I will break the two terms Jinx in Oyo State-Ajimobi

Gov Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State had an interview with Punch Newspaper where the Governor answered some questions from the journalist, when asked about the two term jinx in oyo state here is what the governor said.

No governor has won elections twice in Oyo State. Going by this, your opponents say history doesn’t favour you. Are you already prepared to lose?

There is always a first time to everything. There has never been a Governor Ajimobi before me. I am the first and I will do two terms as a governor. It will then become history. The beauty of it is that the major contestants in the state now have been former governors (Adebayo Alao-Akala and Rashidi Ladoja) whom I defeated in 2011. I am still going to defeat them again. Apart from the fact that I have beaten them before, people will look at the track record of each of the contestants I am referring to.

What do you think you have done that gives you the edge over past governors like Ladoja and Alao-Akala that didn’t get second terms and other governorship candidates in the race now?

If you take a look at the fundamental features of governance, which are peace, security and safety, you can easily say which government is better. During their own tenures, we witnessed violence and Oyo State was projected as a violent state. If you compare this government with that of Alao-Akala and Ladoja, you can easily point out that there is peace today than then. If that is all we have achieved, it is enough for us. The foundation of any society is peace and security, which is what we have established. Nobody wants to go back to the days of old. When last did you hear of National Union of Road Transport Workers crisis in Oyo State?

People talk of stomach infrastructure but we have gone beyond that in the state. During the time of Alao-Akala and Ladoja, they removed traders from Elekuro and other places but they did not build shops for them. We are the first government to remove traders from the streets and provide about 4800 of them with new shops free. We are still building to accommodate more traders. Let anybody challenge me on this. Not only that we gave the traders new shops, we also gave them money to trade at no interest rate. That is a loan that is unlikely to be recovered. We spent close to N500m on that. If you are talking about taking care of people, we do it a lot. Every other month, we give free food to people from a food bank that cost the state close to N2bn. We have empowered many through training and distribution of tools and equipment and the state is better for it because there is development.