Mr Akin Osuntokun was a former Special Adviser on Political Matters to the President, a former Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and also sought election as governor of Ekiti State on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview with Group Politics Editor,Taiwo Adisa, he insists that Ondo State governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, has done welland deserves a second term in office, even as he says the PDP should take a deep look at the reality. Excerpts:THE PDP appears to be losing more grounds in the South-West, especially going by results of the recently conducted local government elections. Despite this, the party is dogged by crisis in almost all the state chapters in the zone. As a leader of the PDP in the zone, do you think the party can ever get over this'Crisis in a party can be a reflection of vibrancy; where you don't have a sole administrator dictating what should take place. So, crisis may lead eventually to strengthening the party. It is not a bad thing; people struggle over good things and not bad things. It is also a reflection of how attractive PDP remains. You mentioned local government election, which has been contentious since 1999. Whichever party is in control at the state level, almost without any exception, you find all elected local government chairmen and councillors coming from the same party. The issue has been raised over and over again; what to do with the State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC). I will not use what happened in the local government elections as the right measure for assessing popularity of PDP or any other party in the South-West. But having said that, in a very important respect, PDP has proven to be an architect of its own downfall significantly in Ogun State and Oyo State where it was responsible for the victory of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) government as such. If the crisis in those two states had been contained before the 2011 elections, I think we will be telling a different story now. It is realistic to think that PDP would have remained in governance of those two states. Giving all these scenarios, PDP has its past, cut out for it, in the South-West; a lot of people have moved. I think there is need to pacify those who have cause to feel wronged; reach out to them and generally inspire the rank and file of the party to move it forward.Next on the line is the Ondo State governorship election. Some people have criticised the party for the way it handled the issue of Governor Olusegun Mimiko in 2007 and he eventually became the Achilles heels of the party. Now that election is coming up again, what do you think would happen in the state'You know, I have a taken a position and it has been expressed strongly and that is the fact that in Nigeria, in Africa and much of the Third World countries, wherever we see governance or a government performing well, we should put party aside and support such a government because it is so rare and so uncommon. So, this issue of my party is right or wrong is a luxury we cannot afford, especially in view of African under-development; that luxury is too expensive for us to assume. What we should hold primarily, especially giving the emergency proportion of the developmental question here, every Nigerian and observer should first and foremost give priority to performance in expressing support or making a choice when it comes to governance at the national, state and local government levels. This position I am putting forward is exemplified by the performance and the conduct of the present governor of Ondo State, Dr Mimiko. I cannot dispute the evidence of my eye; I went there and I have seen what he has done and there was no way my conscience will be at peace if I did not volunteer to say and take the position that he should remain. He has performed and he merits being given a second term. There is no ambiguity about that; the fact that we are in different parties is ultimately secondary. As I said, in those rare instances, where you have compelling performance by a government, those of us who think for our country and society would see it as a responsibility to encourage that person. I use him as a parameter, a yard stick for the kind of governance that we should have and as a status to which other governors and people should aspire.You said you are not playing party politics here but your party, PDP, also has a candidate in Ondo State'That is a dilemma for those of us in PDP and from what I have said, I have come out categorically to say that in this instance, I will want to put party sentiment aside and recommend and advocate that somebody who has excellent performance record should continue. I am yet to see any basis on which Ondo State electorate will prefer another party or another candidate to come into office. This is somebody who has been there and is tested and I said the compelling evidence of his own performance is there. So, I will see myself as not speaking in the interest of the people of Ondo State if I don't express an advocacy for the present government of Dr Olusegun Mimiko.What really are the projects that strike you so much such that you are practically rooting for the governor'Well, you know, there is central theme in his policies, they call it Caring Heart. There is the Mother and Child caring Heart Hospital; Caring Heart Mega School and so on and so forth. Of course, I am not the only one giving this testimony; it has even attracted the attention of the World Bank, Bank of Industry and so on. I will use one instance to answer your question, what is called Mega Primary School, I happened to be there when the Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education (UBEC) and the Minister of State for Education came to Akure, as guests of the governor when he was going to commission, I think, the first or second in the series of these mega schools. Of course, the history of the mega schools was told and we went there to see what was in the oven. The school I saw as a primary school is world-class. If you build that kind of primary school in the US, Switzerland or UK, it is going to be taken and accepted as high quality. We saw what you called computer lab, the infrastructure of the school and the ideology that drives the programme and that is to give the under-privileged in the society an opportunity for upward mobility in life and this was given practical manifestation in the fact that the site where these mega schools was located was before inhabited by a local ramshackle primary school. So, what was there before was cleared away and he put in place these mega schools. Now, the same pupils who were those in those ramshackle schools are the same continuing their education in a drastically better environment.Of course, he did not stop there. They have quite a number of buses in Ondo State now to take these students around. These buses go around in the morning to pick up these students and when they finish school in the afternoon, it does the same thing to take them back to their various homes. As I said, this I witnessed and participated when this was being made manifest to the public. It is not as if I read it somewhere; I am talking about the evidence of my own. You asked for a specific instance and I can offer you this. Of course, if you enter Akure today, the difference, the quality is such that you cannot miss. Well paved and clean roads; you enter the city and you say I am proud to be here. That is another evidence.So what becomes of PDP' Are you advocating a possible merger or a working alliance between the Labour Party and PDP'Well, given the fact that Governor Mimiko himself was in PDP, that is not a far-fetched scenario. We definitely advocate that kind of thing but it is left to PDP in Ondo State to decide what it wants to do. Of course, my major position is predicated on performance and it happens to be Ondo State now. Wherever we see evidence of similar performances like we have seen in Ondo.
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