From Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
Senator Kola Balogun, representing Oyo South Senatorial District in the National Assembly, has opened up on why he rejected second term ticket to Senate offered him by Governor Seyi Makinde.
He opened up when he featured on a personality interview programme – Political Circuit, on Fresh FM, Ibadan.
Balogun stated that Makinde begged him with the second term senatorial ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for Oyo South senatorial dstrict in the build up to the 2023 elections. He added that he was offered the ticket before the primary, which produced Mogaji Joseph Tegbe as the PDP candidate for the election in Oyo South Senatorial District.
Balogun was elected in 2019 on the PDP olatform as a senator for Oyo South. But he defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) when it was dawned on him that the PDP would not give him return ticket to the senate. He has remained a member of APC since then.
His words: “I have no regrets leaving PDP. I will not do anything different, leaving for APC. What you may not know is that, that was the most unexpected thing to happen, not just by me but by a lot of PDP members, leaders and followers. This was because the governor [Seyi Makinde] and I were really close. He was always telling whoever that cares to know that there was no vacancy in Oyo South Senatorial District.
“But you know, politics is a long concentric circles of intrigues. Twenty-four hours is a long time in politics. You think the deal is done, is sealed, but you wake up the next day, something else is happening. So, things happened that changed the colour of that arrangement.
“What may not be known to most people, the general public, is that at a point after I left the party and there was this controversy on whether what he did was right or wrong, he actually sent for me to come back and take the ticket. That was before the primary that produced Joseph Tegbe [the PDP candidate for the Oyo South Senatorial District in the 2023 elections]. Governor Makinde actually sent someone to my wife- a lady- to please tell me to come back and take the ticket.
“I was in Abuja. My wife called me and said the governor said I should come and take the ticket. But I said I don’t want the ticket anymore. My life is not only about being a senator. I have been something before I became a senator. By God’s grace, I will continue to be something after being a senator.
“I said what that [going back for the ticket] means is that I will be subjected to public ridicule within a space of one month to be jumping from PDP to APC and back to PDP, all in the name of a senatorial ticket. I said ‘no, he can keep his ticket. I am gone, goodbye’. So, that was what happened at that time.”