Osun PDP Crisis: Ogunbiyi Warns Adeleke’s Family

By Biodun Ajayi

It seems the crisis generated by the governorship primary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Osun is still on course, as a former aspirants, Dr Akin Ogunbiyi warned the party’s Governorship candidate, Senator Ademola Adeleke, his supporters and family to desist from their avowed mission to force him out of the party.

He said the party belongs to every member of the political fold and not to Adeleke’s family alone.

In a statement by his press secretary on Thursday, Ismail Afolabi, Ogunbiyi decried the Adelekes for “deliberately misinforming the National leadership of the party and the general public about his person, politics and philosophy of life.”

He expressed displeasure at the way the family had been blaming him for whatever political woe it encounters in its struggle to clinch the governorship seat of the state, saying that the woes were glaringly self contrived and inflicted.

He told the Adelekes to cast their memories back to events that culminated to whatever calamitous situation they have found themselves lately, noting that it was not him that contrived the NECO Examination scenario at the Ojo Aro Senior Secondary School in 2017 which is now a subject of litigation in courts.

The chartered insurer wondered how logical it was for the family to link the examination scandal to him, admonishing the family to endeavour to carry its own cross rather than engaging in blame games, always.

He added that the “Adelekes’ absurd resolve to eliminate him from the PDP as it did using the same method it deployed in sending others out of the party would never materialise”, stressing that, “PDP as a political party belongs to every member of the party and nobody can claim any monopoly of membership or ownership.”

“If everybody had been driven away from the party prior to the family’s entry in June 2017 or thereabouts, it would have been practically impossible for Senator Ademola Adeleke to become a Senator in 2017, a few hours after joining the PDP and party politics.”

“Prior to the governorship primaries, they concocted lie that the EFCC had arrested and detained me for weeks. It is on record that the family also claimed that I was sponsored by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of APC to contest Osun governorship ticket on the platform of the PDP, going as far as planning to forge and present to the public, N500 million cheque purportedly issued in my favour by Chief Bola Tinubu to support my gubernatorial ambition to corroborate their tissues of lies. Later, they still claimed to have settled all my campaign expenses after the primary elections.”

“While all these were happening to me, I neither complained nor blamed it on anybody. I took it as my own political cross and carried it. It’s the faithful God that punctured their lies.”

“In the last few days, they have orchestrated another round of campaign of calumny and physical attacks on my supporters, assaulting and threatening them and their families with expulsion from the party.”