By Wole Adedeji, Ilorin
The Kwara State chapter of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, has vowed to rescue the state from persistent bad governance that has allegedly been the order of the day in the North-Central state for years.
The new state Chairman of the party, Alhaji Azeez Afolabi, made this known in a chat with newsmen, shortly after his election in the congress of SDP held in Ilorin, the state capital.
Afolabi averred that Kwara State had over the years been quite unlucky to experience misrule in the hands of some individuals at the instance of a family, who lords itself over the political fortunes of the state.
Worse still, Afolabi said that the resolve of the people of Kwara State to put an end to the tradition of bad governance through an ‘O to Ge,’ – enough-is-enough – revolution, though paid off, but sadly plundered by the incumbent government of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq.
Afolabi is leading a newly 34-member elected executive with a large number of followers said to have angrily dumped the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in alleged protests against the shabby treatments metted on them by Governor AbdulRazaq.
There had been mounting disagreements between the governor and chieftains of the party no sooner than he was inaugurated in 2019. The situation only got worse ever since and the effect became obvious in an alleged slow pace and progress in governance all the while.
The seemingly irreconcilable bad blood did not leave out the two serving federal ministers and board members, whose large number of followers had also dumped the APC because of the governor.
The APC congress was supervised by Barrister Joseph Abu, who was the Chairman of the party’s Screening Committee, as well as the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Alhaji Afolabi, a one-time local government administrator clinched the chairmanship seat. Also elected were: Dr Reuben Akano, Deputy Chairman; Alhaji Isiaka Agboji, Secretary and Alhaji Usman Amuda, state Treaurer.
Alhaja Abolaji Rahamat emerged as the state Women Leader, while Mr. Joseph Afolayan became the state Youth Leader and Barrister S. Ibrahim was elected the state Publicity Secretary.
In his acceotance speech, Afolabi said that the time had come again to effect a change in the affairs of Kwara State, which he said was heading into an abyss.
He averred that the people of the state in 2019 got tired of a system that was under a firm grip of a family, who held the North-Central state by its jugular for over four decades.
He added that out of a seeming state of hopelessness, Kwara State people came together to invest their energies by adopting an ‘O to Ge’ ideology to stop the affairs of their darling state glidding into a ditch.
He however lamented that the efforts of the people to effect such a change by putting the sitting Governor AbdukRazaq in government and head the new dawn arrangement had since been destroyed by the governor.
He accused the governor of only succeeded in pushing aside all the elders of the state who were the arrow heads of the change mantra and turned the apparatus of governance to an arbitrary affair by him and him alone.
Afolabi insisted that the development had caused a mass movement of the people to the SDP; a party of the progressives imbued with the mission of not only set to rescue Kwara State but Nigeria in general, from a total collapse.
