Ekiti election didn’t affect Tinubu’s relevance –Kola-Balogun

Mr. Stephen Kola-Balogun

The Osun State Commissioner for Sports and Youth Development, Mr. Stephen Kola-Balogun, on Saturday refuted the claims of Lagos-based lawyer, Fred Agbaje, that the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had lost relevance in the politics of the South-West.

Agbaje had, in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, said if Tinubu was still relevant to the people of the region, the APC would not have lost the Ekiti State governorship election.

He added that the era of taking voters for granted and imposing candidates on them had gone and that if care was not taken, the APC would also lose more states in the region.

Reacting to Agbaje’s assertion, Kola-Balogun said it was wrong to equate the loss of control of Ekiti State to loss of control of Yorubaland.

He noted that Agbaje’s claim could only become valid if the APC loses Osun State, which he described as the heart of Yorubaland.

He said, “Fred got it wrong, with due respect to him. He is over reacting. With respect to the Ekiti election, Ekiti is just one group of people.

“In Osun, we have an important election coming up in about five weeks. Osun is at the heart of Yorubaland. In Osun State we have Osogbo, Iwo, Ile- Ife, Ede, Ilesha, and Ila and other large towns.

“It is when we lose a state like Osun that you can you can say the APC or Tinubu is losing a grip of Yorubaland.

“Any party that loses Osun State has lost the heart of Yorubaland. You can’t say because the APC lost Ekiti, then Tinubu has lost control of Yorubaland. Ekiti State is made up of just one people, the Ekiti people, unlike Osun.”

Kola-Balogun however noted that Yorubaland had never been dominated by one political party for a long time, saying there would always be opposition in the region.

He added that the PDP’s victory in Ekiti State could also be attributed to the sympathy votes that its candidate, Ayo Fayose, got due to his unceremonious removal from office as governor of the state; as well as the defection of Opeyemi Bamidele from the APC to the Labour Party.