Osun 2022: Aregbesola’s loyalists want Osun APC restructured

Members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State that are loyal to former governor of the state and incumbent Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, yesterday, held a protest to demand for the restructuring of the party, following the loss of the party in the July 16, 2022 governorship election.

The APC members, who trooped out in their hundreds in Osogbo, also called for the removal of the state chairman of APC, Gboyega Famodun, accusing him of mismanaging the party and of being culpable in the electoral defeat that Governor Gboyega Oyetola suffered.

According to the protesting members, mostly of The Osun Progressives (TOP), a faction of the party loyal to Aregbesola, the APC under Famodun is a ‘vehicle with flat tyres,’ which cannot deliver victory in the 2023 general elections.

The aggrieved APC members, armed with banners and placards with several inscriptions, converged in Osogbo from across the 30 local councils of the state, urged the dissolution of the party leadership.

Spokesperson of the group, Abosede Oluwaseun, while addressing newsmen and members of the public at different locations, said the party needed to be restructured from unit, ward, local council and state levels for it to be united and formidable ahead of the coming general elections and urged the national leadership of the party to send an independent caretaker committee devoid of any APC from the South-West to oversee the party.

Meanwhile, Famodun, in a statement by his Media Adviser, Kola Olabisi, in Osogbo, yesterday, condemned the protest, saying that it was wicked, selfish, misplaced and act of mockery for Aregbesola’s loyalists to demonstrate publicly despite working against the emergence of Oyetola in the election.

Famodun insisted that it was inconsiderate for the supporters, who glaringly worked against the success of Oyetola at the polls, to now be canvassing restructuring of the party through a sponsored protest.

He said: “When I heard that the supporters of the immediate past governor of our state, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, were protesting, I thought my memory was playing me false as they cannot insulate themselves from whatever might be the current plight of the APC in Osun State.

“Assuming but not conceding that there are challenges within the party, protesters should be told that they lack moral right to either suggest or effect any likely solution as it is on record that they massively and collectively worked against Oyetola, the APC governorship candidate in the just-concluded election in line with the series of their threat.

“One would have thought that the appropriate place for them to canvass for the restructuring of any party is Senator Ademola Adeleke’s Ede country home whom they voted for with flaunted pride.

“If I may ask, at what point did it occur to you that the political party that you had abandoned for about three years and been working against needs restructuring?

“Did the Adeleke Dynasty not fund your series of campaigns of calumny against Oyetola and the leadership of the party at the Aregbesola Campaign Office where you converge every Thursday with the task of scrambling to outdo one another in lampooning Oyetola’s administration and the leadership of the party?

“It is, however, pertinent to state here that there is a free entry and free exit in any political party, which memberships are bonded by common interests and ideals.

“Since politics is a game of number and the more the merrier; continuous membership of our party is not foreclosed to any genuine member whose interest would not be counter-productive to the interest of our party as you cannot be an outsider and be canvassing for the restructuring of the party.”

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