Biyi Orilabawaye
The current Governor of Ondo State, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu is loud, wasteful and extravagant, unlike his kinsman, late Chief Adekunle Ajasin who was prudent in his lifetime as then governor of Ondo State.
Governor Akeredolu is living large at the expense of the state resources. However, we rejoice with him that his children are getting married, but we resent his showmanship, his extravagant lifestyle, his display of frivolity and a waste of state resources.
Our people in Ondo State should be informed that while his son’s wedding took place in far away America last year – a ceremony that was done like a state wedding, he has again displayed his lust for vanity by traveling abroad with his cabinet over the weekend for the second leg of his daughter’s wedding in Mauritius Indian Ocean in Southeast Africa.
The Governor took away with him all his cabinet members, his countless advisers, hangers-on and the legislative arm of government, forgetting that he only returned to the state recently after absconding from his office for several months. If I may ask, Is public office all about frivolity?
From the seven deadly sins in public office enunciated by Mahatma Gandhi, Governor Akeredolu is guilty of at least three of them : Pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character and Politics without principle. Who will prevail on Akeredolu to tame is lust for vanity?
I could recall that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo once mocked Governor James Ibori when he gave his mother a state burial and Lucky Igbinedion when he turned his father’s 70th birthday to an international carnival. President Obasanjo couldn’t contain his anger when he said, instead of the Governors to sit down and attend to their official engagements, they were busy ” burying mama and do papa’s birthday”.
Some of us went all out for Akeredolu during his campaign to become the governor of Ondo State. We were his foot soldiers during his fiercely contested election against chief Olusola Alexander Oke. We abandoned Oke and supported Akeredolu who is from the northern part of Ondo state in the interest of party politics, thinking that as the candidate of APC, a party whose slogan is change, we thought that he (Akeredolu), would bring the desired change to our people in Ondo State.
Our hopes ballooned when he was declared as the newly elected Governor, especially when he said that he would like to be addressed simply as “Arakunrin”, and not his excellency as the protocol demands. Wow! we were hooked, the Messiah has finally come, we chanted! But we were wrong. We didn’t know that we were wrong until now.
I hereby call on the party’s leadership to prevail on Governor Akeredolu to halt his endless owambe’s misadventures. Government is a serious business. Very soon, campaign will kick off, I wonder what he will tell us in the south as impacts of his government apart from the perennial Ore flyover’s bridge!
The day of reckoning looms…
Biyi Richard Orilabawaye wrote in from Irele Local Government Area in Ondo State.
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