By Zebulon Omosehin
As
the 2020 gubernatorial poll draws near, the people of Ondo State have
recently been inundated with series of media gymnastics of stories of
the deputy governor, Agboola Ajayi running against his boss, Governor
Akeredolu in a bid to oust him. But a clear linguistic and media
analysis of these publications and attendant rebuttals has showed them
to be of common source.
In
many of these sponsored articles, the deputy governor, Agboola Ajayi,
was described as “a grassroots politician from the south district”, “a
rallying point against Akeredolu in 2020”, amongst many other qualities,
who will run under the PDP, basically to portray a tough status to awe
the governor into submission.
The
truth is that, based on mountain loads of allegations against the
deputy governor which bother on his call to bar, perjury, examination
malpractices etc, the governor and those in Ondo APC are already
considering not to field him again as Akeredolu’s deputy. Hence the
recent media upperground and underground swimming to appraise himself,
accuse the governor, put up fake threatening status and at the same time
supplying rebuttals upon rebuttals to all these which have been
emanating from him.
To
drive home more intimidation, the plot suggested he is being sponsored
by the Sokoto governor, Aminu Tambuwal, considering Hon Adedayo Omolafe
as his deputy and “enjoying the supports” of former commissioners like
Taofiq Abdulsalam and Solagbade Amodeni, who were recently sacked by the
governor. But only to turn around and apologised to only Governor
Tambuwal, for what he called “public embarrassment” and left out others
whose names featured in the plot. The questions are, why apologising if
you are not the originator of the scam? Why apologise to only Tambuwal
and not others?
The plot
also has it as a mandate to make it look the stories of the deputy
governor’s 2020 plan is directed at what they called “incriminating him
and thereby push him out of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu’s second term
bid”, but obviously a gimmick geared towards seeking a chance of
Governor Akeredolu changing his mind to run with him again. But again,
this is part of the plot not carefully charted. Will the deputy governor
come out openly to denounce this same plan which they even went ahead
to threaten would be “a serious crack in Akeredolu’s political block”?
Did
the deputy governor publicly apologise to the governor as did to
Governor Tambuwal in his rebuttals, for allegations credited to an
anonymous within the governor’s cabinet which the plot said stated that
he, “Ajayi’s growing popularity and influence may be a reason for the
political cold wars” between him and the governor which they said is
making “every effort to ensure Ajayi’s political strength is drastically
reduced”?
Did the deputy
governor in any of his rebuttals, ever apologise to the governor for
the reportage purporting that he, Akeredolu took “prompt measures to cut
the political influence of his deputy to size”, touting the “PDP
background” of the deputy governor?
In
audience ecosystem, the needs of a population in relation to the
content they engage with the most, always determine the migration
pattern of such population. That is what is happening if one carefully
study the pattern of these publications and attendant rebuttals from the
deputy governor. Someone has noticed the migration pattern of Ondo
discussants both political and otherwise is no more favouring his
continuous stay in office and that of his guber ambition; and has
decided to bombard his principal and entire Ondo people with hand of
Esau, voice of Jacob game to awe them into submission with fake
grassroot acceptability status.
If
the deputy governor who is now apologising to only his friend Governor
Tambuwal, is that popular as made to believe, how come PDP won his
constituency and southern senatorial district? Is it that the
popularity was used against his party, APC and for PDP or the popularity
is a concocted one?
Let
us call a spade a spade, all the publications and the rebuttals from the
deputy governor have linguistic fingerprints pointing to them being
from same source.
Zebulon is League Coordinator, Ondo Unity League.
