A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State, Omooba Dotun Babayemi, has stated that the 2018 governorship election in the state is critical to the party being the starting point of 2015 tsunami that sent PDP parking out of governance in the country.
Fielding questions from newsmen in Osogbo, Osun State capital, Babayemi said that with the work done by Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, “our hope is that our party will continue to retain power within the progressives fold of APC in September 22, 2018 election.”
Babayemi said that the future of the party is very bright in the state and other states in the southwestern part of the country irrespective of the acronyms that the opposition gives to the party.
According to him, “the future of our party in the state is very bright irrespective of the acronyms that we used to called ourselves. The most important thing is that we are progressives; we are the party of the people. We are the party that put our people first. We don’t have factions in APC, we may have differences in opinion; still we are strong and focus.
“What you are probably calling factions are people that have benefited from the ideologies of the progressives as it was in the first republic, but that have moved from focusing their attention on the people to personal interest, anywhere where you put your personal interest above the general interest, the tendency is that there is bound to be failure. So as a party, we are strong, our leadership is very strong, we are focus, whatever issues we have within the party, we resolves them.
While commending the administration of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola for the achievements recorded so far in the last year’s said, “if you look at federal government programmes, 80 percent of the programmes being implemented in other states across the nation originated from state of Osun.
“Whether it is feeding program for school children, youth empowerment, O’YES programme, taking care of elderly, lots of those ideas are strategic driven. They are peoples oriented programmes.
“What has been the challenge in the state has been availability of funds. We have to put it on the table, if you have X amount of money and 80 percent of its spent on salaries, it makes then difficult to do all those other things that the government need to do.
“From my assessment, I will give this administration a significant pass mark. Two things government has to do is that the government has the responsibility to the people that are currently here; government also has responsibility for the children that are coming tomorrow. The focus of any government cannot only be salaries you have to pay today for the people but also for the future.
“Some of the programmes that government have to do must be for the future so that the future of generation yet unborn is guaranteed. If we only focus on today, the future generation will not forgive us.
“We talk about Awolowo, at the time the liberty stadium was being constructed, at the time he was establishing NTA, Ibadan, at the time he was doing free education, people called him a mad man. Why would you be giving education free have you increase our salaries? But today, we are all beneficiaries of that particular programme.”
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