Dotun Ojon, a journalist, is the youngest candidate on the provisional list for the forthcoming governorship election in Ondo State as released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The 38-year-old flag-bearer of the Young Progressive Party (YPP) said his mission was to create a sane state from a seemingly confused country. He also disclosed his agenda for the state, which he said lacked the right leadership.
As the youngest candidate for the Ondo governorship election, how do you hope to sell yourself to the people?
I was not the only person who wished to be the flag-bearer of our great party, but my candidacy scaled through. That same way, we have been meeting the people, making ourselves and the programmes of our great party, the YPP understandable and acceptable.
The good thing is that our people are tired of the present leadership of the state and have been praying for something entirely different. That thing they have been praying for is what we represent. I must mention that our candidacy has been receiving attention, support and acceptance all over the state.
What prompted your decision to contest?
I will like to paint a scenario of a good keyboardist or singer who goes to a church where the man singing or playing the keyboard is not good enough. I bet with you that the man will be uncomfortable all through the service.
In that same manner, because we know a better way to serve our people, we feel very uncomfortable seeing them wallowing in wants in the midst of abundance. It grieves me to see the way our people are being led at the moment when we do have the capacity to lead them to prosperity and abundance.
Our managers over the years have sold to the people that having good governance is not possible in Nigeria. So, we want to create a sane state from a seemingly confused country, that at the end, the hope of the people will be revived and Ondo may truly be a place of reference, as far as governance is concerned.
Why do you think you should be the next Ondo governor?
I should be the governor of my state because our people deserve to lead a life that matches our prosperity level. It is satanic to live in a state that has every good thing in abundance and still be in abject poverty. The challenge we have in Ondo State is not of resources or funds, it is that of leadership failure. Leadership entails many things, and one of it is the ability of anyone leading to place people at the centre of leadership purpose, programme and policy. But the reverse is the case in my state.
Leadership, as we have it now, is about power, where the man wants to continue as governor, the wife as deputy in disguise, and the son, the chief of staff in authority. Leadership, to them, is about what they can get from the entire governance process and not what they can give. But we want to do something differently.
We want to give people a four-year moment of glory and the opportunity to share directly from the prosperity purse of their state.
Some people do not take your candidature seriously because you don’t have any major political antecedent and experience, what is your take on this?
It is understandable. In a community where 40-year-olds are still looking for jobs, 15 years after graduation, people may doubt our mission.
In a society where mere certification has replaced good education, people may say we are not ready. But the truth is this – no man will stake what we have staked if he is not ready. No man will close a door of possibility to open that of impossibility if he is not willing to disrupt the status quo.
I must quickly tell you, however, that things are changing fast. We are becoming very acceptable by the day. And I know that by the end of this month, it would be clearer to everyone that we are going to emerge winner.
Do you have what it takes to defeat an incumbent governor?
I often tell people that we are not in this race to defeat anyone. In fact, this to us is not a contest between professional politicians, it is an expression of our commitment to something different. We only want to win the election by first winning the heart of our people. For the professional politicians, they are free to be defeating one another. In fact, they have started doing that already and we are taking advantage of that to advance our course. So the resources we are deploying are not to match what others are spending but to strategically communicate our commitment to our community.
How would you describe your support base?
We perhaps have the best in terms of the dependable support base. The majority of our people have not voted before. And in this category, we have about 500,000 people who are truthful about what they want. And that is having me as their governor on the day of our election.
What do you plan to do differently in Ondo State?
To lead differently. Once we change the direction of leadership, everything begins to work differently. We want to build a system that will stabilise governance, even after our own tenure because the kind of system you run determines the kind of result you get.
The leadership system they run in our state now is the one that excludes the majority of people from both governance and the dividends of government.
We identified this challenge and came up with the LEAP AGENDA to help guide our leadership direction as we move on in government.
You tagged your campaign LEAP agenda, what do the residents stand to gain from this?
Every component of the LEAP agenda is people-focused. The letter ‘L’ for instance stands for Leadership, Light (electricity), Labour, Life, and Property Security. And if you notice, these are not new promises, we are only driving them with new passion and technique.
On electricity, for instance, we do not intend to join more people to the national grid, we even intend to drop more people off the grid in communities with agricultural possibilities and entrepreneurial potentials and light them, up using alternative sources.
On labour, we want to build a labour force that will rival the private sector in welfare package, so that our workforce can rival the private sector in productivity.
The security programme of our government is hinged on intelligence and technology. We will start by re-jigging the law creating Amotekun to include what we call the State Intelligence Agency, an arm that will deploy technology to police our communities.
What are your expectations from the INEC and security agencies?
The only thing we expect from them is never to take sides, before, during and even after the poll. We must all know that Nigeria is our own, so we must put the country above sentiments.
How are you conducting your campaigns in the face of this pandemic?
To us, the pandemic is not all evil. This is because politicians may have to rely on the media and one-on-one campaigns. This is what we are doing. I must confess that we are doing well in it. With this campaign, we are not talking in terms of local government again. There are just 18 local government areas in Ondo State, but over 200 political wards. In fact, we have even gone beyond talking about the wards too; we are discussing happenings based on polling units. And it has brought us closer to our people
