Kwara State Executive Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) recently inaugurated its executive arm at the local councils. Its state Secretary, Prince Yemi Afolayan, spoke on the issue and some other related matters

There are insinuations that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), even as the ruling party, has lost its firm grip at the grassroots?

The insinuations are not just false, but satanic, because in all the council areas visited during the inauguration, we were welcomed with multitude of our supporters, which is a clear testimony of acceptability of the party at the grassroots level.

Wherever we went, it was like a campaign trip, as men, women and the youth trooped out in their large numbers to welcome us.

We are happy with what we saw, which is a demonstration of acceptability of the government of Alhaji Abdul Fatah Ahmed by the people for bringing the dividends of democracy to their doorsteps.

I sympathise with people who often compare politics in the state with that of Southwest zone, where the ruling party is trying hard to keep the states.

But recently, some PDP members defected to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), citing alleged neglect by your party?

Truly, there has been one or two of such reports, including the cases of a former commissioner and a former member of the PDP Central Working Committee (CWC). But they are without ballot values.

In the last election in the Kwara South senatorial district, the candidates of the opposition party sponsored themselves without a kobo from their political parties, as they were left in the wilderness and they got lost.

Many of the parties are factionalised and decimated with infighting that could shred them into pieces before the 2015 polls. In fact, they are gradually heading into extinction in the state.

So, it is very funny and laughable to see some political analysts still giving them ratings in their write up and analysis.

In most cases, they will go to the neighbouring states and ask people to come with hired vehicles to their functions in Kwara. The number of the actual participants in the programme from Kwara, in most cases, is not more than 10 people.

The reason is that they are factionalized and the centre could no longer hold. This could be why people from Ilorin East, West and South councils are trooping into my office for membership cards.

There is a particular opposition party now whose members are slugging it out among themselves over the chairmanship of the party.

So, my appeal is for all PDP members to stay put in the party.

Again how best do you describe a situation where someone who wanted to be the governor of Kwara State sank a deep well in a political ward, where the PDP had sunk 10 boreholes and said he was doing that to alleviate the suffering of the people of the ward. Which suffering are they talking about now?

PDP loyalists regard the immediate past governor of the state, Senator Bukola Saraki, as ‘a leader.’ How did you people arrive at such?

Saraki has become an institution, not only in Kwara State, but also in Nigeria. He is a man that emerged on the political scene of the state when none was ready to hit his head against the rock.

Today, you have many doubting Thomases, who are disappointed by his numerous achievements during his eight years tenure as governor.

The solid foundation he laid is there for all to see today. He gave the state its own university, with one of the most modern architectural designs in the world, at the school of Aviation Technology, Ilorin.

We are today receiving not just Nigerians learning how to fly planes, but people across the world are coming to the school to learn aeronautical engineering.

Again, the state has become a commercial nerve centre for the North Central zone, so much that any Nigerian banks that do not have a branch in Kwara today is not a good one for business.

This enigmatic leader did what even Napoleon could not do in the field of commercial agriculture by turning Kwara into a leading light in this respect.

Today, the diary farm supplies milk to WAMCO, while the grains are being exported to other countries for revenue.

In the area of education, he had restored us to the position of a leading figure in that sector via education reforms system.

The aggregate of all these is what Ahmed termed ‘government of continuity.’

How would you rate the performance of Ahmed in the past one year?

He is performing wonderfully well. Apart from opening up rural roads in the state, he has maintained the culture of making the streets very clean. If anyone moves around the state today, without mischief, the person would see well-designed drainages being constructed by his administration.

Unless God wants it, it will be difficult for the people of Kwara today to experience flooding in any part of the state due to this development.

Our critics cannot see all these, because they have refused to wake up from their slumber. These are the people who would sneak into Kwara at the weekend with pajamas, boasting of the readiness of their parties to take over from the PDP in 2015.

They should go back to their people who are dying of flood disaster and leave us alone here in Kwara. The situation is like that of a man using torchlight to look inside a pot of soup in a broad daylight.

They should go back and face their responsibilities at home before talking of taking over Kwara.