By Myke Uzendu, Abuja
The former governor of Ekiti State and frontline aspirant in the June 18, 2022, governorship election, Engr. Segun Oni, has declared that majority of Ekiti residents are pushing for his return so as to continue with his developmental legacies and master plan.
Oni who is seeking the governorship ticket on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stated this after submitting his Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms on Monday at the party’s headquarters in Abuja.
The erstwhile governor said that service delivery which characterized his administration would be given pride of place if he is given the nod by the electorate to return to the Ekiti State Government House.
“We are responding majorly to the sentiment people have been expressing in our state about the services we rendered them when I was the governor of the state.
“Based on that, the people believe that they and us still have more to give to one another.
“That is why we have decided to take it upon ourselves to run again for the governorship of Ekiti state so that by God’s grace, we will be able to render more service to our people,” he said.
He said that he would use the opportunity of his return to complete some of the projects he initiated which he could not complete before his administration was ousted by a ruling of the Court of Appeal.
He continued: “We will begin from where we stopped. There are a lot of things we did not take to a conclusion.
“We will take the state further down to a new terrain where we will be able to add value to the lives of the people.
“We believe that Ekiti state must be creative, innovative and must bring to the table a lot of new ideas that will further excite the democratic field in Nigeria. We are getting ready to do exactly that.
“When we came in, we tagged our campaign office, “the PDP family office.” We didn’t say Segun oni campaign organization office. We said PDP family first. The emphasis is on family and on PDP. We believe that we can all come together to derive the best for our party and for our people. I am a party person to the core.
“We must bring our people together, First, to be able to conquer together and realize the benefits together. When I was the governor, I introduced a few things which are still on. For example, I created the position of wards development officers.
He promised to revamp the agricultural sector saying, “we were number one in cassava by the time I was leaving. From nowhere, we brought a man of blessed memory who ran our cassava program and took us to the very front of cassava output.
“This has convinced me that when any government is determined, the sky is not even the limit.
“We are still going to go back to some of these ideas to see whether we can still run them profitably, so that we will produce, not just for human consumption but also for processing to get value from the chain.
Oni further dismissed insinuations of feud between him and the former governor, Ayodele Fayose, saying, “he (Fayose) is my brother and we are brothers of the same family, brothers of the same party.
“You know in the process of competing and contending, you can disagree but it is disagree to agree. So, there’s nothing serious that will stand between us.”
Earlier in his remarks, National Organizing Secretary of the party, Col. Austin Akobundu (retd) assured Oni of a level playing field, saying the PDP of today is anchored on internal democracy and the rule of law.
“Let me remind our brother, the aspirant that the party he is running this important contest today is totally different from the party he contested the last time, the reason being that steadily, this party under our leadership embarked on reforms that would elevate quality of services of this party principally by opening up the space, insisting on internal democracy and enforcing the policy of free, fair and transparent primaries.
“This, no doubt, places huge burden on any aspirant because it simply means that unlike those days, you have no business running around offices at the Wadata because nobody will help you here. Only the delegates will help you.
“As you drop your forms, we encourage you to go back home and don’t come back here again until you win or lose.
“We must put it that way because we know that our brother and friend is not the only aspirant in this race. Somebody will win and other people will lose. I will advise all of you that as you are supporting him, support him with all your heart and put in the necessary hard work.Apart from Oni, other aspirants include Ajijola Lateef Oladimeji, Otunba Bisi Kolawole, Albert Kayode and Aribisala Adewale, incumbent National Treasurer of the PDP.
