Osun PDP not for Sale: Save Our State from Iyorchia Ayu

Taofeek Adegoke

Recent happenings in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), especially as it affects Osun chapter of the party, calls for sober reflections. To this end, this is a clarion call to leaders of thoughts and right-thinking members of our party to save our state and the party from pathological liars and wheeler-dealers as represented by the National Chairman and his cohorts who are selfishly playing with the chances and the opportunities for Osun PDP to take over the mantle of leadership in the state from APC, come July 16, this year.

Indications have emerged that our number one PDP member is at it again in his typical sleazy manner, this time around, toying with our future and those of our children yet unborn in Osun State by selling out Osun State and imposing Senator Ademola Adeleke as the party’s gubernatorial candidate. Our national Chairman has been bought over. Hmmm….he and his co-travelers should remember that conscience is an open wound.

It is on record that Ayu met with Deji Adeleke, the billionaire, a self-professed member of PDP and brother to Ademola Adeleke, one of the six PDP aspirants in Osun, in his house at Maitama, Abuja, on Monday, 31st January, 2022.This was a day before stakeholders from Osun, which included some elders, had a meeting with the National Working Committee, NWC, in Abuja. On that fateful Monday which preceded the stakeholders’ meeting, Ayu, the man we collectively entrusted with the destiny of our party, clandestinely held one hour meeting alone with Deji Adeleke in his Library at his Maitama home in Abuja. The begging question is: Was Osun PDP ticket sold and bought that day?
Ayu-appointed an Appeal Panel and in their reports, warned that Senator Ademola Adeleke’s credentials should be rechecked and thoroughly scrutinized before submission to INEC.

Was this not the job the Screening Committee ought to have done with utmost sincerity and seriousness? The Screening Committee failed in this regard as it was perfunctory in its approach. Does the fear in some quarters that a well-woven script was already in place to ensure that Ademola Adeleke’s name will be the one to be sent to INEC, not confirm that the ticket had already been sold and bought before the party primaries by Ayu’s PDP Working Committee?
The recent court judgement which joyously prompted majority in the party to heave a sigh of relief that they have been freed from the bondage of imposition being hatched by our national party leaders who are hell bent in foisting the candidature of Ademola Adeleke on discerning and already agitated members of PDP in Osun.

That Adeleke’s emergence will automatically spell doom and misfortune to our party and its teeming members is non-negotiable. Worse still, determined to shipwreck the yearning aspirations of thousands of people of Osun to see the PDP enthroned in the state later this year, out of the blues, came the appointment on Thursday, 16th February, 2022, of the Osun PDP PRO, Sunday Bisi, who has been acting as Senator Ademola Adeleke’s Campaign Manager for over two years now, touring all local governments in the state in Adeleke’s campaign paraphernalia.

Yet, the same man (Sunday Bisi), is who our almighty national leadership is insisting must be our acting Chairman in the state, a development that is antithetical and flagrant disobedience to what court judgement said. Is this not enough proof that Iyorchia Ayu and the PDP NWC have sold out the PDP governorship ticket before the party primaries? Can a leopard ever change its spots?
The good people of Osun are calling on the PDP Governors across Nigeria as leaders of the party, to rescue us by not allowing Ayu to sell our future. A proper screening to evaluate the six PDP aspirants vis a vis their abilities, competences and capabilities to govern Osun was never carried out because Ayu chose to sell the ticket to the highest bidder. Self-serving and pecuniary gains on the part of leaders, will only take us to a dreary destination if we fail to chart the right course.

Our respectable leaders, elders and party faithful should rise against the tyrannical antics of these conscienceless and unrepentant money- for-posts politicians. Unfortunately, this is why Nigeria has continued to move in a spot without making any progress because we prefer with glee, to always sacrifice merits on the altar of greed.
Is the PDP, particularly at the national level, seriously desirous of winning Osun at the forthcoming polls? Then, those saddled with this responsibility must choose right and with the fear of God too.