Mimiko salutes Ondo People, says 2008 will be year of
victory
Mimiko in a release issued in Akure on Monday while
felicitating with the people on the yuletide assured
that the year, 2008 would usher in the much desired
victory at the Election petition Tribunal as their
true wish expressed during the April 14, 2007 would
come to pass. He equally praised them for the very
matured and dignified manner in which they had
conducted themselves “at these obviously trying and
difficult times for our dear State.”
The former Minister who insisted that he won the
election before it was rigged for the incumbent; Dr
Olusegun Agagu is currently challenging the purported
victory of Agagu at the Election Petition Tribunal
sitting in Akure and hearings had already reached an
advanced stage.
In his release to the people of Ondo State signed on
his behalf by his Media Assistant, Mr. Kolawole
Olabisi, Mimiko noted with regret the events soon
after the election of April 14 during which “your wish
for a new beginning in our State was expressly
demonstrated but subsequently wantonly violated, all
of us have been subjected to an unprecedented level of
further violation of our persons, our values and what
we have always stood for as a people – forthrightness,
social commitment, egalitarianism, hard work and
mutual respect.”
But to him he is particularly happy that the people
refrained from being goaded into violence despitge
series of unprovoked persecutions saying: “My heart
goes out to the masses of our people, our heroes and
heroines, who have been in the frontline of this most
difficult but ennobling struggle for the emancipation
of our State from an unusual form of governance system
that is unabashedly and increasingly openly disdainful
of our people.”
Mimiko however assured that the all these would soon
be over enthusing that he was confident of victory at
the end of the day.
His words: “We know what everyone of you has passed
through these past months of the locust. Our
conviction and the basis of our joy is that while
weeping may endure for a night, surely, joy cometh in
the morning! As we assured you a few months ago, these
times shall surely pass!
”Let us therefore draw from our deep reservoir of
inner strength and continue to bear for a few more
weeks the indignities of being ordered around in Ondo
State by those we never chose. Let us tolerate for a
few more weeks the wanton violations of our lives and
values by those who were actually never part of us; of
the ceaseless threats and intimidation oozing out from
the mouths of those who openly insist that we as a
State do not have any option other than to accept
their leadership. In all of these, I plead that you
move away from the path of the desperadoes. Let them
alone continue to beat their own drum, dance to its
intoxicating tunes all alone and continue to get
intoxicated all alone.”