Osun APC Rift: Aregbesola’s camp claim they are ready for reconciliation

All Progressives Congress(APC) members in Osun State who support Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, the state’s interior minister, have said that they are prepared for reconciliation to put a stop to the divisions tearing the party apart.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) defeated the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state’s recently ended governorship election; this result was widely linked to the party’s internal conflict in the state.

Ademola Adeleke, a PDP candidate for governor, received 403,371 votes, defeating Adegboyega Oyetola, an APC candidate, who received 375,027 votes.

Alhaji Rasaq Salinsile, the party’s factional chairman, said that Aregbesola had a reconciliation meeting with Abdullahi Adamu, the national chairman, prior to the election on July 16 but that Oyetola delayed it until after the party had lost.

He denied the assertion that Aregbesola’s supporters, acting through The Osun Progressives (TOP), helped Adeleke win the election by voting for Oyetola.

Salinsile claimed that Oyetola and the PDP’s state chairman, Prince Gboyega Famodun, gave the PDP a shoddy victory in the July 16 governorship election.

Salinsile contends that Oyetola and Famodun’s receptivity and impunity over party matters caused the complete breakdown of the APC’s winning infrastructure and its ultimate defeat of the election.

He said, “Let me quickly note that they are up at harms to finish Osun APC with an instruction to ward chairmen to start suspension of members of TOP from the APC.

“Towards 2022 election, the party got divided into two with the former and incumbent governors leading the two caucuses. Famodun felt so comfortable to side with one of them and make the enemy of the other because of lucre-immediate gain.

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“Then we went to the election and lost scandalously, even in our traditional safe constituencies and he started looking for a scapegoat. Famodun is to be told that he is an original failure.

“The TOP which Famodun is trying to blame had offered to help him in resolving the matters that is affecting the party but his penchant for avarice, greed and corruption will not allow him to see reason.

“May we ask Famodun, is it the TOP leaders and members who he described as rebels, insignificant, not popular at home, not core politicians, etc that suddenly, in his warped thinking, become strong enough to win an election against him and his almighty government?

“It is only a warped and a heretical thinking that has brought Famodun to that inebriated conclusion. Was it TOP that made Famodun and other cabinet members lose in their various wards and local governments?

“We take Boluwaduro local government for particular example, with very small voters registration but with Famodun, three cabinet members and head of a powerful agency in town, the APC lost. Could that be the work of TOP? For those who operate a bad system, they will never see anything wrong in it until it crashes.

“Putting a lie to Famodun’s allegation are tones of abuses and curses that are placed on the leadership of Governor Oyetola and kitchen cabinet by members of the Ileri-Oluwa camp who felt let down by the outcome of the election and the flippant manners their advice to resolve the obvious crisis in the party were treated.

“The contents of those voice notes should be more than enough for modest and reasonable person to bury their heads in shame.”

Salinsile claimed that Oyetola and Famodun were both to blame for the APC’s loss in the gubernatorial race.

“The goal of Governor Oyetola and Prince Famodun to bring down the APC in Osun has unquestionably been accomplished.

“The National Secretariat has a responsibility to stop holding out. With Famodun’s confession, the wall of Jericho has crumbled, and Osun APC needs to immediately be reorganized, rebooted, and reenergized for better future performances, according to Salinsile.

Famodun, however, asserted that Aregbesola and his supporters lacked the moral justification to continue to identify as APC members.

He continued by saying that committees had been formed at the ward level to look into their behavior and punish them appropriately.