The Ebira Youth forum, a Peoples Democratic Party pressure group in the central senatorial district of Kogi State has reacted to a recent interview granted by an indigene of the state, but living in diaspora, Dr Adinoyi Onukaba-Ojo, with a call on the journalist and playwright to leave Wada alone while finding a new trade.
Onukaba-Ojo in the interview alleged that the recent defections of some PDP members in the state to APC was a vote of no confidence on the governor.
Dr Onukaba-Ojo called on the national leadership of the PDP not to field Capt Wada for a second term in office as a means of rescuing PDP in Kogi State.
But alluding to a renewed smear campaign against Wada ahead the 2015 elections, Haruna Sani, President of the group in a statement issued in Lokoja described Onukaba-Ojo as a busy bodied politician and a mole of the APC in the ruling party.
“The renewed smear campaign against His Excellency Capt. Idris Wada and his administration by Dr Adinoyi Onukaba-Ojo and his cohorts will go the way of the old.
According to Sani, Dr Onukaba-Ojo and his likes in the Kogi Elders Forum have never hidden their disdain for Capt Wada before his election in 2011, maintaining that since they did it before and failed, the monumental achievements recorded by the Wada led administration in the last two and a half year is a vindication that the choice made by the people was a right decision.
The interview in Thisday Newspaper blamed the defection of a few political jobbers from PDP to APC on His Excellency, Capt Idris is old, out of use, and should be ignored by discernible minds as the ranting of a political lightweight out to seek undue attention. Such ranting by Onukaba and his cohorts in the discombobulated elders forum, Sani disclosed is not new and has since become an old lie.
If Dr Onukaba-Ojo where not an Abuja based politician, the defection he talked about according to Sani, was a political misadventure that had no consequence. Little wonder, those he mentioned that defected could not secure even the APC ticket for the next year’s general election.
Early in the life of the Wada Administration, the primordial vicious campaign launched against the governor in a veiled bid to deter him in his calm, courageous takeoff towards repositioning Kogi State by the so-called PDP elders from their Abuja basement had failed. The result and rejection by the people of the state over their action the Youth Leader pointed out is the silence that has engulfed the forum whilst a confused few have bowed their heads in shame to find an abode in the APC. Where that leaves Onukaba is a question he will have to answer all by himself in order not to suffer an impending political asphyxiation. Mr Sani disclosed that Onukaba has never been a committed PDP member, asking when last did he attend a meeting of the PDP in the Central Senatorial District of the state. For a man who the Youth Leader noted cannot mention the name of his party Ward Chairman, Dr Onukaba-Ojo even as a governorship aspirant in the PDP 2011 governorship primaries could not pull a vote, is at best a mole of the APC in the PDP and his emotions he inadvertently betrayed in the Thisday interview when he bemoaned the crisis in the APC under Abubakar Audu’s leadership.
This level of competence and innocuous approach to governance and leadership by Governor Idris Wada no doubt have exposed the undying envy and ill will the Onukaba’s have ensnared their hearts in.
Thus far, Kogi State Governor Capt. Idris Wada , according to Sani has proven that he is a man imbued with a high sense of service”.
The statement added, “In order to expand the frontiers of infrastructural and human capital development in Kogi State, over the last two and half year, the Wada’s administration in line with the driving force of a legacy of continuity, has completed all project he inherited from the last administration. He has also embarked on new ones.
Several of them with direct impact on the lives of the people.
Despite the shortfall in fiscal allocation from the federal government, it is a credit that the Wada administration has paid workers’ salaries regularly and remains a state that is up to date in the payment of salaries. The administration has also. embarked on life impacting projects,renovating all the general hospitals in the state, massive renovation of primary and secondary schools across the state, and placed emphasis on youth employment, empowerment, and carried out micro credit schemes for market women among other groups in the state.
“It is equally important to state that since his assumption of office as governor, Capt Wada has taken several decisions that have properly affected the course of governance to connect with the envisioned vision of the founding fathers of Kogi State.
Abu disclosed that the ongoing construction of 500 unit of houses in the ganaja and crusher areas of the state, the building of a eleven storey building Kogi House and Kogi Hotels, the governor’s other programmes and policies, is why the likes of Dr Onukaba is scared.
Sani added that the way Capt. Wada has driven governance and politics so far in the state shows that he is well grounded to govern a complex Kogi State, with equity and justice as his watchword.
A man who has been prepared for his today’s role as a consumable intellectual, Sani says Wada sees the correlation between the impact of his long years in private service as a preparation for what he is going through today, and pointed out that the wheel of development is on course in Kogi State.
Mr Sani described Capt Wada as a man who reckons with the notion of attitudinal change in the state’s politics, and said without mincing words, the Governor has raised the bar of quality politics by identifying the issues of good governance and development as his sole purpose for being in governance.
The last Party primaries of the PDP, Sani noted can testify to that. Thuggery and violence he explained has giving way to decent politics where it was the people and not godfathers that decided where the pendulum swung to, urged Dr Onukaba to find something else to do.
Without mincing words, one will not be far from saying the truth, Kogi is on the threshold of genuine transformation, evidenced in outstanding results and the peace and tranquility that abound the state.
