those who defected to the party “was part of the naivety of the leaders and their political business model for the state.”

He said, “As at the end of May, the integration of those that were brought to the party needed to be done, and ACN did not do it. They first asked Olaiya Oni to do it but they sabotaged him from doing it.

“They took it to Senator Kolawole in Ado-Ekiti and he could not do it.

Then it was taken to Chief Bisi Akande and he also was unable to do it before I left the party.”

Agunloye explained that he held series of meetings at different locations in the state with members of his Omoluabi platform on the way forward since he was not picked as the party’s candidate but that the leadership of the party did not make themselves available for him to brief them.

He said: “The next thing was that they invited 85 people to Lagos State. I asked the Chairman of the party what the meeting was for, but he did not give me the answer, and I was here in Akure with my people.

“It was at the meeting that I held with my people in Akure that we decided that we should go back to where we came from which is Labour Party.

“On that day, Tinubu made five frantic calls to me and then they had called a meeting of Ondo State in Lagos in their usual way but my mind was already made up.

“The declaration of Mimiko for second term in office the following day was handy and my attendance in that rally showed that I have left the ACN.

“If I was a mole in the ACN according to Akande and others, Tinubu will not have been making all efforts to stop me from going back to LP. It is also some leaders of the ACN that are spreading rumours that I collected money from Mimiko.

“Winning election is not just about telling the man on the street to go and vote. There must be party and campaign structure and the team to do it must be on ground.

“As we were battling with all of that, Mimiko was planning and strengthening his position more and more. Now that I have come in, we know that the LP is putting everything that is needed to win election in place.”