After Absolute Deadline, Amosun, Okorocha Continue Attack on Oshiomhole
Ogun gov: He is meddlesome, hypocritical Imo gov: We aren’t surprised by his actions, denies $2m bribe allegation
Ogun State Governor Ibikuun Amosun and his Imo State counterpart, Rochas Okorocha, yesterday continued their diatribes of denunciation against the national chairman of their party, All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, after failing to win the acceptance of their favoured governorship candidates. The party practically scrambled to meet the November 2 deadline given by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to political parties for the submission of their lists of candidates for next year’s governorship and House of Assembly elections. But it was forced to drop contentious candidates that emerged from its recent controversial primaries and make last minute substitutions as the time allowed for parties to send their candidates’ lists ended on Friday.
Amosun described as hypocritical the basis for Oshiomhole’s rejection of the primary elections in the state, when they were based on the same consensus arrangement that brought him into office.
He accused the national chairman of lacking respect for truth and decency.
He was reacting to statements credited to Oshiomhole, accusing him and Okorocha of desperation in the bid to determine their successors.
The Ogun State governor, who spoke in a statement by the Commissioner for Information, Adedayo Adeneye, alleged that the plot by Oshiomhole and his “collaborators to hijack the government of Ogun State and hand it over to a gang of rapacious expansionists in the South-west will fail.”
He added, “This is, however, without prejudice to the sanctity of the consensus arrangement, which Adams Oshiomhole hypocritically tries to demonise. Nigerians will recall that Oshiomhole himself was elected National Chairman of the APC by consensus arrangement, which witnessed all other contestants to the office being prevailed upon to step down for him.
“The ground on which Oshiomhole disputes the gubernatorial primary in Ogun State is that the result was not announced by the State Electoral Committee from Abuja, therefore the governor resorted to self-help. We wonder why Oshiomhole accepted the result of the primary election in Lagos State, whose result was also not announced by the State Electoral Panel. Why will the same scenario be acceptable in Lagos State but regarded as self-help in Ogun State? Is it because it was executed by the Capo Di Tutti in Lagos State?”
He maintained that the only governorship primary held in the state was that of October 2, which produced Hon. Adekunle Akinlade as governorship candidate of APC. He stated that the emergence of Akinlade was initially through a consensus arrangement, as allowed by the party’s constitution, but it was subjected to a primary election, when some aspirants disagreed with the outcome of the consensus arrangement.
The statement said, “We wish to call the attention of Nigerians to another evil being perpetrated by Oshiomhole in Ogun State. As at today November 03, which is 24 hours after the deadline for submission of names of candidates for the House of Assembly, Oshiomhole has not given INEC Party Candidate Form (CF001) to any of the 26 candidates, who won the primaries for the tickets to contest for the Ogun State House of Assembly.
“The primary was conducted on October 07 by the State Electoral Committee headed by Col. Ali Ciroma. This is despite the fact that the state chairman of the party had kept vigil at the national sec- retariat of the APC in the last two weeks to collect the forms. If Oshiomhole is denying the outcome of the gubernatorial primaries, because the State Electoral Committee shied away from announcing the result, what is the reason for denying all the 26 candidates for the House of Assembly freely elected by members of the APC in Ogun State?
“We want Nigerians to note the duplicity and meddlesomeness of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and his gang in the affairs of the APC in Ogun State. It is also important to note that Oshiomhole unilaterally replaced four of the nine winners of the primary election into the House of Representatives. These include Hon. Mikhail Kazzim, a serving member of the House who won the primaries by defeating Olumide, the son of Chief Olusegun Osoba, with 28,802 votes to Osoba’s 4,209.
“Oshiomhole removed Hon. Kazzim who won the primaries and replaced him with the man he had serially defeated, not only in the last primary election but also in the general election of 2015. In yet another instance in Ado Odo-Ota Federal Constituency, Oshiomhole substituted the winner of the primary for the House of Representatives, Hon. Rotimi Rahmon, with the name of Hon. Jimoh Ojugbele, who did not even contest to go back to the House of Representatives but contested the primary for the Senate and was defeated.
“In his conduct, Oshiomhole is opening a new chapter in the history of elections in Nigeria – a situation, where a gang of desperate politicians will sit somewhere in another state and write the result of an election that never took place – what our people creatively refer to as ‘Offshore Rigging!’ This is what Oshiomhole and his gang are trying to foist on Ogun State. Lawyers say ‘you cannot build something on nothing’, Oshiomhole and his gang are trying to build a storey building of fraud on nothing.”
Dismissing claims by Oshiomole that he withdrew the security of the State Electoral Committee, whose chairman, Indabawa, is a retired Commissioner of Police, Amsoun said the man came with a full complement of police security, which he claimed was provided for him by a Deputy Inspector General of Police.
The governor said, “All of these have clearly shown that the motive of Oshiomhole is not the rule of law, which he proclaims on the roof top. It is rather, an evil plan with some collaborators, desperate to hijack the government of Ogun State and add it to the harem of states under their rapacious gang of exploiters.