Oyo violence: Ajimobi, Folarin, Ladoja, Akala in verbal war

The All Progressives Congress (APC), Oyo State chapter, has said that there is a gang-up involving opposition parties in the state, especially Accord, Labour and the Peoples Democratic Party to instigate violence and use such isolated cases to puncture the three-and-a-half-year of peace that its party-led government had brought to the state, stating that “the parties and their runners who are trying to come back to government are like the traditional smelly vegetable called Ebolo which cannot hide its smelly antecedent”.
The party said this in a statement by its State Director of Publicity, Mr. Olawale Sadare.
“We do not need to join the emergency advocates of peace which Ladoja, Akala and Folarin have been since they started campaigning to come to Agodi Government House. They are all one hand of violently leprous fingers. We do not have to convince the people of our state that ours is not a violent government or party. In the three and half years of our being in government, we have demonstrated that we hate violence. Can Ladoja and Akala say the same about violence? Their governments almost grounded Oyo State. They are like the proverbial Ebolo vegetable which cannot but demonstrate its smelly antecedent,” the APC said.
The party said that, having identified that the battle in the next gubernatorial election would be between a government that has stood for peace and safety of lives and property, as against regimes in the past where there were political murders, arson, violence and brigandage, and whose major actors are seeking to come back to office, the opposition parties are struggling to paint the APC “as a violent party too.”
According to the party, the recent violence in Ibadan South East, which reportedly led to the death of one person, as attested to by the police, was a gang war between an Accord Chief Thug and some factions in that locality and has nothing to do with the APC.
“If our people don’t know anything about Ajimobi, they know he can’t stand violence. He ordered a Pilgrims Board member sacked and charged to court for being violent. That violent man is with Akala now. He outlaws thugs and Indian hemp at Governor’s Office. He is one governor who does not go about with thugs. Let them tell us their own antecedents. Luckily, the world knows the truth,” said the APC.
On allegation of capital flight, the APC said it was an attempt by the opposition to profile its government stating that no government has patronized local contractors like the party.
“Our party-led government will soon publish the names of all contracts awarded in Oyo State wherein we have Ladoja, his Campaign Director and Ladoja’s harem of wives as beneficiaries. Let them explain to the whole world how that amounts to capital flight. The truth of the matter is that, in about four years, non-local contractors are less than five, the rest are sons and daughters of Oyo State,” the party said.
The party said that it is a shame that Ladoja and Akala, as well as Teslim Folarin are seeking to come to government, going by their individual antecedents while in office and government.
“Ladoja and Akala were both in government. While Ladoja is a good advertisement of what a governor must not be as his cerebral make-up is suspect, Akala signposts how the worst of us always try to rule the best of us. How many Oyo indigenes would be proud to have the duo as governor? Both mentally and administratively, none of them can stand Governor Abiola Ajimobi. Teslim’s case is that of the evil that men do that lives after them. The position he held as Senate Leader was the only known position Senator Olusola Saraki held that made him a cult hero among his Kwara people. Let Teslim point at a single Oyo State person he made while he was in the Senate,” the APC said.
But the Labour Party expressed worry over the spate of sponsored violence in the South-West state, especially the recent shedding of innocent bloods of citizens in Ibadan.
The Labour Party equally raised alarm that certain satanic politicians are planning this kind of sponsored violence against the election train of its gubernatorial candidate so as to make it look like another violent thirsty party like others.
In a statement in Ibadan by its Director of Media and Publicity, Hon. Taiwo Ibrahim, the Labour Party condemned the arsons and brigandage that resulted in the death of two people and rendered many hapless as a result of political rivalry and called on the state Commissioner of Police to fish out the culprits.
The party called on security agencies to stem the tide so as not to reduce Oyo State to a theatre of war as a result of the inordinate ambitions of certain individuals.
“Certain people,” the party stressed, “are hell bent in regaining or retaining power at all cost like the biblical Saul, but such people should be told that this state is greater than all of us and we cannot afford to stand by and watch them shedding the blood of innocent citizens as a result of their ambitions.
“Both the actors in the APC and ACCORD parties should know that politics in Oyo State has risen beyond falsehood and unholy propaganda where the world would be told one thing when whereas the opposite is the case, they have both proved that they are the real agents of violence which they have, through propaganda, professed against others”.
The Labour Party recalled that its gubernatorial candidate in the April 11 election, Adebayo Alao Akala, has taken its campaign round the 33 local governments of the state without a single report of violence or crisis.