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Director, Media, Mimiko Campaign Organisation, Kolawole Olabisi, tells Punch that Olusegun Mimiko signed no pact with Chief Bola Tinubu before or after the governor’s legal battle to reclaim his mandate. Excerpts
Asiwaju Tinubu has described Governor Olusegun Mimiko as an ingrate and a betrayer for not fulfilling an alleged pact between them, having assisted your boss to win his legal battle against former Governor Olusegun Agagu. What is your reaction to this?
It is unfortunate that a leader of a political party like the Action Congress of Nigeria can use a non-courteous language against somebody who had maintained decorum in responding to some of the tirade and abuses against him in recent time. If you want to tell the whole world that you have done something for someone, you should tell the whole world, how much you have spent in clear terms. Again, you can see from their posturing that it is not about the Yoruba integration, that it is the problem. The problem is ego. When somebody is on an ego trip and something bruises his ego, he behaves the way the ACN leader is behaving. Can you imagine, Tinubu is even insulting the people of Ondo state. Who is he to be telling our people that he will capture our dear state?
If somebody says he want to capture our people, people who are one of the most sophisticated in the whole world. Are they animals? Are they grass cutters? It is an insult on our psyche. When you go on air at a public forum and you just tell people stories without any substance that you brought in a white man, obviously referring to Adrian Forty.
What Tinubu is saying by his action is that he want to install an Ajele that is coming to collect the so called debt Mimiko owe him. We are hereby challenging him to come out in clear terms to tell us how much he gave to Mimiko in kind or in cash. Where did he give it, how and what he gave. He should be a man enough to tell the Yoruba nation how much he gave to Mimiko as a person.
Are you saying there was no form of support from Tinubu to Mimiko throughout his struggle to reclaim his mandate?
When Tinubu was governor of Lagos, he had some altercation, some quarrel as it were, with the Federal Government. When you are talking about democracy, it is about interest. Mimiko resigned as a minister despite the fact that Former President Olusegun Obasanjo kicked against his action. He resigned and Tinubu saw in Mimiko, a fellow comrade who is of like mind with him. If you help somebody, it is not a fashion in Yorubaland, it is not part of our Omoluabi culture to come out as an elder to start bragging about what you have done. We have helped some people who are also sitting governors today. Have we gone out to tell the whole world?
But people believe that Mimiko received some supports from Tinubu, why did he not honour the terms of the pact between them.?
The truth of the matter is that Tinubu asked Governor Mimiko to come and join the ACN. That one is a fact. But the fact that the people of Ondo State, who are the barometre, they are the one that would determine where the pendulum of the politics would swing, prevented Mimiko from dumping the Labour Party. The people of Ondo came to meet Mimiko in Abuja when he was minister in 2006 after they rejected Agagu. I was there because I was his Special Adviser on Media and pleaded with him to save our people from Agagu. Agagu blocked all necessary means by which Mimiko could contest under the PDP ticket. That was why the PDP chairman and the secretary resigned. By the time Mimiko decided to resigned as minister, the people of ondo had left the PDP waiting for Mimiko to give them the direction to follow hence LP became the biggest party in the state.
When Asiwaju asked Mimiko to come and join the ACN, Mimiko replied that the people of Ondo state had not asked him to dump the LP. Again it is not possible to put something on nothing. As of 2010 when the matter cropped up, there was no ACN in Ondo state; the members had fused with the LP and in a happy family. How can we now dump the LP and embrace ACN which is not in existence in the state? No state apart from Lagos in the whole of southwest is better managed than Ondo. Mimiko will soon come out to tell Asiwaju that there was no pact between them.
