Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State has defended the siting of the proposed Ede International Airport in his hometown, insisting that being governor does not mean he should neglect his own community.
He spoke on Tuesday at a town hall meeting organised by Arise Television for candidates contesting Saturday’s Osun governorship election.
Adeleke, who is seeking re-election on the platform of the Accord Party, was responding to questions on the controversial airport project, which has drawn criticism from opposition parties over its cost and location.
“I wish my town to be a small London. So because I’m a governor, I should abandon my own town? Go and fact-check it. I just told you I just came back from Ife. Am I from Ife? I’m from Ede,” he said.
The governor listed several Osun towns where his administration had executed projects, insisting he had not neglected other parts of the state in favour of Ede.
“Am I from Ila? They have never done any dualized road in Ila. Am I from Bongo? Am I from Ikire? Am I from Iwo? Am I from Ilesa? Even all the towns in Osun, do I have a flyover in Ede? No. But I cannot be fixing other towns alone and abandon mine. I’m not a bastard. I will fix my town too,” Adeleke said.
Turning to the airport project, the governor explained that the state currently has no functional airport, describing the existing facility as an airdrome that his predecessor had handed over to the Nigerian Air Force for training purposes.
“It’s not my fault. When we’re about to build this airport, I said this is not acceptable. In the Southwest, we are the only state without an airport. So I invited experts to go and look for a suitable site,” he said.
Adeleke said the experts who scouted for a location eventually settled for Ede, adding that the choice mirrored precedents in other states, including Ogun State, where he said the airport was sited on farmland in Abeokuta.
“They went around, and they ended up in Ede. Go to Ogun State; the airport is on farmland in Abeokuta. It’s the same thing. There’s nothing I can do about that,” he said.
The Ede airport project, initially awarded at N99.5bn, has faced backlash from the All Progressives Congress and the Allied Peoples Movement, whose governorship candidates have questioned the technical capacity of the contractor and the rising cost of the project, now put at over N130bn.
The APC candidate, Bola Oyebamiji, had alleged that the contract was awarded to a firm with a background in interior decoration rather than aviation infrastructure, while the APM had urged the Adeleke administration to instead upgrade the existing airstrip at Ido-Osun.
Adeleke is seeking a second term against Oyebamiji and other candidates in Saturday’s election.
