Alao-Akala is a misfit in governance – Aregbesola

Osun State Governor, Mr Rauf Aregbesola, has described his Oyo State counterpart, Chief Adebayo Alao-Akala, as a misfit in governance, predicting that the former police officer will lose his re-election bid in April. Aregbesola stated this in Osogbo on Sunday during a stakeholders’ meeting called by his administration to address the crises afflicting Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso and Osogbo campuses. Both Osun and Oyo state governments had been at loggerheads over the ownership of the 21-year-old institution, which was established by the old Oyo state but which had been jointly owned by the two states since 1991 when Osun was created. Since last year, the Alao-Akala administration had stated the desire to fully own LAUTECH but the ousted Olagunsoye Oyinlola administration had stoutly resisted the attempt, saying the laws establishing LAUTECH must be repealed before Oyo could own it. The Oyo State government, however, went ahead and announced an Acting Vice Chancellor for the university even as it unilaterally increased tuition fee from N40, 000 to N90, 000 for indigent students and N100, 000 for non-indigenes. But Aregbesola announced on Sunday that students should pay the old school fees of N40, 000 henceforth and disregard Akala’s directive increasing the fees, stressing that Oyo governor had no right to unilaterally increase school fees. “It is a sad irony and unconscionable that the same revered seat in Agodi where the golden eggs of Yoruba patrimony were incubated by Chief Obafemi Awolowo is now occupied by a barbarian and philistine, who has made an art of trampling on and desecrating this heritage. Quoting the Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, Aregbesola said Alao-Akala was a bird of passage which could “not determine the fundamentals of the terrain over which it has flown.” Reacting, Alao-Akala, who described Aregbesola as ill-bred, added that his administration was aware of plans by a former Governor of Lagos State and Action Congress of Nigeria leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to wrest Oyo from the Peoples Democratic Party. Speaking through his Special Adviser, Public Communication, Mr Dotun Oyelade, on Sunday, Alao-Akala claimed that both Osun and Oyo states had, on October 26, 2010, signed a mutual agreement during the tenure of Oyinlola – on the ownership of the university.