A senior Advocate of Nigeria and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress in Oyo state, Chief Adeniyi Akintola has described Oyo state governor, Seyi Makinde as a fantastic gentleman who is surrounded by hypocrites and sycophants. The legal luminary stated this in an exclusive interview with GOALPOACHER NEWS in commemoration of “Democracy Day.”
Chief Akintola who declined comment When quizzed about Mankind’s performance in the last one year however said, “there are no bad leaders anywhere but bad followers,when you have a bunch of sycophants and hypocrites around you,that’s where the leadership qualities in you come out.” “You see,former President of France, D’Estaing, said when he wakes up in the morning, the first thing he does is to go and read what the opposition is saying because your enemies are always ready to put you on your toes, in fact, your enemies will get the best out of you.”
“But the sycophants around you will probably break you,ruin you through their praise singing as a matter of fact, they are the same.” “If you do not have enemy, create one, If you don’t have critics, like our fathers will always say, such a person will live a miserable life, there must be somebody you defer to, you must be afraid of somebody, there must be somebody in your life that will always tell you the truth at all time.”
“You have to look at those who are singing your praises as a leader against the backdrop of what they have,what they want from you,so those who surround our leaders are the greatest problems we have.”
“There is this culture of fear, as a result of poverty,poverty of ideas, poverty of knowledge, poverty of integrity, poverty of morality. Our major problem is centred around the core poverty, not necessarily the poverty of material things.”
Chief however said he was happy with his earlier interview where he spoke about Makinde’s style of governance which had since been corroborated by chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party. “I don’t belong to the disco critic club, where you are good, I will say it, I was the first to commend him on COVID centre at Olodo, I was there, he did a good job.”
“Look, human memory is too short, they have forgotten about my antecedents, have they forgotten I was the deputy speaker that criticized the government in which I was an active player that landed me in the boot of a car? They have forgotten that I was in the same camp with late uncle Lam Adesina, the former governor of the state when I described his government as a disaster, they have forgotten that I was that young fellow that confronted Nwosu in this town and that fetched me two days detention when Nwosu was using horse whip to control the civil servants and two of them lost their lives in the process of scaling the fence, I was glad my action marked the end of such dictatorial tendency in the state.”
When asked his advice for the government and residents of Oyo state, Akintola urged the people to maintain peace and the government should ensure maintenance of rule of law, there shouldn’t be violence, thuggery, hooliganism, he admonished the Seyi Makinde led administration to learn from the past experiences, we shouldn’t go back to Egypt, this state must not turn into a theatre of war where thugs will take over the streets and become lord of manor like we had in the past,you and I know those who are in power then,so we don’t want to go back into that.