Osun APC accuses Aregbesola, TOP of working for PDP

…says minister lacks moral right to call for restructuring

By Deborah Oladejo, Osogbo

Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State, Prince Gboyega Famodun has said that the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola and his loyalists, The Osun Progressives (TOP) lacked the moral right to either suggest or effect any likely solution for the restructuring of the party in the state.

In the meantime, members of the party, at their meeting passed vote of confidence on Governor Gboyega Oyetola and Famodun.

The party members who are ward chairmen, LG chairmen, women leaders, youth leaders, state working committee, House of Assembly members said they want the Famodun-led state executive to continue in office.

They also unanimously said they don’t want Aregbesola as minister again.

Delivering his address at the party secretariat at Ogo-Oluwa, Osogbo on Thursday, Famodun noted that it was on record that Aregbesola and his allies massively and collectively worked against Governor Oyetola in the just-concluded election.

He said: “One would have thought that the appropriate place for Aregbesola and his group to canvass for the restructuring of any party is Senator Ademola Adeleke’s Ede country home whom they voted for with flaunted pride.

“If we may ask, at what point did it occur to Aregbesola and his rebellious followers that the political party that they had abandoned for about three years which they 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 they all have conscience, it would not be out of tune for the said TOP members and their leaders to do an individualistic soul-searching and ask themselves if they are indeed worthy to be called the members of our party again by their obnoxious actions and inactions which partly contributed to the temporary loss of our party’s governorship election in Osun State.

“Was it after they were rebuffed and outrightly rejected by the PDP which pungently refused them patronages after the governorship election as it was witnessed by the composition of its Transition Committee membership that they 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 restructuring of the party.

“It was not that we didn’t know what and how to handle the members and leaders of the inglorious TOP before the governorship election; we, all along, had been thinking that they would have a genuine change of mind by joining us for the re-election of Governor Oyetola.

“Since they, the TOP people, under the patronship of Aregbesola, had done their worst by working assiduously and conscientiously by teaming up with the PDP for the success of Adeleke, which is the highest level of an anti-party activity that can be committed by any politician, it would be a needless venture to enter into any pact with the shameless political group that is bereft of honour.

“It’s expedient to explain here, for the umpteenth time, that all the executive positions of our party at all its levels in line with the constitution of the party, have stipulated tenure, which have been the reason for the smooth-running of our party to date.

“It is an aberration for an outsider to canvass or initiate the restructuring of another body more so when the personality constitutionally recognized to head the affairs of the state, Governor Gboyega Oyetola, had shortly after the governorship election, promised to carry out an effective restructuring and reinvigoration of the party.”