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The former minister
of justice and attorney-general of the federation, Richard Akinjide,
told the Ibadan Elders Forum yesterday to stop inciting other sections
of Oyo State against the state governor, Adebayo Alao-Akala.

Mr Akinjide, who
led other members of the Ibadan elders of the People’s Democratic Party
(PDP) to address journalists in his Idi-Ishin residence on Thursday,
was reacting to the forum’s adoption of Abiola Ajimobi as the
governorship candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Oyo
on Wednesday.

The forum, in a
press conference, declared their total support for Mr Ajimobi, saying
he is the only viable candidate among the options available for the
people of the state to choose as their leader for the next four years.

They chronicled a
litany of allegations against the incumbent Adebayo Alao-Akala, the
PDP’s candidate, as well as Rashidi Ladoja, a former governor of the
state and the Accord Party candidate, to explain why they are not fit
for the post.

While Mr Ladoja’s
sins border on an alleged lack of popularity of his party in the state,
Mr Alao-Akala was accused of disrespecting the traditional institution
and misappropriating state resources, among other wrongs.

But as the nation
prepares for the governorship election coming up on Tuesday, the PDP
elders say the Ibadan Elders’ Forum was wrong both in its assessment of
the candidates and its open support for the ACN flagbearer. According
to them, the attack against Mr Alao-Akala was nothing but an attempt to
call the dog a bad name in order to hang it.

Political opponents

They maintain that
the desperate ambition of the group to always produce the governor of
the state is antithetical to the tenets of democracy and the realities
of the 21st century.

“The truth of the
matter is that the hoopla over Akala’s performance is borne out of a
general feeling of the Ibadan Elders’ Forum, who has the myopic belief
that no one else from any other part of Oyo State other than Ibadan can
be the governor,” Mr Akinjide, himself an Ibadan elder, said.

“A mental incursion
round the states of the federation reveals that out of the 36 state
governors in Nigeria, 28 out of them are not indigenes of the capital
city of their states. Nearly all the states’ chief executives hail from
small towns and villages. Even the late Bola Ige, the governor of the
old Oyo state, was from Esa Oke. Moreover, there is a subsisting
doctrine that every geo-political zone of Oyo State has a legitimate
right to produce the governor.”

A stern warningMr
Akinjide declared that the forum failed in its bid to get Mr Ajimobi
elected in 2007, and will also fail this time as, he said, the members
lack the popularity to push a candidate to electoral success in the
state.

The senior lawyer
further warned that the Ibadan elders must borrow a leaf from other
equally successful senior citizens from other parts of the state who
have not dabbled into politics, urging them to clearly define their
stand.

“Henceforth, if the Ibadan elders fail to heed this advice, mud and
darts will fly in their direction and the respect and reverence usually
reserved for the elders in Yorubaland will henceforth elude them. They
will be treated strictly as political opponents,” he said.