Governor of Ondo State, Dr Olusegun Mimiko

Dele Ogunsakin writes that attempts to rubbish the success of the Dr. Olusegun Mimiko administration in Ondo State as the October 20 election approaches will not work

There are many reasons why the leperous and relentlessly corrupt contraption called Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), a party built around a drunken god, is jealous of the Iroko of world acclaim, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, executive Governor of Ondo State, until 2016. For long, aided by its one-eyed newspapers and corrupted allies, the party successfully brainwashed Nigerians, saying that it had arrived with great goodies as the saviour of the people. But while it has failed to back up its boasts with solid performance, it has always been embarrassed that Mimiko has refused to allow it to harness the resources of Ondo State. To make matters worse, Mimiko’s performance, acknowledged as a global brand, has always evoked jealousy and put a lie to its (ACN’s) dubious claims.

What is more, in addition to countless awards, almost by the day, Dr Mimiko has just been given the UN Habitat Scroll of Honour award, a lucid testimony to credible governance, because the Western world does not joke with its parameters. However, rather than call on his devotees  to deliver good governance to the people by borrowing a leaf from the authentic people’s governor, the philistine from the illegal State of Osun has ordered his bootlickers in the Lagos media to bring down the Iroko at all costs. As the Yoruba would say, this philistine’s fried yam (dundu) is getting over-peppered and his doom is just around the corner.

In this Iroko-must-be-hacked enterprise, however, the ACN failed to recruit intelligent writers, relying on intellectual midgets and moral cripples, who send their brains on holiday while writing, to prosecute a losing battle. Labour lost, you would agree, especially when the writers utilise the internet to advertise their illiteracy to the whole world. As part of what he called “50 Questions for Mimiko,’’ Tinubu’s bootlicker, Idowu Ajanaku, a man whose records of failure should irritate even the devil, asked Mimiko to tell the world what happened to: “the multimillion naira Owena Dam project at Owo.’’ Yes, you heard right: Owena Dam project at Owo!

Does anyone still doubt the fact that these lepers don’t know Ondo State; that they are only after a corrupt empire, striving hard to arrest the massive development going on in the state, and that even their fake ‘baba-onirungbon-yeuke’ candidate is not even a registered voter in Ondo State? In Ajanaku’s Plato’s Cave, Owena Dam is in Owo and, I suppose, Kano is also the capital of California! Yet, if he really wanted to see the Iroko’s water projects, all he needed to do was to visit Awara Dam or Ose Dam close to his hometown in Idogun. He would see that the water projects are beautifully on course, not like the “television water’’ of past administrations, and that rubbishing Mimiko along that line is a futile effort.

Not surprisingly, question number one in Ajanaku’s list of 50 lunatic questions concerns “The whopping N65 billion OSOPADEC Fund,’’ a sum which is the aggregate of what that agency has received since  inception, and for which Ajanaku should have asked, if he could, the late Baba Adebayo Adefarati or his friend, Dr Olusegun Agagu, questions. Unfortunately, for Ajanaku and his employers, elections are not based on 50 foolish questions.

Like all jejune writers exhibiting gross incompetence and an unusual temerity in fabricating lies, Ajanaku had the temerity to say that the Akure Stadium (a stadium which has an astro turf soccer pitch; Olympic-size swimming pool, world class basket ball court and so on) has been ‘abandoned’; that “the Mega School project ‘’ is unfulfilled when, in reality, 30 mega schools have already been completed while 24 others are in various stages of completion, bringing them to a record 54!. Why would Ajanaku not imply that there are no mega schools in Ikare-Akoko, Okitipupa, Ondo, Ore, Akure, etc, since he is an outsider pontificating in a dream world?

The contractor handling the Ile Oluji Stadium has refuted the lie that it collected N273 million and asked Ajanaku’s media stations to apologise, but that apparently does not bother him; just as he would boldly claim that there are no Abiye hospitals in Ondo State except in Akure! Seriously, how do you address these characters who always claim that the Ondo people are not mature enough to know what is good for them? How do you address robbers, in Ngugi Wa Thiong’O’s terms, who are openly proud of their actions? You can only appeal to men of conscience.

