The Ondo State Secretariat of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Akure, the state capital of came alive on Thursday with crowd of supporters and party loyalists to witness the official declaration of Brigadier General Olamide Felix Ohunyeye (retd) to contest the November 16, 2024 governorship election.
The governorship hopeful was received by members of the State Working Committee of the APC under the leadership of the chairman, Engr. Ade Adetimehin.
Speaking with newsmen after his brief engagement with the party leaders, General Ohunyeye said he joined the race to offer his wealth of experience and expertise in changing the political and economic narratives of the state.
He emphasised that with the administrative, human, and financial resource management training he received as military personnel, he is fully equipped to lead the state as there will be a turnaround across various sectors.
According to him, “ I am coming into this contest from a privileged position. And the privileged position is that I have been trained for 36 years in the military.
“The 36-year training speaks for itself; right from my junior days as a cadet, spanning to Officer Second Lieutenant and even to Generalship, you are exposed to various classes of command, leadership, administrative, human, and financial resource management training.
“The essence of those trainings is to achieve excellence in military service. I can without any doubt or equivocation tell you that it is a rare privilege to serve in the armed forces.
” I have been more than equipped, and I believe I will be able to compete favourably and possibly surpass every other aspirant in the race.
“There is no doubt that if I’m given the mandate, we are going to have a rebirth and a renewal of our Sunshine State, Ondo State.”
He disclosed that a blueprint that will be used to turn around the state in the areas of health, infrastructure, and education, among others, has already been prepared.
Ohunyeye further said, “We have prepared a blueprint that has come with cardinal objectives for critical areas in the state to be touched. We are going to look at security in its entirety. On security, we want to see the performance and functionality of the Amotekun Corps.
“There are plans to improve on the blueprints to ensure that Amotekun Corps is more potent, mobile, agile, and intelligently driven to perform within the state.
“On security, we have planned to deepen our collaborations with our neighbouring states and to ensure that not even one element of criminals and bandits infiltrates into Ondo State.
“We will look at the architecture of development in Ondo State. We want to entirely x-ray the infrastructure, which will cut across various sectors of development within the state.
” We are going to look at the urban renewal programmes, road networks within town, environmental-friendly issues within all towns in the state, drainages, and other support facilities within all our towns.
“On education, we will do a complete value chain analysis of all the educational facilities within the state, and this ranges from infrastructural support for education.
“The same goes for healthcare services. There will be deliberate and conscious efforts to improve all health facilities, from the tertiary to the intermediate and primary levels. Where they are not available, there is going to be the development of new ones for the general use of the people to improve healthcare within the state.
“The continuous practice of medical referrals out of the state to UCH Ibadan and the University of Ife Teaching Hospital will have to be carefully and painstakingly addressed so that we will have competent facilities with adequate capability to address this issue within the state.”
On the mode of primary he will prefer ahead of the exercise in April, he said “as a part-loyalist who believes in party structure and hierarchy, it is not in my place to determine what mode of primary would be accepted.
“Whatever the party decides, it depends on me being a loyal member of the party that has a stickler for respect for the structure to key into this and prepare myself comprehensively towards winning the desired seat.”
He commiserated with Governor Lucky Ayedatiwa over the death of his principal, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, urging him to build on the good legacies left behind by Akeredolu.
WHO IS GENERAL OHUNYEYE ?
Ohunyeye was born in November 1966 in Okitipupa, Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo State. He attended Methodist Primary School and Community Grammar School, both in Okitipupa before proceeding to the Nigeria Defence Academy. He was commissioned as a Regular Combatant from the famous Nigerian Defence Academy in 1992. He later bagged his Bsc (Hons) in Applied Accounting at Oxford Brookes University, London.
He rose to the rank of Brigadier General and honoured with one of the prestigious military honours, the Grand Service Star, meritorious service star, and United Nations medal among others his years of unblemished career.
In the course of his career, he also strived and acquired many academic laurels including an MBA (Finance) at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, and Master of Strategy and Development Studies at Bangladesh Institute of Professional and a PhD in Management at the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka among others.
He is a fellow of numerous professional bodies in finance and management which include Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Association of Chatered Certified Accountants, the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, Nigerian Institute of Management, Institute of Cost Management of Nigeria, Institute of Chartered Economist of Nigeria among others.
