Mr Pius Olakunle Osunyinkanmi is the Director General of the Directorate of Technical Aide Corps. In this interview with ANDREW OOTA the former Presidential Aide, former Special Assistant to Ondo State Governor Olusegun Mimiko and governorship aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC explained why he left the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
What informed your movement from PDP because I know how close you were to governor Mimiko and so for many it came as a surprise.
My movement to PDP, even though I was in the Labour Party remember that I served in the PDP government, but it was based on certain understanding. It was based on the understanding of the progressive tendencies of the Labour Party and the need for them to use that to moderate the conservatism in the PDP and so they needed some of the versatile-minded individuals in the progressive Labour Party then to also complement the efforts of the PDP to serve as a moderating influence. It was on that basis that I had to come to the national level and for those of you who knew my activities throughout my period of service you would know that I was more or less like a moderating influence trying to get policies to be in tune with what the vast majority wanted. Of course, over time quite a number of issues happened. The emperor syndrome developed within the Labour Party and the development of the emperor syndrome there seem to be the need for a clear re-evaluation, because within a progressive tendency there is no room for an empire; individual voices must be heard irrespective of their social or economic status and must be respected. It is also a cardinal principle in the progressive tendency that nepotism is neither a part of the sides of the coin, but where you have a seemingly and initial progressive free minded individual approximating power and evolving into an emperor like individual, it is left to the progressive elements within that enclave to either decide to continue to subjugate their freedom and liberty and become surrogate of sort and neglect as it were the interest of the vast majority of the people.
The movement to the PDP was a movement that was meant to consolidate the emperor like mentality that has suddenly become the hallmark of the leadership of the labour party, which was a marked departure from progressive tendencies – and so quite a number of people were hoodwinked into joining the PDP in the last ditch to save the Labour Party from an internal implosion, because quite a number of people were already ready to move and technically speaking as we speak today even while my press statement said we were resigning from PDP the truth of the matter is that we were never authentic members of the PDP, because the governor only came to ditch the Labour Party in the Villa and you know the controversy that sounded it then and as we speak today nobody that was of the Labour Party extraction could claim to be a valid member of the PDP in Ondo State. And if I talk of the PDP, I mean the authentic PDP not the Mimiko invented PDP, because immediately he moved into the PDP the popular concept was that he came to ebolarise the PDP and so the party is jinxed and notable leaders have to leave and what he inherited was more or less a carcass.
Based on your submission, what I deduce is that disagreement between you and the governor and the PDP is elitist. It is like you did not see anything wrong with governance in Ondo State.
If we have not seen anything wrong with governance in Ondo State we would not have exited. We must learn from history because there is a difference between loyalty and slavery, we must also understand that there is a dividing line between politics and principles. Politics is played as a means to an end, but where politics becomes an end in itself for a particular leader that has chosen in the first instance to make politics as a means to an end, you as a follower who became the disciple of that leader as at the time his initial focus was to make politics as a means of affecting positively the socioeconomic circumstances of the people you became a follower as a result of that conviction now where you are convinced that there is a marked departure from that initial principle upon which you are recruited it is left for you to evaluate and see whether you want to continue to partake in the largesse or examine your conscience and see whether you want to really act out your conscience, be with the people and act out your principles.
That does not in any way affect personal relationship. It is only a marked departure based on principles. We had been recruited abinitio on certain principles and we embarked on that journey based on that principle, we got to a certain point there was a branch off from that principle and a number of us said common let us re-evaluate it, we seem to be deviating, we came to power on the bases of the people, that the plight of the people will be our plight that on no condition would anybody in Ondo State go to bed hungry, that whatever we would do will be for the interest of the vast majority of the people of Ondo State and what that implied is that even in terms of distribution of projects, we are going to be fair to all residents of Ondo State; in terms of the distribution of those projects we are going to be fair to all communities and local governments; in terms of access even to simple element of contracts and patronage we were going to be fair not to your political followers alone, but to every legitimate resident in the state, who is able to show that he or she is fulfilling his or her obligation to the state. Today the government in Ondo Sate is the government of the Mimiko, for the Mimiko and the interest of the Mimikos.
Who are the people behind those projects, who are the ones using those proxy contractors. What we have in Ondo State today is a situation where an otherwise trusted government becomes the most distrusted government and the reason is not farfetched; the Labour Party’s blueprint was developed right in my house. We developed what the Labour Party would be doing from week to week for the first four years and that if we are lucky to have the second four years what we should be doing. But the governors wakes up one day and he thinks that there should be a market along Oke-Igbo Road even though nobody has taken the distance between where he is siting the market Oke-Igbo or whether the people of Oke-Igbo are even willing to come to the place. It is just that somebody has brought a proposal; you just begin to rule by impulse. As we speak today a new vocabulary got introduce into our political lexicon in this country and that is the concept of budget reordering. Back to your question, it is not a question of an elitist fight, it is a question for the fight of the common, by virtue of education and what have you he is a medical doctor so even if he is not a politician and if he were to be a serious medical doctor, he should be able to live a comfortable life. I have a doctorate in Political Science, my wife has a doctorate in Political Science by virtue of education we should have the opportunity of the average Nigerian to be able to contribute our quarter.
What is the antecedent of the APC? You must understand this; you must take it way back to 1999 and begin to see the preponderance of the elements that make up the APC today. Where were they initially in 1999? They were either in AD or AC and later CAN and the like. See the fight of Governor Chibuke Amaechi as reflecting the fight of a genuine progressive. Genuine progressive even within the PDP and so just like the natural law in physics there is a way that the progressives will naturally gravitate towards themselves and this case the gravitational point is the party and so what you have is an APC that has that magnetic gravitational force to attract the progressives depending on the distance of your connectivity to that level of political gravitational force. In this case since I joined the APC, I could sleep and sleep very well because as a so called PDP member while walking the street, in spite of the fact that people love me as an individual in my community and local government, the general thought is always that look sir why not disentangle yourself from this ever sinking governor, from this government that has disconnected itself from the people.
Leadership
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