One of the aspirants for the upcoming governorship election, Akinboye Oyewunmi, has explained his reasons for aspiring to govern the state. He said he wants to turn around the fortune of the state..
    
He said, “when I move round, I’m touched by the level of poverty, which has visited us, more particularly in the South West, because in the years gone by we used to be privileged. If you look at our percentage of the population and look at the positions that we occupy, we had strategic advantages and those advantages have been eroded.”
    
According to Oyewunmi, the assurance of what he could achieve is evidenced by his successful establishment of a number of multi sector businesses in various countries, adding that his vision is to make Ondo regain its greatness in economic development, total wellbeing, equitable distribution of commonwealth and justice.
   
“The message to the people is, let us make Ondo State Great again in bringing prosperity to the good people of the state, reason we tagged our movement Agbajo Owo. What we want to bring to Ondo State is governance through exemplary leadership across all organs. Our mission in Ondo is to build and deliver good governance as the dividends of democracy to the people; we are going to ensure that people are heard irrespective of the social status, ethnic or gender inclination.”
    
Oyewunmi, noted that education is the cheapest way to redistribute wealth, stressing that it is the common nexus between the people, and reason everybody is able to communicate in one language, have common vision and passion, and know right from wrong. He added that the more uneducated a society becomes the poorer its human capital.
    
According Oyewunmi “many years past, there were some menial jobs we literally believed were meant for and done by strangers in Ondo State, but today, we are taking our fair proportion of such jobs like Okada driving and that can’t be tolerated. Again, getting a plumber or someone who is highly skilled in a particular vocation that speaks our local language is difficult. We don’t have the skills and we don’t have the education.
     
“It may interest you to know that the case of Ondo State is unique, because there is a no other part of the South West that I know of with high preponderance of minerals. Let’s leave minerals aside, in terms of human intellect, Ondo and Ekiti used to be the fountain of knowledge, but now, we have mega schools with mega failures; we have class sizes that are bulging on the streets, schools with non-graduate teachers. When you are a non-graduate teacher, what education are you impacting; what knowledge are you transferring? We have schools that their infrastructures have decayed to the point that they are now more academic, but no infrastructures to support it. So, a lot of things are wrong in the state.
   
Oyewunmi lamented that what has been lacking, not only in Ondo, but the body polity generally is stewardship to the people in public service, which he said has not been embraced with commitment to bridge the gap between the government and the governed.
  
On how he hopes to transform the state, he said, “Sustainable and evolving urban and rural renewal through accelerated infrastructural development to develop the state into a highly diversified economic hub would be taken as priority.
 
The state, as it is now has no unique selling point, when you look into the coast line, you see oil and gas; when you move inward, like Irele and other environs, you have bitumen. You don’t have to dig deep, some are found on the surface. You have cocoa, timber, palm-kernel, cashew, laterite, granite and many other metal and non-metal minerals, yet we can’t pay salaries and always run to Abuja. These are age-old problems and it is a general Nigerian story, but we are only cascading it down to Ondo State. Most states of the federation are rich in minerals, but they are lacking in cash, infrastructures and ideas. It is said that the youths are the leaders of the future, but we are being asked to look back to elect our governors, and that I think is an aberration.”
   
On his chances of securing the APC ticket, Oyewunmi says it is very bright, stressing that the teeming populations in the state are youths, and the elderly know that this is time for fresh ideas to take centre stage.