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A Socio – Cultural Group, Oyo Patriotic Front (OPF) has commended the reported truce initiative between Governor Abiola Ajimobi and Senator Rashid Ladoja being brokered by the Central Council of Ibadan Indigenes (CCII).
The group however advised Governor Ajimobi to keep Ladoja at arms length as the High Chief may not reciprocate the good gestures.
The Group’s chairman, Chief Jare Adepoju, in a statement, said “the peace move by the CCII to resolve the entire imbroglio in Ibadan and Oyo State as a whole is commendable. However, we want to caution Governor Ajimobi not to get carried away. He should remember that his gestures in the past were repaid ungraciously. Through Governor Ajimobi’s magnanimity and benevolence, the Accord Party leader’s family member and loyalists were part of Ajimobi’s government between 2011 and 2013, they were part and parcel of the Executive council where major decisions affecting the state were taken and despite this, all the projects executed by the present administration were cynically viewed and condemned by the Accord party chieftain.”
He said that Senator Ladoja’s fruitless efforts at governing Oyo State again may have had an adverse effect on him, saying that the former governor’s recent utterances are bordering on frustration especially the statement on a private radio interview in Ibadan that the Oyo State Housing Corporation gave him a land and not Governor Ajimobi.
Adepoju explained that any sane mind will know that the Oyo State Housing Corporation cannot give land free of charge to to anybody without the consent of the governor.
He added that the former governor’s recent urge that the police should probe the state government over the violent attack on Olubadan should not be taken seriously but seen as a diversionary attempt from the real issues, stating that the general public knows that Ajimobi’s name is synonymous with peace while Ladoja’s name is synonymous with violence.
Adepoju appealed to the general public to consider the sustainability of peace in the state as a collective responsibility adding “the achievements of Ajimobi’s administration should be seen as our collective patrimony and guarded jealously.”