A few weeks ago, you were a member of the All Progressives Congress where you and Alhaji Moshood Adeoti, who is now the governorship candidate of the Action Democratic Party, served in the government of Governor Rauf Aregbesola for years. Why did the music change so quickly?
The issues were clear. What we all protested against was injustice meted out to the governorship aspirants under the banner of the APC. When the contest started on the 21stof May, 2018, I was one of the 27 aspirants that showed up at the party office. But when we realised that a level playing field was not guaranteed, some of us opted out. In every party primary organised by any party in Nigeria, there are supposed to be guidelines, rules and instructions that you will want the people partaking in the exercise to adhere to. But nothing of such was done by the APC with respect to the Osun governorship primary.
The former National Working Committee under Chief John Odigie-Oyegun announced that the primary would hold on July 7, 2018 and by the time he left the saddle as national chairman on June 24, 2018, the new leadership under Comrade Adams Oshiomhole did not announce a new date or an alteration to the date until the evening of July 6, 2018. And when they did, they said the primary would be on July 19. Yet, there was no guideline. The only instruction was that intending aspirant should go and pay N5.5 million to the national account of the party and N2 million to the state account of the party. There was no guideline and we did not know the committee coming to anchor the primary until 48 hours to the primary. We have had primaries in Anambra, Edo, Ondo and Ekiti and immediately the party announced the date, it announced the committees that supervised the exercises. But that was not the case in Osun.
We have always had the delegate primary or indirect primary, but the party said it was going to have direct primary in Osun, which was new and we warned them that the direct primary would bring chaos. For you to do direct primary, there must be guidelines; there must be a membership register that must be used. No membership register was used in Osun and no guideline. The primary was an all-comer affair; every Tom, Dick and Harry voted. When the national leadership would make its announcement on the committee to supervise the exercise, they announced a five-man committee. How will a five-man committee supervise elections in 332 wards? It was the supporter of the favoured aspirant that appointed those who supervised the primary in 332 wards and you expect us to accept the result of that election? So, that was why Alhaji Moshood Adeoti wrote before the primary to express his displeasure about the imperfections in the primary the party wanted to hold and it opted out of it.
Let me also tell you that 11 out of the 16 State Working Committee members in the state objected to the use of direct primary and out of the 24 members of the state executive, 22 objected to the use of direct primary. Out of the 31 local government party chairmen across the state, 25 objected to the use of direct primary. Out of the 31 women leaders, 27 objected and 27 youth leaders also objected. This is to tell you that a bulk of the leaders of the party in the state was against the process.
But a governorship election is a serious business that goes beyond one or two aggrieved aspirants moving to another party to get tickets. Going by the fact that the ADP is not well-known until Adeoti defected to it, what do you think are his chances in a party that has no established structure?
The chances of our candidate, Alhaji Adeoti, are very high. Let me remind you that he was the chairman of the Action Congress/Action Congress of Nigeria for about eight years before he became SSG. He is well-known and he has people across all the 332 wards and 31 local governments. He has his followers everywhere. I told you earlier the number of the members of the state executive of the party and local structures of the party that kicked against the direct primary.
Are you saying that those State Working Committee, state executive and local government executive members of the APC in the state have all followed/or will follow Adeoti?
I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag. But I can tell you that in the next few days, you will hear shocking news from Osun. We are preparing for the election and I can assure you that Alhaji Adeoti will emerge the governor-elect in the state by 22 September, no matter what anybody does.
You and Adeoti were part of the Aregbesola government and if the people of the state are saying that they want to vote against continuity, are you not scared that might affect your fortune in this election?
Our own position is different from the continuity they want to reject. What the people insist that they do not want again is an Osun indigene from abroad as governor. They want a governor who they can identify, who can identify with them and know them by their names. The problems we have had in the state is that the governors are Osun indigenes from abroad and that is the bane of the state. There is nothing stopping the leadership of APC from supporting Alhaji Adeoti to be governor, but they did not support him because they see him as a home-based politician and they do not want people from here. I am assuring you that the 22 September election is the election of freedom for a new lease of life. The ADP is taking back power and bringing it to the people.
and then