Ondo election: Why Jegede lost again – Ex-Attorney General Ajulo

Former chairman of the board of Ondo State Radio-vision Corporation, Kayode Ajulo, on Sunday attributed the defeat of Eyitayo Jegede in Saturday’s governorship election to the faceoff between him and former Governor Olusegun Mimiko.
Jegede, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the election, served as a two-term Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice when Mimiko was Governor for eight years.
The relationship between the two of them went sour when Mimiko anointed Jegede as his successor in 2016 but allegedly refused to back it up with funds, which led to his defeat.
Jegede also emerged as the candidate of the PDP in the 2020 governorship election but Mimiko, who has since dumped the party to form the Zenith Labour Party, pitched his tent with the incumbent Deputy Governor, Agboola Ajayi, who contested on the platform of the ZLP.
Reacting to the outcome of the result in a statement on Sunday, Ajulo, who is an Abuja-based lawyer, said Jegede would have won if he had made peace with Mimiko to earn his support.
He said Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, who won the election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, defeated other contestants because he made peace with the aggrieved members of his party before the election.
He said, “The Peoples Democratic Party would have had a better shot at winning if the party’s candidate had emulated the tactic of the APC’s candidate who stooped to conquer by making peace with all his old and new adversaries.
“I am disturbed that the PDP candidate failed to be on the same page with his former principal, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko.
“This (development) unfortunately, helped Akeredolu, SAN fortunes as PDP went into the election with a cracked wall.
”Where are all state governors and national party leaders of the party? They even tried to beat up Ayodele Fayose during one of the campaign rallies.”