Adeleke to Ladoja: Your interview on Oyo PDP crisis ‘misleading, erroneous’

Ripples are still being generated, weeks after parallel congresses were held by the Oyo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The two factions are led by former governor of the South-West state who recently defected from the Accord Party to the PDP, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, and Mr. Seyi Makinde, a governorship aspirant.
A former National Youth Leader of the party, Hon. Dare Adeleke, on Sunday, declared that a recent interview granted by Ladoja on the crisis was “misleading and outrightly erroneous”.
Adeleke, who described Makinde as “a decent and thoroughbred Oyo son who respects our elders”, said Ladoja should be blamed for the crisis in the party.
Declaring that Makinde’s “silence is not cowardice”, Adeleke, a respected voice in the party, said that manipulation from the Ladoja camp led to the parallel congresses.
“To now say that Honorable Seyi Makinde held a parallel Congress is entirely false”, he said.
Tracing the genesis of the crisis, Adeleke said Ladoja and some leaders are not sincere in ensuring that peace reigns in the party.
To him, peace will return to the party if Ladoja is humble and sincere.
Adeleke also said that any attempt by national leaders of the party in Abuja to impose candidates will not work.
Ladoja had said in the interview “But Seyi Makinde, Senator Hosea Agboola and a few other leaders held a congress at the Baptist School, Oke-Ado, instead of the Watershed Event Centre, venue of the state congress. That was their choice. I said there was no parallel congress because one, there was a caretaker committee that was put in place, which comprised 33 people from Oyo State with the chairman and secretary from outside the state. They agreed on the sharing formula of the positions and it was signed by some leaders, including Seyi Makinde and Hosea Agboola. They were signatories to that agreement.
“After that, it was agreed that every senatorial district should take the positions shared to them and share among the federal constituencies or local governments. Oyo South shared its own. Oyo Central also shared its own among the federal constituencies; same for Oyo North. The only thing that was causing contention was the position of state chairman and it was said that it had been zoned to Oyo North, which had two distinct zones; Oke-Ogun and Ogbomoso.
“They zoned three positions to Ogbomoso and six to Oke-Ogun. In their wisdom in Oyo North, they said the constituency that produces the chairman may not have any other position and so it happened that Iseyin/Itesiwaju/Kajola/Iwajowa Federal Constituency produced the chairman and that is the only thing it was supposed to have out of the six positions zoned to Oke-Ogun. Saki East/Saki West/Atisbo federal constituency was given three positions, which was shared to each local government while Irepo/Olorunsogo/Oorelope got two positions.
“But when they were not able to resolve the issue of chairman, the leadership of the party in Oke-Ogun brought the matter to me and they all came. I called the two individuals eyeing their chairmanship post: Alhaji Kunmi Mustapha and Chief Jacob Adetoro and I talked to them. Adetoro said he would go and consult with his people and that for him, their chairmanship was not a do -or-die affair. They asked us to suspend the meeting at 3p.m. and reconvene at 6 p.m. We resumed at 6p.m. But Adetoro said his people didn’t have problem with him not contesting, only that the two of them vying for the position should be dropped. However, other leaders from Oke-Ogun said that could not be, that he could not say that the other should be dropped. You know, the situation was like the case of the two women with one dead child and one living child who went to King Solomon for justice and one recommended that a living child should be cut into two just to prove it belonged to her. So, I reminded them that the same thing played out during the party’s congress in 2012 and I asked where it led the two of them. The two of them were the contenders for the state chairman’s position in 2012 and when they could not agree, they brought in Yinka Taiwo as a compromise candidate and we all know what happened. So, I said we do not want that this time. I asked Chief Adetoro who his leaders were; I said I knew Seyi Makinde was one and Seyi was sitting down at the meeting. I asked Seyi for his view on the situation and he said whatever you leaders decide. Then, I called Hosea Agboola on the phone and told him to come to my house and he came. When he came, he said that since we have said that we had handed decision-making on the matter over to Oke-Ogun leaders, whatever decision they took was okay by him. But Adetoro said we should give him the opportunity of meeting some of the delegates who had already come to Ibadan so as to tell them that was the decision we had taken. And they (Seyi Makinde, Hosea Agboola, Adetoro) said that by 9 p.m. we should reconvene. But on the day of the congress, we just heard radio announcements in the morning, saying the chairman of the caretaker committee, Honourable Tunde Akogun, had changed the venue of the congress (to Baptist High School, Oke-Ado). That was illegal. They could not make such announcement in Akogun’s name”.