…Says sending people to beg Osoba is hypocritical

By Bashir Adefaka

Lagos—Former Deputy Governor of Ogun State and a serving Senator, Alhaji Olugbenga Kaka, has given conditions for peace to reign in the Ogun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

According to him, the solution to the crisis in the party lies in the hands of Governor Ibikunle Amosun.

Kaka told senior editors during a courtesy visit to the Lagos corporate head office of the  Vanguard newspapers, yesterday that peace would return to Ogun APC if the governor did the needful rather than sending emissaries to beg former governor Olusegun Osoba.

Senator Kaka said the conditions for peace included: re-organising the party structure, ensuring all-inclusive government, ensuring that each of the 20 local councils of the state has a commissioner instead of the current scenario where some councils have three and four commissioners while some councils have none.

He said if Amosun ensured justice and equity the Aremo Osoba camp would work in peace with him.

Describing the recent claim by Amosun on his effort to pacify Osoba, the leader of the party in the state, as cheap blackmail emanating from a “height of hypocrisy”, the former deputy governor said the solution was for Amosun to look back on his wrong steps and decisions and make amends.

His words: “All the rigged-in executives from wards to the national level will, first of all, have to give way to genuinely elected representatives starting from first unadulterated compiled lists of delegates up to wherever it gets to. Thereafter, if there is room for good primaries, so be it. In fact, I was the first person to say that there is no automatic ticket for anybody, including Amosun. I said it a long time ago. That was what created the enmity and other things.”

Senator Kaka, himself an APC chieftain, highlighted some of the sins of Amosun and explicitly stated why he would not be forgiven until he did the needful.

He said the governor had not called a consultative meeting since the inception of his administration following their collective electoral successes three and a half years ago.

The Senator said Amosun had carried out all programmes and projects of the APC-led government without consultation with stakeholders and that all he had done was to do things in the name of the party but without any of the stakeholders being able to defend it even in the face of criticisms by opposition.

According to him, “Amosun will have to go all out now and reach out to all the injured people. He had been very elusive any time we made attempt to table our pains before him. But we have had cause to talk to some of our leaders such as Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and even former Vice President Atiku Abubakar led a high power delegation to meet with him but they met brickwall.

“It is cheap blackmail for Amosun to say he sent people to beg Aremo Olusegun Osoba in the sense that it is hypocritical for him to send people to the same person with whom  you live within the same house and bedroom. It is a known fact that before the governorship ticket was given to him ahead of 2011, Aremo Osoba’s house was second to none. When last he visited Aremo’s house and why. When last did he pick his phone and call Aremo?

“The people who worked tirelessly to ensure that we won the elections were all relegated to the background to the extent that there has been no consultative meeting that can be called all-embracing. Is it Aremo he should be begging for that?  It is on record that he sponsored a candidate against the Aremo’s son even after granting him the ticket. It is on record that all the National Assembly members, he has positioned series of candidates to take over from them, while he has been busy fighting for second term for the past two years.

“So, asking people to beg Osoba and expecting that Osoba would forgive him is not the issue. If Aremo Osoba accepts his appeal, is that the end of his problem? Are the others that were affected included in the begging? And if Aremo accepted, then Aremo would be on his own! Because, like I said, the political space is bigger than Aremo and the governor. So, attempting cheap blackmail on Osoba is not going to be the solution to the problem.”

*FULL INTERVIEW ON THURSDAY.