Senator KOLA BALOGUN
Senator Kola Balogun, the outgone lawmaker of the Oyo South Senatorial District, has, for the first time, opened up about the real reasons why he didn’t re-contest the zone’s seat in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Balogun not only disclosed that Oyo State Governor, Engineer ‘Seyi Makinde, after he (Balogun) had left PDP for APC, begged him with the second term senatorial ticket in the build up to the 2023 elections. But again pointed an accusing fingers at a former governor of the state and an Ibadan high chief as the one who influenced Makinde not to give him the ticket initially.
He said he was offered the ticket before the primary which produced Mogaji Joseph Tegbe as the PDP candidate for the election in Oyo South Senatorial District, but he declined the offer.
The younger brother of the Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Lekan Balogun, Kola Balogun made these shocking revelations while featuring on the Political Circuit, a radio interview on Fresh 105.9 FM, Ibadan, monitored by this reporter penultimate Saturday.
“Before that happened, I went to Humra to give thanks to God. Before I came back, all these shenanigans that we referred to have happened,” he said.
This new revelations are against the insinuations in some quarter that Kola Balogun must have been denied the ticket due to the frosty relationship between the governor and his brother, the Olubadan.
It would be recalled that Oba Lekan Balogun, before he ascended the throne, was one of the Ibadan High Chiefs who aligned with late ex-Governor Abiola Ajimobi’s chieftaincy reform in the state.
The high chiefs were later to be crowned as obas in their respective domains. The development created a kind of confusion when the former Olubadan passed and there was need to fill vacuum as result of his passage. In fact, there a lot of pressure on governor Makinde not to confirm Senator Lekan Balogun as the new Olubadan.
Speaking further on what really transpired between himself and govennor ‘Seyi Makinde, however, Balogun emphazised on the fact that there were cordial relationship between the two of them before incident, and that he has no regrets despite not being able to secure the ticket in his new party to return to the Senate.
“I have no regrets leaving PDP. I will not do anything different, leaving for APC. What you may not know is that, that was the most unexpected thing to happen, not just by me but by a lot of PDP members, leaders and followers.
“This was because the governor and I were really close. He was always telling whoever that cares to know that there was no vacancy in Oyo South Senatorial District.
“But you know, politics is a long concentric circles of intrigues. 24 hours is a long time in politics. You think the deal is done, is sealed, but you wake up the next day, something else is happening.
“So, things happened that changed the colour of that arrangement.”
He also said, given what transpired in the build up to the Oyo PDP primaries in 2022, he will still take the same decision, if he were to do it all over again.
“What may not be known to most people, the general public, is that at a point after I left the party and there was this controversy on whether what he did was right or wrong, he actually sent for me to come back and take the ticket.
“That was before the primary that produced Joseph Tegbe [the PDP candidate for Oyo South Senatorial District in the 2023 elections].
“Governor Makinde actually sent someone to my wife- a lady- to tell me to please come back and take the ticket.
“My wife called me and said the governor said I should come and take the ticket. But I said I don’t want the ticket anymore.
“My life is not only about being a senator. I have been something before I became a senator. By God’s grace, I will continue to be something after being a senator.
“I said what that what going back for the ticket means is that I will be subjected to public ridicule within a space of one month to be jumping from PDP to APC and back to PDP, all in the name of a senatorial ticket.
“I said ‘no, he can keep his ticket. I am gone, goodbye’. So, that was what happened at that time,” he added.
Balogun, who was silent about his next political move at the expiration of his tenure in the Senate, said a lot of PDP senators were upset with Governor Makinde about the decision to withdraw his second term ticket.
“Senator Gabriel Suswam told me he saw him somewhere and asked why he should do that.
“This is because when Prince Uche Secondus was the PDP National Chairman, the National Assembly PDP Caucus and the PDP National Working Committee, the state governors and senators were not usually friends.
“There was always this unhealthy rivalry between governors and senators. But mine was different.
“Each time my colleagues were talking at such caucus meetings about their terrible experience with their governors, I was the only one that was saying my governor and I were close and we were truly close.
“There was a day we, Senate Committee on the Army, came on an oversight to Oyo State, led by Senator Ali Ndume.
“We didn’t tell the governor that we were coming. Ndume said, ‘we are going to a PDP State, I don’t know if the governor will receive us’. I said, ‘why not?’
“I called the governor, he picked it and he said, ‘please come’ and he received us. They were surprised.
“One of my colleagues, Senator Hassan Gusau, the immediate past deputy governor of Zamfara State, now made a comment- before the camera:
“‘My governor, I want you and your senator to keep the relationship going because this is the first time I will see a governor and his senator working together’. He said this to him in the Governor’s Office.
“Our relationship was really very good. I was telling people that there was no vacancy. But suddenly things changed.
“I went to Humra. I am not a pastor. I am not an imam. The only thing I know is what I use- five times prayer. But when I pray about something to God, He will give it to me.
“Before that happened, I went to Humra to give thanks to God. Before I came back, all these shenanigans that we referred to have happened.
“Senator Uche Ekwunife and Senator Mike Nnachi, each time they ran into Governor Makinde, they told him that they were still upset with him.
“One day, Senator Nnachi met him and told him, ‘Governor, we are not happy with you. Why did you take Kola’s ticket?
“There was a day the governor now confessed to him because Nnachi called me and said, ‘Is it true governor asked you to come back and take the ticket?’
“He (Nnachi) said he would have asked me to take back the ticket. But I said I will not take it back because that will subject me to public ridicule.
“Nnachi said Makinde mentioned one Ibadan high chief’s name and he asked me ‘who is so, so and so?’
“I said he is a former governor of Oyo State. And he said ‘that is the one that influenced the decision not to give you the ticket’.
“I said ‘no problem; all that is history now’. The governor also told Nnachi that he asked me to come back to pick the ticket and I said it was true,” Senator Balogun added.
– Dare Adeniran
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