…says it’s a cardinal assignment
… reels out agenda to liberate Kogi people
The Action Alliance, AA’s candidate in the 2023 governorship election in Kogi State, Otunba Olayinka Braimoh, has vowed that despite the setbacks encountered in the polls, contesting again is a cardinal assignment.
Braimoh, who said his desire to liberate his people from the shackle of poverty and underdevepment would propel him to step into the ring again, reeled out his agenda to make life comfortable for them.
This was as he lamented the frustration he encountered in his 2023 election outing, recalling with disappointment that those he had set out to rescue ,turned against him when unlike other contestants, he refused to buy their consciences with money on election’s day.
Reaffirming his stand not to engage in vote-buying, the entrepreneur disclosed that he would engage the electorate through conversations this time to change their mindset about engaging in the act of vote-buying or Vote-selling.
Speaking to some journalists in Abuja, on Thursday, on his political experience so far, Braimoh,who challenged his loss to Governor Usman Ododo up to Supreme Court, said he has taken the disappointment in good fate. However, he said he remains undaunted in his quest to vie for the position again with a view to turning the state to what the people have been yearning for since its creation.
He reaffirmed his desire to reposition Kogi State through an agenda he referred to as STAT- Solid minerals;Tourism; Agriculture, and Trade,respectively.
Reflecting on his electoral engagement, Braimoh recalled that he undertook indepth campaigns across the state, giving his candidature high prospect in the election.
Regrettably, he recalled that his staunch principle against engaging in vote-buying turned the people against him.
He said, “For me,I put in my best, there was no local government that I bluffed over,we covered everywhere in the entire state and campaigned the way we should have campaigned. But however, on getting to the field, I realised that few days to elections, people started asking me where is the push money. And I said ‘I told you I’m not buying votes.’
“I had a coordinator that said sir,if you are not going to give us money for push,I would not even go out of my house. Push is vote-buying money. It’s vote-buying money they called push money. They told me that if I would not release money for push,they will not leave their houses. I thought it was a joke and I told them that ‘you know what, I’m not going to buy vote.’
He, however, exonerated the people from their actions, blaming the development on what he referred to as abnormal situation they find themselves in.
“But I realised after the election that if people are living in abnormal situation and you are expecting them to think normally, would you not have to re-examine and realise the situation,because people living in an abnormal situation, do we expect them to think normally?
“So,on election day, as reported, they were distributing fabrics, distributing money, and all of that and I see people saying ‘you know what, even if this is going to last me for two or three days, after all, I know that in the next three to four years, they will not do anything again,let me take this one first. ”
He continued:”We had our call centres, we were calling people and a lot of feedbacks from the call centres,we were talking to people and they would say ‘are you ready to buy my vote? If you are ready to buy my vote, I would vote for you. We know you are good but how much are you going to give me? They have been promising us every four years and nothing, if I know I’m going to have this N10,000 for the next four years, I’m okay with it.’
Describing the situation as ‘a sad story”, he said “but the reality is that people are living in abnormal situation and thinking normally is difficult.”
“That is one of the things that I learnt from that outing, ” he said.
He questioned the authenticity of votes claimed for the All Progressives Congress,APC candidate by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
“How can one become a governor with results from only three local governments? But we leave that to the judiciary in terms of interpreting the laws. For the INEC, you have 142,000 registered voters from a local government and you are recording over 138,000 votes for a particular candidate! Here,you are talking of 97 percent and there were clear- cut differences in terms of accredited voters and the votes they recorded. But of course, judiciary would latch on technicality and just throw it away. And that was what happened.
” I followed the election all the way to Supreme Court, I challenged the election to Supreme Court and when the Supreme Court ruled, I said okay, after Supreme Court, what do you have to do? You go to supreme being. I just said well,we will move on and go another day.
” It’s not a lifetime office for anybody, so if you are there, it’s four years and that is 48 months.”
Asked if he would contest again, considering his firm stand against vote-buying that has gradually entered the nation’s politics, he responded, “why not? ”
How he intends to navigate his way through this time, Braimoh explained:”We will now engage the minds of our people through conversations, for them to begin to see the possibility because if you cannot see forward, you can’t move forward. The reason for those actions of vote-buying on the part of the electorate is because they have lost hope. They have lost hope in the fact that we can’t have an electoral process that is devoid of riggings and manipulations.In fact, an average person would tell you that ‘don’t waste your money, that the judiciary would not give judgement in favour of you,they will favour whoever is in the ruling party.
“But for me,are we going to stay where we are and say to ourselves, that we are helpless while really we are not helpless? Are we going to say we are helpless and we are not going to do anything about the situation? For every challenge, there is a solution. And a challenge that you don’t confront, how can you conquer? So,it’s a challenge and what we are doing right now is to confront the challenge for us to be able to conquer it.
“There is a danger in conformism and the danger in conformism is death, gradual death. So if we don’t look at it critically, don’t we think that for us not taking any action towards conquering an evil in the land,we are dying gradually? Because it means that we have become conformists.
“There is poverty in the land. If they rigged election, we will adjust, the roads are bad,we will adjust, healthcare is not working, we will adjust but are all of these things not killing us gradually? That is the danger of conformism. Conformism kills,even though gradually. So going again is to refuse to be a conformist. And I believe strongly that once people can see hope, their thinking and their energy will start to gear towards where there is hope as against the case of hopelessness.
He insisted that he intends to break the circle of vote-buying in the state’s politics by engaging the people on conversations.
“One thing we will be doing is engaging the people in conversations, like telling the people that collecting rice is not sustainable, collecting palliatives is not sustainable at all but what is sustainable is empowerment, ” he said.
