Group calls on Oyo governorship candidates to undergo fitness test

A socio-cultural organization, Oyo Patriotic Front, has called on the three leading candidates for the April 11 governorship election in the state to submit themselves to health scrutiny so as to determine their fitness for the rigours of the office they are aspiring to occupy.

    Specifically, the organization challenged Senator Abiola Ajimobi of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Rashidi Ladoja of Accord and Adebayo Alao-Akala of Labour Party (LP) to submit themselves to a consortium of medical experts before the election.

      The organization, in a statement by its Chairman, Chief Jare Adepoju, said that the consortium should be made up of consultant cardiologists, psychiatrists, neurologists and ophthalmologists among others from the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. 

     The group said this is imperative in view of the daunting challenges required by the office of the governor in the successful running of the affairs of the state.

        It said that this ought to be a constitutional provision that would guard against the emergence of political office holders with debilitating health challenges that might hinder the effective and efficient performance of their responsibilities.

        For instance, the organization said it had it on good authority that Ajimobi is a workaholic who stays till late in the night on daily basis without showing any visible sign of stress, but insisted that this was not an indication of a clean bill of health.

        It, therefore, said that the governor should also undergo medical examination to determine his state of health having functioned in the office of the governor with its attendant tasking responsibilities for almost four years.

     It said that the state could not afford to have a governor who would junket abroad on a weekly basis for the management of his health challenge, at the expense of the discharge of his duties, stressing that this might also eat deep into the resources of the state.

  It noted that one of the governorship candidates is medically unfit, from his physical appearance at campaign grounds, which suggests that he is battling with serious ailments as exemplified by his ever swollen legs.

 However, Alao-Akala in his response to the call by the group denied that he is suffering from an ailment is far a lie saying, he has been going about meeting people from ward to ward and local government to local government campaigning and sensitizing them on the need to return him as governor of the state”. 

     “The claims is a clear evidence that they are jittery about the soaring image and increasing acceptability of the former governor who by the 

grace of God is taking over the mantle of leadership from their sickening principal who always travel abroad for medical checkup in disguise for searching for foreign investors”.