THE Secretary of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara State, Yemi Afolayan has described the government of President Goodluck Jonathan as fair to the people of the state and by extension, the people of North Central geo political zone, under which Kwara falls.

Afolayan, speaking with The Guardian said people of the state would be stigmatised for being ungrateful to Jonathan if they should join those accusing the President of marginalising them.

According to him, “in Kwara State, we are very grateful to Jonathan for giving to us our own fair share. What else should we have expected from him that he has not done? Even where there are such things, we will not go on air to make it known to him. He runs an open door policy, we will simply go to him and table such before him.”

According to him, “there are posts that are strictly given out at discretion. If he likes, he can so decide to concentrate his appointees in one area. But there are some that have to do with overt career progression system. If the latter is breached then you can be talking of a just shout of marginalisation.”

He added, “in Kwara we are not regretting voting for the President. Our tested women and able men are occupying political and career positions under this administration and they are making us proud.

“Look at the Minister of Sports (Bolaji Abdullahi). He inherited a crisis-riddled ministry, but he reconciled all the warring factions. We all saw the result of a rancour free ministry when Nigeria recently won the most prestigious trophy in African football.   If we therefore want to cry out, we can say that since we are doing well, Mr. president should give us more responsibilities.”

Afolayan listed two other citizens of the state who are at present in Jonathan’s administration, just as he reminisced on others who had in the recent past held political offices.

He noted, “the nation’s Ambassador to Holland, Nimota Akanbi is from Kwara. The incumbent chairman of the Federal Character Commission, Professor Oba AbdulRaheem is also from this state. They are simply doing well.

“Even when one considers the role played by our political leader in Kwara (Dr Bukola Saraki) while serving as the chairman of Nigerian Governors Forum, we can say that he brought life into the forum. Again, when Abubakar Baraje was the acting national Chairman of the PDP, he did very well.”

Speaking on some of the present political offices held by people from North Central geo-political zone, he said: “we have the offices of the Senate President, the Information Ministry, in fact, all the states forming the geo-political zone have their respective ministers. So I can say that we are not marginalised.”

On whether the emergence of the APC was a direct response to marginalisation in Nigerian politics, the PDP leader said the new party was not “in existence in any North-central state, so you can see that we are all PDP fanatical supporters.”

He added, “North-central is the heart beat of Nigerian politics, so APC can’t be a threat to us here. It will surely crumble if it tries to raise its ugly head here. You see, those fighting for positions among the partners will kill the party.”