The former governor of Oyo State and a chieftain of the Zenith Labour
Party (ZLP), Senator Rashidi Ladoja, has been in the news for moving
from one party to another.
With less than two months to the
general election, Ladoja’s defection from the African Democratic
Congress (ADC) to ZLP has continued to raise dusts.
He has
however opened up on his reasons for moving from one party to another
with journalists, in a new interview drafted from Nigerian Tribune.
Excerpts:
You
have moved from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to Accord Party (AP)
and later back to PDP from where you moved to African Democratic
Congress (ADC) and now you are in Zenith Labour Party (ZLP). What
brought about the decision to ditch ADC with less than two months to
elections?
The election is not as close as many people think. The
first election is still about two months away. In politics, how many
times do you have to tell people where you are going before they begin
to know where you are going?
For me, it is not about how long,
but how well. With the level of communication today, there is virtually
no area in Oyo State today where you don’t have a radio station. So, you
can disseminate your information through radio, television, personal
touch and even visits.
You can drive round the state in two three
days and meet the people you want to meet as you prepare for elections.
So, all you need to do is to canvass very well and let the people
decide. The people of Oyo State trust me; they just want to know where
they are going.
So, it is not too late to move if you emphasise
what you stand for. It is not too late to make the right moves. The
people already know where Ladoja stands. They know when I recommend
something and they trust me so much.
Talking about trust, you have
moved the same set of people and structure from one party to another
over the years. It is expected that some people might be tired of moving
around without getting what they truly want. Why are you sure the
people will trust your decision again this time?
What I mean by ‘trusting me’ is that they know that I am always looking for what is best for my people.
When
you left Accord for PDP, you moved your political structure into the
party but when you left PDP for ADC, some of your loyalists, like Chief
Bisi Ilaka, stayed back. While in ADC, some of your loyalists picked up
tickets in the party. Now that you are in ZLP, you seem to have your
loyalists scattered across the parties in the state. Don’t you foresee a
repeat of what happened in 2015 when the sitting governor had 32 per
cent of the votes?
I will tell you that what happened in 2015 is
different from what is happening now. After the 2015 election and the
governor scored 32 per cent, I had 29 per cent, while Adebayo Alao-Akala
had 14 per cent.
Teslim Folarin had seven per cent and Seyi
Makinde had five per cent. Some people felt then that had I, Alao-Akala,
Teslim and Makinde pulled our resources together, we would have won the
election. But people tend to forget that politics is not arithmetic.
You
can’t say that because Ladoja scored 29 per cent and Alao-Akala scored
14 per cent, if the two of us had worked together, we would have
defeated Abiola Ajimobi.
But that’s not true because that was
what got us to PDP in the first place, only to find out that after the
tenure of the former PDP chairman, Ahmed Makarfi, the succeeding
leadership was not as diligent. We discovered that the decisions they
wanted us to take did not go down well with us. So, we pulled out of
PDP.
As I always say, politics is personal and the fact is the
number of people actively involved in politics is just 10 per cent of
the people that would vote. In most cases, the voters are the ones that
determine who they want to vote. So, it is not about the number of
people in a party that matters, what is important is the people that
would vote. In ZLP, our winning strength is in the masses.
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