By: Oluwatosin Adesola
Ahead of the November 16, 2024 governorship election, the Labour Party (LP) has presented Chief Olusola Nehemiah Ebiseni and Hon. Dayo Awude as the party’s Governorship Candidate and the deputy governorship candidate respectively.
Ebiseni is a former Commissioner for Environment while his running mate, Awude is a former Commissioner for youth and sports development, both served under former Governor Olusegun Mimiko’s administration.
Addressing newsmen in Akure on his return from Abuja, Ebiseni said he emerged the candidate of the party through withdrawal and substitution processes.
Ebiseni, the Secretary General of Afenifere, pointed out that his intention was to rebuild Ondo state, saying “it is my pleasure to address you today as the candidate of the Labour Party in the Gubernatorial Election in Ondo State slated for the November 16th this year.
“It is in fulfilment of my determination, in conjunction with my running mate and other like minds to provide our people a viable option to drive the developmental machineries on the right path of progressive politics for which our dear State is reputed.
“In recent times, security concerns have become the most debilitating factor against development leading to unemployment and hunger. We shall run an administration of veritable team work and peoples participation based on the age long and proven beneficial programmes enunciated above but calibrated as follows:
“Security: We will in partnership with the Federal Government and its relevant agencies build on the efforts of successive administrations in providing adequate security within our borders and in regional collaboration with our neighbours as we all know that security of lives and property is the primary purpose and responsibility of government.
“Human Capital Development: This includes education, ICT and technological know-how. Education at primary and secondary school levels shall be qualitative and free including there-introduction of free buses for students, payment for WAEC final examinations, schools infrastructural development, training and re-training of the teaching personnel. The standard of our Post-secondary education shall be heavily enhanced, yet subsidised for access and affordability. Sporting activities shall be given priority attention
“Infrastructural Transformation: We will revive our moribund infrastructures and bring to bear new ones. We will embark on road construction as has never been seen before in the State, including urban renewal, ecological control and environmental sanitation.
“Agricultural Rebirth: We will re-enact the golden era of agriculture in the state through a revolution that we will inject mechanisation, and assist in the area bring to of equipment and inputs to farmers. We will also ensure that our farmers are safe in their farms.
“Industrial Revolution: We will get our people working again by putting in place measures that will encourage and enhance industrialisation with the objectives of mass creation of jobs and employment.
“Qualitative Health Care: There shall be free child and maternal health care services. We shall build more Health Centres and hospitals to bring health
care services closer to the people and train more personnel in all sectors with affordable access to drugs.
“Integrated Rural Development: We will pay adequate attention to our rural populace through upgrading and regular maintenance of rural roads and other infrastructures to improve on living to discourage rural-urban drift.
“Full details of these 8 cardinal programmes shall be released to the good people of Ondo State in due course, suffice it to say that they shall be the pillars upon which the master plan with which we shall run our government shall rest and the yardsticks by which our government will be measured. The mantra of our campaigns is thus REBUILD ONDO STATE
“Great people of Ondo State, the November 16th, 2024 election is another potent instrument to choose a governor who shall be in charge of our dear state. In this connection, we are confronted with the choice of either a governor that will assume office without a clear focus on how to manage the state, therefore waste or mismanage our resources and leave our state worse than he met it, a governor that will see state resources as his personal resources and those of his cronies or a governor who is well prepared, full of experience, armed with requisite intellectual sagacity, and one eager to hit the ground running to mobilise the people, cultivate the vast resources of the state and be the reference point in good governance.
“Without sounding immodest I make bold to say that this third scenario captures personality and intentions. I hereby yield to the call of the good people of Ondo State to offer myself for service on the platform of Labour Party which symbol of a bonded family symbolic representation is incidentally a of the meaning of my name Ebiseni.
“Labour Party is not new our state. It is a party in which my running mate and I and a vast majority of politicians across all political parties including many of us seated herein served the state in various capacities as revealed below.
“My Running Mate: With me in this journey of transformation is my beloved aburo and compatriot, Hon. Dayo Awude, a well-experienced and known technocrat from the Akure sub-group of our state whom I came across when I was Commissioner in the administration of Chief Adebayo Adefarati. He was one of the leaders of the very versatile Ondo Youths In Politics (OYIP) some of which members marooned in other political parties have signified the intention to join the Labour Family.
“Dayo, as fondly called later became my colleague as Commissioner in the Labour Party government of Dr. Olusegun Mimiko. Before then, he had served,” Ebiseni said.
Some LP chieftains from Ondo state and national levels attended the briefing.
