My friends and supporters within and outside Ibadan North Federal constituency.
Let me first thank all who believe in our vision for our constituency and gave freely of their time, energy, and resources to help us make the loud statements we made at the February 25 polls, I say thank you to everyone who, worked, voted, campaigned and contributed one way or the other to the course, we all know that by now we would have been declared winners if we had a free and fair election , but through it all we certainly are winners and for that I am certainly grateful.
Anyone who knows me will also know of my loyalty and commitment to any course I truly believe in. For the past 9 months, I have given my political journey all that I can and the impact speaks for itself.
As I moved from place to place across the 12 wards of Ibadan North, I preached clearly that for me, I can only play politics of conscience, my choice to contest under the platform of labour party was mostly driven by my personal assessment of the presidential candidate of the labour party, Mr. Peter Obi, his candidature was one I believe in wholeheartedly and can defend anywhere and anytime in terms of Character, competence, capacity, commitment, credibility, Compassion and creative solutions to the problems of our nation. So much did I believe in these 7 parameters for leadership that I said multiple times on radio that if I ever found any candidate in Ibadan North Federal constituency who beats me in these 7 parameters, I will step down for them, as far as I am concerned Nigeria is too sick for us to put personal ambition ahead of public Good.
Following the events of last Saturday’s elections, as a faithful and committed card carrying member of the labour party, who graciously gave me the platform to contest my elections and in whose fold I solidly remain, I saw the need to meet with the governorship candidate of the labour party so as to understand his plans visions and strategy in order to arm my convictions about his candidature so we can go to work, before I could make this happen, I was invited to a meeting of all candidates and state EXCO on Wednesday and was told by the chairman that the meeting was put together to review the February 25 Elections and hear from the governorship candidate about his plans for the March 11 elections.
At the meeting, it was acknowledged that the labour party indeed has great opportunities, but those opportunities must be maximized. Since a lot of people have accused our gubernatorial candidate of doing almost nothing to win his election, he was requested to tell the assembly his plans, vision, strategy and budget for the election, he was also requested to tell how much he had to spend for the elections and if there was any shortfall between his budget and how much he had, the assembly wanted to know his strategy to raise the shortfall.
Unfortunately, the gubernatorial candidate was upset about the questions, and he thought the best thing to do was walk out on everyone. When he left, the state EXCO reached a unanimous decision that the gubernatorial candidate lacked the seriousness, commitment, and capacity required to win the election and the party should therefore find another gubernatorial candidate from another party to support.
Personally, I have since then, been assessing all the main gubernatorial candidates of the other parties, assessing them in terms of the 7Cs required in a leader I would support, I assessed them in terms of character, competence commitment, capacity, credibility, compassion, and creative solutions to the problems of our state, and after much thoughts, prayers and consultation with the leadership of labour party within the state, I together with other leaders of the labour party in Oyo state have decided to give our full and unreserved support to the person that we believe stands way above others in our assessment. We cannot preach a different gospel when it seems not to favour the candidate of our party. Party loyalty cannot be put above public good.
Our full and unreserved support will, therefore, be going to his Excellency Governor Seyi Makinde in his re-election bid as the governor of our dear state.
Difficult as it may, there is no way I can personally justify campaigning for our governorship candidate in good conscience when a candidate such as Engineer Seyi Makinde is in the race, and this is not based on any personal sentiments, but solely on the earlier mentioned 7 leadership assessment criteria; character, competence, commitment, capacity, credibility, compassion and creative solutions to the problems of our state.
For the sake of emphasis and clarity, I Femi Dexter Akin-Alamu, and my entire followership base within and outside Ibadan North Federal Constituency, hereby declare that our full and unreserved support in the March 11 Governorship election in Oyo state will be going to His Excellency Eng. Seyi Makinde.
Long live Oyo state.
Long live the federal Republic of Nigeria.