Milk of Human Kindness: A Tale of One Former, One Serving Governors | Morufu Smith

On Tuesday, February 5, 2019, late Governor Abiola Ajimobi was returning from Ado Ekiti at the reelection campaign of President Muhammad Buhari with his convoys. When the late former governor and his entourage got to Iwo road, they met a gory scene of a vehicle accident in which the victims were writhing in pains. The victims were a bike rider and his female passenger who were knocked down by a reckless driver over thirty minutes earlier while no one offered to rescue them for fear of being implicated by the police.

On seeing the victims in agonising pains, late former Governor Ajimobi ordered his convoys to stop and rescue the victims. They were rescued and rushed to UCH with the former governor in tow. At UCH, late Ajimobi spoke to the medical personnel to give the victims the best medical care possible while he paid their bills. He also paid the medical bills of four other victims he met at the emergency unit of the hospital. The late Senator left UCH after ensuring that the victims had been stabilised and were in safe hands.

In another development, on Thursday, May 20, 2021, Governor Seyi Makinde, was in Ogbomoso, accompanied by his convoys of thugs and hoodlums, for the local government electioneering. One of the governor’s henchmen, one Nurudeen Alade, a PDP chieftain and a staunch member of the Park Management System being chaired by Lamidi Mukaila aka Auxiliary, through his reckless driving, was alleged to have hit a child with his Toyota Matrix. The child was said to have given up the ghost later at the hospital the child was rushed to. Neither the governor, who was said to be at the scene, nor his representative followed the child to the hospital until the child’s father was reported to have returned to the campaign ground bearing the corpse of his child for the cruel campaigners too see what worst they had done.

In reacting to the unfortunate incident, Governor Seyi Makinde said that the accident was caused by an unknown driver, driving an ‘unmarked vehicle’, who was at large, and that when identified, he would be brought to book.

Facts, however, emerged later that the hit and run driver was both a member of the PDP and the PMS. Besides the statement, denying the identity of the reckless driver, Mr Seyi Makinde also did not show a modicum of empathy about the avoidable incident. The campaign went on despite that their activities had brought an unending sorrow to the parents and families of the ‘slaughtered’ child.

Oyo state used to have a governor who had the best interest of the state and its people at heart and from whose eyes flowed an immense milk of human kindness. Just as the state is now having another governor who seems to have entered into a covenant with callousness and from whose eyes even a pint of milk of human kindness does not drop.