Former Ondo Governor Olusegun Mimiko has returned to Labour Party. His defection shows all that is wrong with the typical Nigerian politician.
Immediate past governor of Ondo State, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, wants to return to the Labour Party. Except that Labour Party doesn’t want him back.
“Nigerians would recall that Dr. Mimiko abandoned the Labour Party (LP) for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) a few days to LP’s October 2015 National Convention,” said national chairman of Labour Party, Mike Omotosho, who went on to add that Mimiko only wants to return to destroy a party that gave him everything.
Mimiko was elected Ondo governor in 2009 on the platform of the Labour Party. In 2012, Mimiko was handed re-election on the platform of Labour. However, months before the 2015 general elections, Mimiko moved the entire Labour Party structure in Ondo into the PDP.
He joined PDP afterwards and became the de facto campaign manager of former President Goodluck Jonathan. After the PDP failed to retain the center in 2015, Mimiko’s political stock began to plummet. Like every PDP chieftain post 2015, the grass has suddenly gone from lush green to brown and the center is no longer holding for Mimiko.
The PDP has become so cash strapped these days, its Wadata Plaza headquarters in Wuse, Abuja, has been ceded to roaches, spiders and dust. Its members are fleeing to other tents and Mimiko has hopped on a bike to the party he once abandoned.
Mimiko says he’s rejoining Labour because the party shares his ideology. How convenient!
According to Mimiko: “LP, and its few ideological soul mates among the legion of parties in the country today, provide the requisite platform for this type of deep ideological introspection.
“Without doubt, this social democratic mantra, which LP and its soul mates represent, remains the best possible outlet for leading Nigeria into a new era of progressive governance.
“We have also come with the conviction, consequent upon several years of practical involvement in the nation’s political process, that the need for ideologically focused political engagement is now more pressing than ever before.
“Virtually all the existing political parties in Nigeria today belong to the right of the centre, ensconced as it were in a neo-liberal mental construct, the name or mantra they choose to enrobe themselves in, notwithstanding”.
Well, believe Mimiko’s grandiose and flowery prose at your peril. Like every Nigerian politician out there, Mimiko’s politics isn’t rooted in ideology or values. He’s defecting to Labour for a reason. He’s rejoining the political party he once used and dumped for a reason. And that reason has nothing to do with ideology, altruism, nobility or the common good.
We’ve been here before.