Mum to Ladoja: reject PDP

[TheNation]

Former Oyo State Governor Rashidi Ladoja yesterday got an elderly counselling from her mother over the plan by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to woo him back. The elderly woman urged not to return to the party.

The warning came on the heels of former President Olusegun Obasanjo's visit to Ladoja's Bodija, Ibadan, home. The former President wanted Ladoja to woo him on Monday.

Obasanjo, in company of some factional leaders of the party in Oyo State, had visited Ladoja to finalise a merger talk between his Accord Party (AA) and the PDP in Oyo State. But the former governot, sources said, was yet to bulge.

A source close to the Ladoa family told The Nation yesterday that over 70 per cent of Ladoja's supporters opposed his plan to return to the PDP. The source added that some of his supporters told Ladoja's mother about the plan, when they heard that Obasanjo wanted to visit Ladoja's wife, Mutiyat.

Obasanjo had reportedly called Mutiyat at the weekend and intimated her with his plan to eat pounded yam at the family house on Monday. She reportedly promised to inform her husband.

It was learnt that many of Ladoja's supporters opposed the visit. They were said to have recalled that it was pounded yam that Obasanjo ate at Chief Audu Ogbe's and Senator Chuba Okadigbo's homes that led to the revelation of the former President's hostility to them.

Ladoja, sources said, has a lot of respect for his octogenarian mother, which was why his supporters urged her to prevail on him.

The elderly woman was said to have had a deep discussion with him on Obasanjo's visit, reminding her son of how she spent three days in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, to beg Obasanjo not to remove him (Ladoja) from office in 2005. Obasanjo, she recalled, refused to dignify her with an audience, despite her age.

The Nation learnt that the former governor may not return to the PDP because of his political working relationship and agreement with his cousin, Governor Abiola Ajmobi.

The source added that Laoja told Obasanjo that the plan to return him to the PDP had become impossible with the appointment of about 100 of his supporters into different offices in the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) government in Oyo State.

It quoted Ladoja as saying: "I told him (Obasanjo) that if I decide to join the PDP today, I will lose all these, people because they will not follow me. I will become a general without soldiers."

THE Oyo State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has warned the Accord Party (AA) leader and former Governor Rashidi Ladoja to beware of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

It likened the former President to a viper, which though looks beautiful outwardly but could be a deadly baggage to carry.

In a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Dauda Kolawole, the party urged Ladoja to be cautious of his association with the former President.

According to the party, Obasanjo's visit to Ladoja was an ill-wind that could only lead to disaster for the former governor, if he abandons a party he helped to build and join a party whose runners were traditional vipers, scorpions and those who have run Nigeria aground for decades.

The ACN drew Ladoja's attention to the fact that Obasanjo, who now appears as a worthy bride, supervised and choreographed his illegal impeachment as governor.

The former President also "supplanted him (Ladoja) with his deputy, whom the ACN said was "a total antithesis of and indeed destroyed all that Ladoja stands for in politics".

ACN said: "The intention of Obasanjo in bringing Ladoja back to the PDP, we hope Ladoja knows, is not because he likes the former governor. Obasanjo knows that with his highly discredited name, he can never win a single election in the Southwest. He is aware that the regime he foisted on Oyo State after Ladoja can only be likened to that of armed robbers' invasion. Even though he was a recipient of some of the heists, deep within him, he is aware of the quality of that government. He only needs Ladoja's name and clout to gain legitimacy and, immediately this is achieved, he will bare his age-long fang.".

While warning Ladoja to remember the Jamaican reggae star, Bob Marley's admonition that it is better to live in a house of peace with you at the top than to live in a house full of confusion, the ACN admonished Ladoja to sleep and hear what his pillow tells him at night.

"It is only Ladoja's pillows that can tell him the truth. He should go to sleep and listen to his pillows. Those who came to him are his enemies. Ladoja should reflect on that day when, as a sitting governor, Obasanjo barred him from entering Papa Emmanuel Alayande's house. He should reflect on the long history of treachery and Machiavellian disposition of Obasanjo. Obasanjo is inherently evil and does not have a forgiving spirit. Ladoja should reflect on the path that the former President has trod, which is full of the skeletons of the people he used and stabbed at a time when they relied on him. He should reflect on an anthropologist's submission on Obasanjo that the former President can only be likened to a typical African witch who, the more good you do to him, the more evil it breeds from him," the party said. 

ACN urged the Accord Party leader to cooperate with the Oyo State Government in rebuilding the state.

It added that being a very deep thinker, Ladoja would know that any association or promise from Obasanjo can only be temporary and selfish because abandoning his supporters for the PDP was akin to committing political suicide.

TheNation