Sola Adeyemo, Ibadan 
The presidential candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) and first son of the late Chief MKO Abiola, Mr. Abdul-Lateef Kola Abiola, Thursday took a swipe at the state governors who disobeyed the executive order of President Muhammadu Buhari on the autonomy of the local governments, vowing that his party would enforce the order to the letter if elected on February 25.
The scion of the “Hope 93” winner of acclaimed freest and fairest election in the political history of Nigeria made the promise at the Lekan Salami Stadium, Adamadingba, Ibadan, Oyo State capital, during his party’s presidential campaign rally where the party’s flag was handed over to its candidates across board.
Addressing the mammoth crowd that welcomed the team led by its National Chairman, Mallam Falalu Bello, and the National Secretary (Babatunde Alli), as well as, the Legal Adviser (Mrs. Juliet Ogba, among others, Abiola bemoaned the deplorable state that the country has continued to be over 30 years when his father contested and won the presidential seat on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), but denied the victory. He said that many of the politicians going about promising restructuring, true federalism, local government autonomy and the rest were just making empty promises, stressing that: “They will never do it. It is only our party, PRP, that can do it and that is why it has always been in our manifesto 50 years on.”
Believing that grassroots development is very germane to a nation’s progress, Abiola said: “Regarding the local government autonomy, what we have now is that when the money gets to the state level, from the Federation Account, the governors are too hard on the JAC account. They will never let the money get to the local government chairmen. Even the President signed the Executive Order on autonomy of local government, but you have your governors going to the Houses of Assembly to reject it. How many of them have complied? That is what is already in the constitution, yet they would not want it implemented. We are the party that will enforce it in our states. We will enforce it to the letter.”
