THE protests embarked upon by Akoko people, especially in Ikare-Akoko, over the last two weeks are not owing only to the outcome of the Ondo State All Progressives Congress (APC) primary, it was learnt yesterday.
One of the Akoko sons and an aspirant, Segun Abraham, failed to clinch the party’s ticket as its governorship candidate in the troubled primary.
Sources hinted that Akoko division, comprising four local governments, has been totally abandoned by successive administrations in area of infrastructural growth.
At a stakeholders’ forum in Ikare Akoko, a lawyer, Bayo Awe, said having Akoko indigene as the governor in the next political dispensation remains the only way out for the “marginalised people of Akoko land”.
He said: “Akokoland is worst hit in the area of infrastructural development; we have no road network. In fact, the most deplorable road in the state is in Akoko. We have no accessible road throughout the length and breadth of the four local government areas. Talk of electricity, water and other infrastructure, it is on zero-level here; we are lamenting.
“It is most disheartening that no government has ever deemed it fit since the exit of late Adebayo Adefarati to fix any of our roads in Akoko land. It is as if we are no more part of Ondo State. Akoko is cut off from the rest of the state. How long are we to keep suffering?” he asked.
A community leader and National Organising Secretary of the Ansar Ud Deen Society of Nigeria (AUD), Alhaji Ibrahim Kilani, lamented that in the last five months, Akokoland had been thrown into darkness.
He noted that till now, people were relying on generating sets, which, according to him, were too expensive to maintain.
Another community leader in Afin Akoko, Mrs. Ramotu Ajulo, noted that it was during the late Adefarati’s administration that meaningful growth came last to Akokoland.
She cited Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko (AAUA) and Alpha D Factory as examples.
He said unless Akoko indigenes are in power, it would be difficult for anybody in position of authority outside the division to remember Akokoland.