The Kwara State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has advised leaders of the ruling APC in the state not to rejoice yet over the victory of the APC candidate, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, in the just concluded gubernatorial contest in Osun State. The PDP says the variables that led to the victory of the APC in Osun State are acutely lacking in Kwara State.

We make bold to say that the Osun’s case is a different ball game compared to Kwara. Whereas Ogbeni Aregbesola is beholden to no other power and principality apart from the people of Osun state, the Kwara Governor has been bedeviled under the shackle of godfatherism. He has, from day one of his administration, been under the remote control of a single man that has refused to take his mouth from the feeding bottle even after his eight years of uneventful governance of Kwara State.

Whereas Osun State successfully fashioned and implemented the legendary 0’YES Youth Empowerment Scheme, Kwara’s own ill-conceived duplicate of it, the QuickWIN, has sadly refused to take off almost five months after. Whereas Osun successfully completed several kilometers of road across the length and breathe of the state, Kwara’s own pride is in the number of potholes filled in a handful of street in the Ilorin metropolis. Whereas, students in Osun State-owned varsity pay as low as N40,000 in school fees, Kwara Government under the APC has discreetly jacked up fees payable by poor Kwara students to the tune of over N150,000 in dubious departmental and accommodation charges. This is the trend in other higher institutions across the state too.

This is why we are amused that the Kwara APC leaders will make the outcome of the Osun elections the yardstick of their party’s victory at the poll in 2015. The earlier the leadership of the APC in Kwara State realizes that the Kwara electorates are not some zombies that will be herded into yet another four years of hopelessness and incompetence by the APC-led administration, the better for them.

The people can differentiate between the fake and the true progressives; the people know that you do not become progressives overnight simply because you jump parties to fester narrow political interest. They know that like chameleons, no matter the amount of time the Kwara APC leaders change political parties, their incompetence always follow them.

To all discerning minds, the Kwara political landscape of today is a different ballgame compared to what the APC leaders are used to. Whereas, the people of Osun have always been presented with spectrum of quality political choices, Kwarans have sadly over the years persistently groan under the heavy weight of imposition and limited choices foisted upon them by the same political class that are now shamefully rejoicing.

So in 2015, like the people of Osun, Kwarans will be voting to exercise their choices and like the electorates of Ekiti, Kwarans will be voting against non performance and the siege of the oppressive hegemony.

It is therefore our sincere advice that the Kwara APC and its leaders should not rejoice yet, because their own day of reckon is right lurking at the corner.

Chief Rex. K. Olawoye
Publicity Secretary