Ondo: The more the PDP aspirants, the merrier – Olafeso

An aspirant for the October 10 governorship election in Ondo state, Dr. Eddy Olafeso has urged the party to allow eligibly qualified members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) willing to contest the party’s governorship ticket be allowed without let or hindrance.

He said as a democratic who had lost contest in the past, he is ready to square it up with as many aspirants as possible in the party ‘s primary election, while he foreclosed the idea of consensus candidature.

Olafeso who has been a member of the National Working Committee of the PDP said this at the weekend after obtaining the Expression of Intetest and Nomination forms at the party’s national secretariat, Abuja.

Determined not to step down for another aspirant, he said “In the first instance, we are going into the primary’s. It is decision of the electorate and delegates on whom they want to pick, if I am not their choice, then I can understand.

“I just bought the form. I know that you are aware that the cost of form here is N21m and I didn’t borrow it from anybody. So why do you think that having come this far, and the quality of people surrounding me, that we are going to step down for people.

“Let’s leave the people to make their own choices and if you are not their choice, be reasonable enough to step aside for another time and may be continue to preach your own gospel until they understand what you are saying”.

He said he is in the race to redress the nepotistic and fraudulent kind of governance which has resulted into decayed infrastructure, education, social and human capital and capacity development that have dogged every sphere of Ondo state.

The political experience in Ondo state as presently configured is skewed in appointments and infrastructural development abandoning a sizeable chunk of the state in abject disrepair.

“Education, which is the focal pillar on which the society rests, has gone comatose as students in tertiary institutions across the State are dropping out of school on daily basis due to govemment’s insensitivity in astronomical increase in fees.

“This is not only limited to the higher institutions of learning as primary and secondary schools have their own share of the increase in fees making education an IGR point.

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“Our roads have become death traps and points of kidnapping especially in the northern parts of the state where criminals enjoy field days of criminality without let and hindrance. Ten years have passed like a bad dream for those who live in the southern part of the state in their continued stay in absolute blackout.

“Poverty is so glaring in the lives of the people that we can literally see it walk the streets, clinging to our people’s daily existence.

“All of these call for urgent, drastic and decisive intervention to redeem a once thriving state of a well-orchestrated blue print for socialand economic reengineering standing on a six-legged agenda for redemption”

If elected, he said, he will tackle as his cardinal programmes, issues of ; human capital development, agriculture, infrastructure, security, job creation and power.