The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused the state chapter of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of fabricating lies and subterfuge against Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola, the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, in order to score a cheap political point to fraudulently shore up the dwindling popularity of the party in the state.
It was disheartening to observe that a ruling party in a state like Osun could go to the extent of fabricating barefaced lies against the immediate-past governor of the state in order to whip up sentiments in the court of the public.
That the state PDP chairman could append his signature under such fabricated lies with the ulterior motive of tarnishing the hard earned image of the state leader of our party, Alhaji Oyetola, is an indication that Osun State has been unlucky to have the worst set of people managing its affairs at this particular point in time.
We are used to fabrication of stories, which has been the hallmark of the ruling party in Osun State but what we did not recognise before now was that the leadership of the rudderless party has graduated to an imaginary level of weaving together of compositions to make them appear as true stories.
We are stating here categorically that at no time did the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy threatened to rig the forthcoming elections in the state with both the police and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as alleged by Mr Sunday Bisi, the state chairman of the PDP in the watery statement he pushed to the public domain few hours ago.
It was also not true that Alhaji Oyetola told the stakeholders of the APC at the meeting that he was working on the Attorney-General of the Federation to create a loophole for the reinstated APC local government chairmen and councillors to access the accumulated local government allocations as there could not have been any need for that as the logjam had been settled by the Court of Appeal judgment of the 10th of February, 2025.
The obvious and verifiable problem with Governor Ademola Adeleke, the PDP and its handlers is that they are afraid of their shadows at this critical time that their party has become the shadow of its old self as all the good hands in the party have since defected into the opposition APC.
In the first place, there was no closed-door meeting of the APC stakeholders, which was only held in the imagination of Governor Adeleke and the state PDP chairman.
Thank God that technology has deflated the balloon of lies woven together by the state PDP chairman and his cohorts, where they have the latitude to support their concocted allegations with video reporting which they cannot present.
The brick wall met by Governor Adeleke himself in his fruitless efforts to defect into the APC has been one of the reasons the governor and his cohorts have become needlessly paranoid and suspicious of harmless shadows of the members of the opposition.
It is a common thing among the members of the opposition PDP in Osun State today to blame the state leader of our party, Alhaji Oyetola, who can hardly hurt a fly, for any woes that befall them.
Accusation of the PDP against Alhaji Oyetola of planning to rig the forthcoming elections in the state does not add up as when he was having the apparatus of the state at his disposal, he allowed the rules of law to prevail.
If Governor Adeleke and his co-travellers think our leader would allow the militant wing of the state PDP to massacre our members and supporters in the forthcoming elections in a similar manner that no fewer than 30 of them were slaughtered before and during the 2022 and 2023 elections, they are making a mistake as they would meet a resistance with the instrumentality of the law.
We are urging the members of the public to discountenance the lies woven together by the Osun State chapter of the PDP, accusing Alhaji Oyetola of planning to rig the forthcoming elections as balderdash, misplaced and superfluous.
If Governor Adeleke and his co-travellers think that there would be an unfettered allowance for their members and supporters to vote till 11:00pm as was the practice during the 2022 governorship election in Ede North and South local government council areas of the state, they are making a great mistake of their lives as such would be legally resisted.
Sooko TAJUDEEN LAWAL, Chairman, Osun State APC.
