Demand removal of Osun APC Chairman, party restructuring
It’s callous protesting after working for Adeleke’s victory – APC chair
BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
Members of the All Progressives Congress in Osun State, who are loyal to former governor of the state and incumbent Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola on Tuesday held a protest to demand for the restructuring of the party, following the loss of the party in the July 16 governorship election.
The APC members, who trooped out in their thousands in Osogbo, also called for the removal of the state chairman of APC, Gboyega Famodun, accusing him of mismanaging the party and of being culpable in the electoral defeat that Governor Gboyega Oyetola suffered.
According to the protesting members, mostly of The Osun Progressives, a faction of the party loyal to Aregbesola, the party under Famodun is a ‘vehicle with flat tyres’, saying it could not deliver victory in the 2023 general elections.
They affirmed that if urgent steps were not taken by the national leadership of the party to reconcile aggrieved members, recognise Aregbesola as a strong factor in Osun APC politics, remove Famodun and holistically restructure the party, APC candidates for the Presidential, National Assembly and State House of Assembly may lose like Oyetola.
Armed with banners and placards with several inscriptions, they converged in Osogbo from across the 30 local government ares of the state, and called for the dissolution of the party leadership in the mainstream and that of the faction supporting Aregbesola, which is chaired by Rasaq Salinsile.
Chanting various political songs, the aggrieved APC members walked through Odi-Olowo, Olaiya, Ogo-Oluwa, among heavily armed security operatives, to deliver a letter to the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Timothy Owoeye.
The protesters were armed with placards with inscriptions such as: “Osun APC Needs Restructuring,” “Famodun Must Go,” “Save Osun APC From Total Collapse,” “Sack Famodun,” “Aregbesola Is The Soul Of APC/Progressive Politics In Osun,” “There Is No Life In Osun APC Again!,” “2023: Asiwaju May Lose Osun With Famodun As APC Chairman,” among others.
When they got to the APC state secretariat, Ogo-Oluwa, Osogbo, they could not access the building to meet party officials as the gate was under lock, while some security operatives were heavily deployed to prevent entry and break of law and order.
Addressing newsmen and members of the public at different locations, spokesperson of the members, Abosede Oluwaseun, said the party needed to be restructured from unit, ward, local government and state level for it to be united and formidable ahead of the coming general elections and called on the national leadership of the party to send an independent caretaker committee devoid of any APC from the Southwest, to oversee the party.
Oluwaseun said, “We are registered members of APC and we are here to protest against future defeats in our party. It’s quite unfortunate that the high-handedness of Gboyega Famodun-led APC is the reason why we are where we are today. You will recollect that for the past 12 years since Abdulrauf Aregbesola took the mantle of leadership of Osun APC, we had never lost any election. Then, after the emergence of Gboyega Oyetola and Gboyega Famodun as the state governor and party Chairman respectively, they started introducing politics of division.
“They claimed that they will not recognise the faction of Rauf Aregbesola, a two-term governor and the current serving Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and we now told them that politics is about give and take, everything in life has to be about accomodation and that we have to do this thing together. We cannot do it alone but they said no. Now, for the first time in the history of Osun APC, we have a situation where Gboyega Famodun wrote the results from the unit level to the ward, to the local government and to the state level, and we told them then that things are not done this way. This is the result of doing it alone. We lost scandalously.
“Unfortunately, the Gboyega Famodun that claimed he can do it alone lost his unit in Boluwaduro, lost his ward and lost his local government, lost his federal constituency, lost his senatorial district. We have the governor of Osun that is from Osun Central, we have Gboyega Famodun as the party chairman that is from Osun Central, we have Ajibola Bashiru, the Director General of their campaign council and serving Senator, that is from Osun Central. In Osun Central, we have 10 local governments but it was unfortunate that we lost eight of the ten.
“Our demands are that the National APC should come down and dissolve the leadership of the two sides that are in Osun. We have Aregbesola’s side and we have Salinsile side and the State Executives. They should restructure the party from the unit level to the ward, to the local government and to the state level so that the two factions can be brought together. In politics, it’s about give and take, nobody does it all. Winners don’t take all. We don’t want anybody from the South West to come and chair the committee, the committee must be from the North because we have the elections into the state House of Assembly ahead, we have the elections of the National Assembly ahead and we also have the presidential election. Osun has the number, over one million votes domiciled in Osun and without Aregbesola’s side, and those that are aggrieved in APC, Osun can’t win any election,” he stated.
Addressing the protesters who besieged the State Assembly premises, the Speaker, Timothy Owoeye, assured the party members of necessary steps to make the party united and formidable.
Meanwhile, the state APC chairman, Gboyega Famodun, in a statement issued on Tuesday, condemned the protest against the state leadership of the party and the administration of Governor Oyetola saying that it was wicked and act of mockery for Aregbesola’s loyalists to demonstrate publicly despite working against the emergence of Oyetola in the governorship election.
Famodun, in a statement issued by his Media Adviser, Kola Olabisi, in Osogbo, insisted that, “the protest was shameful, callous, primitive, selfish, wicked, misplaced and inconsiderate for the Aregbesola supporters who glaringly worked against the success of Governor Oyetola at the polls to now be canvassing restructuring of the party through a sponsored protest.
“When I heard that the supporters of the immediate past governor of our state, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, were protesting, I thought my memory was playing me false as they cannot insulate themselves from whatever might be the current plight of the APC in Osun State.
“Assuming but not conceding that there are challenges within the party, protesters should be told that they lack moral right to either suggest or effect any likely solution as it is on record that they massively and collectively worked against Oyetola, the APC governorship candidate in the just-concluded election in line with the series of their threat.
“One would have thought that the appropriate place for them to canvass for the restructuring of any party is Senator Ademola Adeleke’s Ede country home whom they voted for with flaunted pride.
“If I may ask, at what point did it occur to you that the political party that you had abandoned for about three years which you have been working against needs restructuring?
“Did the Adeleke Dynasty not fund your series of campaigns of calumny against Oyetola and the leadership of the party at the Aregbesola Campaign Office where you converge every Thursday with the task of scrambling to outdo one another in lampooning Oyetola’s administration and the leadership of the party?
“If you all have conscience, I will enjoin you to do individualistic soul-searching and ask yourselves if you are worthy to be called the members of our party again by your actions and inactions which partly contributed to our temporary loss of the Osun State governorship election.
“Was it after you were rebuffed by the Pathfinder group faction leadership of the PDP which pungently refused you patronages after the governorship election as it was witnessed by the composition of its Transition Committee membership that you thought of coming back into the party with a sing-song of restructuring?
“It is however, pertinent to state here that there is a free entry and free exit in any political party which memberships are bonded by common interests and ideals.
“Since politics is a game of number and the more the merrier; continuous membership of our party is not foreclosed to any genuine member whose interest would not be counter-productive to the interest of our party as you cannot be an outsider and be canvassing for the restructure of the party,” Famodun explained.
The Point had reported that Senator Ademola Adeleke, the governor-elect under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party had defeated Oyetola in the July 16 governorship election. There had been insinuation that majority of Aregbesola’s camp voted against Oyetola during the poll as a result of the feud between the minister and the governor among other internal crisis bedeviling the party.
Adeleke had noted that he never had any support directly from Aregbesola but said some of the minister’s supporters worked for him during the election.
It could also be recalled that in the build up to the July 16 poll, Aregbesola had declared that his successor would never taste second term.
