“We asked the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force a question on the whereabouts of the bill and he said they are already at the National Assembly. And I said if that is the case, why are you just coming here for us to debate and give you the approval as prayed. So, it amounted to putting the cart before the horse.
“I said it was an agreement reached unanimously at the NEC meeting; withdraw this from the National Assembly, let us have a wider consultation.
“If people have reservations here and there, it is something that is national and you can seek alignment. And when you align, it may be in the original form or you may have to tweak it to accommodate whatever the stakeholders are going to say.
“Unfortunately, I was asked to be part of the people that will brief the press and my bit was to explain our decision for that bill to be withdrawn so that consultation can now happen with stakeholders, but it seems that some people are just focusing on the messenger as opposed to the message.
“This has caused a lot of issues but my position is that reforms should happen but you need alignment with wider stakeholders to be able to arrive at a reform that would be meaningful to everybody.
“Also, focus should not be on the messenger. This is not because I am in the opposition.
“Few days ago, I was talking to a good friend of mine, former member of House of Representatives, who represented Ogbomoso/Surulere Ogo-Oluwa federal constituency, Rep. Adebunmi Bunvic and he said don’t look at it from the angle of opposition and I said, Bunvic, what is opposition? What are you opposing? This is our state.
“With me being elected as the Governor of Oyo State, what it means is that we are now in a position where the next governor will not be a 70-year-old man because we have broken that jinx.
“We should all come together and say, look, this is our state, play different type of politics. Only one person will occupy that position at any point in time. So, we should align and agree within ourselves and support ourselves.”