Ajanaku would, of course, also talk about “the failed Owo-Akure road dualisation project’’ since he must maximise the advertisement of his ignorance and naivety. He may wish to learn that the road in question is a Federal Government road in which the Ondo State government has never, at any time, stopped intervening. He would make a dirge of the lie that the Ondo State government collected N50 billion bond simply because it is not in the league of Asiwaju Company of Nigeria. To date, however, the apprentice governments in Ogun, Osun and Ekiti have borrowed far more than N50 billion each, while Lagos has raised over N150 billion. Ajanaku would however not see anything wrong in the ACN states raising bonds simply because of his partisan views.

The about N26 billion bond obtained by the Ondo State government, with a sense of accountability which is lacking in the ACN states, was executed on meaningful, life-changing projects that dot the landscape of the state. Graduates are not roadside cleaners and cutters of grass in Ondo State and there are no private armies constituted by misled and untrained youths. Ondo people are proud of their heritage and do not have plate washers during parties in the name of youth empowerment, nor do they seize all the resources of a state in which they have no roots. But Ajanaku and his employers will never sit down and think because, as our people say, “a dog that will get lost does not heed the hunter’s whistle.’’

Recall that, in Ajanaku’s world, ACN is always right. Thus, he can claim that the Akure Dome project, which is almost completed, is “doomed’’ just as he wants Mimiko rather than Agagu to answer questions about  Okitipupa Oil Palm. Ajanaku would accuse Mimiko of abandoning moribund sites like Oluwa Glass, as if the governor met them as work-in-progress; he would also advertise his ignorance about urban renewal by mocking the water fountain project in Akure. Terms like greenery, eco balance and the three geometries are foreign to him since they do not relate to writing jejune articles for unconscionable individuals.

The Mother and Child hospital was started at Igbara Oke as a pilot scheme and, to date, no community in Ondo State lacks a community health centre. His principal had, while being inaugurated as governor, promised the people of Lagos State 10,000 housing units yearly but failed to honour his pledge, preoccupied instead with destroying Afenifere and charting his own cause. He promised 20 millenium schools but delivered only three. He promised a Fourth Mainland Bridge, which is still in the realm of conjecture; he promised an airport in Epe but failed to deliver on his promise.

Indeed, only recently, the newspapers were awash with reports of members of the Zero Corruption, South-west zone, protesting the abandonment of the Sunburn Yatch fraud case in Lagos, another legacy of Ajanaku’s godfather.

This robust background of unfulfilled promises made Ajanaku to claim that the Iroko government has built no housing estate in Ondo State, when all he should have done was to ask those who visit the state questions. Ajanaku is not aware of the Oba-Ile Housing Estate or the Oda Housing Estate, each with no less than 500 houses, built by Mimiko, being the only time anyone has built a housing estate since the Adekunle Ajasin days. If he had taken the pain to travel to Akure, he would have saved himself considerable embarrassment. The Arakale dual carriageway, which he dismissed, is ongoing, and the area is set to become a commercial nerve centre in Ondo State.

Ondo State is paying the highest minimum wage in the country yet Ajanaku claims that Mimiko has betrayed workers, the same workers who openly endorsed him at the Akure Democracy Park, proudly turned out in the Labour Party’s vests and fez cap. Sunshine Stars is currently Nigeria’s only representative in the CAF continental campaign and is at the semi final stage, yet Ajanaku grumbles that Mimiko has no achievements in sports. It is obvious that he and his sponsors are wilfully blind, which is a tragedy because, even with their eyes fully open,   Mimiko will be re-elected Ondo State governor on October 20.

Let no one be deceived that the ACN would stop the subversive media campaign against the Ondo State government and the people. Yet the attempt to harness Ondo State is doomed to failure.

•Ogunsakin wrote in from Akure, Ondo State

Gone are those days ...L-R: Governors Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Rauf Aregbesola (Osun), Olusegun Mimiko (Ondo), and Osun State Deputy Governor, Mrs. Laoye Tomori when the trio visited Mimiko