Governor Olusegun Mimiko

Beyond the October 20 ultimate battle for the governorship of Ondo State between incumbent Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Labour Party (LP) and Chief Rotimi Akeredolu of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in which Akeredolu, former Nigeria Bar Association President, will be fighting a proxy war for the party’s national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, there is another impending battle. It’s not holding this year; not even next year. It would be in 2015, but already all the ammunition to prosecute the war, all the war arsenal are being assembled. It’s going to be the battle for Ondo North Senatorial seat in the 2015 National Assembly poll. It would be fought between the two gladiators who are prominent sons of Akokoland who have already been picked as it were by their parties for the slot. One is the incumbent senator representing the senatorial district, Prof. Boroffice Ajayi; the other has always been an aspiring senator, Dr. Olu Agunloye. Only the suspecting political analysts would understand why the election will be a fiasco; the unwary should simply read the following. Both Boroffice and Agunloye had wanted to be the senator representing Ondo North. And both used to be Governor Mimiko’s allies. In the 2011 election, Governor Mimiko, at the behest of traditional rulers in Akokoland who favoured Boroffice, the Asiwaju of Akokoland, for the senatorial slot, had given the LP ticket for the seat to Boroffice. And he was so elected senator. In annoyance, Agunloye left the LP for ACN. But as former Lagos State Governor Tinubu fell out with Mimiko whom he had assisted to retrieve his stolen mandate in court, he (Asiwaju Tinubu) began making overtures to Boroffice to come over to ACN in the hope that he would be used by the party to wage the war against Mimiko’s re-election in 2012.

Boroffice fell for it and defected to ACN, dumping Mimiko who had nominated him for his first political appointment as the Director-General of the National Research and Space Agency (NARSA) in Abuja.  But as it turned out, the powers-that-be in ACN side-stepped Boroffice and gave the ticket to Akeredolu but with an understanding that he (Boroffice) would be given his ticket for re-election into the Senate to represent Ondo North senatorial seat. Meanwhile, Agunloye, peeved that he lost out in the ACN governorship race, has dumped the party and returned to LP and to Mimiko. And Mimiko is said to have assured him the party would give him the ticket for Ondo North senatorial seat, where he would slug it out with Boroffice in 2015. It promises to be a titanic battle.