By NG Tribune
With less than a year to the conduct of the 2018 governorship election in Osun State, the two major political parties, namely the APC and the PDP, are still enmeshed in internal crises, investigations have revealed.
Though the polarisation of the PDP into two factions, headed by Honourable Soji Adagunodo and Dr Bayo Faforiji, had been a major issue, the seeming closing of ranks and fence-mending achieved shortly before the July 8 by-election for Osun West Senatorial District appears to have collapsed. While Faforiji’s faction aligned with Senator Makarfi, Adagunodo’s group belonged to the Senator Sheriff faction at the national level.
However, regardless of the Supreme Court judgment, which affirmed Makarfi as the authentic national chairman of the PDP in the state, both Faforiji and Adagunodo are still laying claims to the chairmanship position, a development which has reignited another round of rivalry over the control of the party’s structure.
Speaking on the cause of the crisis, the PDP Legal Adviser in the South West, Chief Ojo Williams, who is also a chieftain of the party in the state, recalled that “the problem in Osun PDP started from the way the last party congresses in the state were handled by the national secretariat under Professor Wale Oladipo, who was the national secretary at that time and who happened to be an indigene of Osun.
“Oladipo and the outgone chairman in the state, Alhaji Ganiyu Olaoluwa, decided to ostracise a whole group within the party and conducted a one-sided congress. They did this jointly, by depriving the other side aspirants of forms for the contest in March 2016. The other group did a parallel congress, resulting in two parallel executives. Every other thing apart from this submission is pure gain-saying,” he said.
On the way out of the crisis, Williams, who belongs to Faforiji’s faction stated that “if a man stumbles, he looks back to where he tripped. There is no way any of the factions can go it alone. I canvass unification of both groups as we did because of the election of Senator Ademola Adeleke”.
But one of the chieftains in Adagunodo’s faction, Honourable Bamidele Salam, maintained that “there is no confusion about the leadership of the PDP in Osun State”, adding that, “those people who may want to create confusion are people who are ignorant of the guidelines of the party and also blinded by sheer ambition.
“The PDP constitution stipulates that a congress must be conducted from the ward and local government levels to the state level before party leaders can emerge. The party members in Osun, last year February, elected Soji Adagunodo as the state chairman during a congress held at the Osogbo Township Stadium. The congress was witnessed by INEC, DSS, police and the media. No other congress was held in Osun PDP.
“The leadership problem at the national level of the PDP started long after the emergence of Adagunodo as the state chairman of the PDP. So, the issue of Ali Modu Sheriff and Ahmed Makarfi is immaterial to the Osun issue. The NEC of the PDP listed five states where the PDP congresses had some knotty issues. Osun was not among.”
While the confusion in the PDP over the emergence of two chairmen persists, the ruling party, APC, which has only one chairman, in person of Mr Gboyega Famodun, is fast losing grip on some of its members, who alleged that the party lacks internal democracy and is reeling under the grips of the governor, Mr Rauf Aregbesola.
One of the APC stalwarts, who pleaded anonymity, told Saturday Tribune that “the chairman we have in Osun APC is a figure-head. The problem with the APC is that we are running the party and the government together. It is a one-man show and the governor is the all-in-all. We have a moribund party where the so-called party elders have no say and cannot hold contrary views against the governor’s dictatorship style”.
But he argued that “the only way through which the party can wriggle out of the problem is for Governor Aregbesola and his sycophants to toe the path of peace. The governor should come down from his Olympian height and respect the wish and interest of the party members”.
Reacting to Saturday Tribune’s inquiry about the seeming disunity in Osun APC, its Director of Publicity, Research and Strategy, Kunle Oyatomi said “forget about political tantrum and shenanigan. Osun is very lucky to have been blessed with Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola as its governor.
“There is no crisis in the APC. Some members are unhappy because they erroneously believe that they are being hit too hard by the economic hardship as a result of what the state government is doing or not doing. Now hear this: We have said it for the umpteenth time that Aregbesola by his makeup is a people-oriented person. He can’t afford to hurt the people of Osun. They simply misunderstood him which was why they took irrational decision when they voted PDP,” he said.
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