By Adedapo Fagbemi
I read with disbelief Oma Djebah’s piece entitled “Amosun’s perilous pill”on the current political logjam in the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ogun State. Oma Djebah, who claimed to be a global journalist, threw away all caution that a journalist is trained to have in his diatribe against the governor of Ogun State.

•Amosun: Ogun governor

He did not make any effort at interrogating the issues in the logjam but went all the way to castigate the governor in a way suggestive that he is one of the writers recruited to do a hatchet man’s job to legitimise the rape on democracy that was visited on Ogun State by the powers-that-be in the APC.

His piece is a classic example of how a victim is blamed for crying loud to call attention to the oppression he has suffered. To Oma Djebah and his co-travellers, a victim ought to suffer in silence and allow his traducers to have a field day without anyone having a wimp of his pains.

Desperation of some forces in the party

The issue in the APC in Ogun State is about internal party democracy. It is about the desperation of some forces in the party to ride rough shod over other members in the party whom they perceived as not complying with their dictation. It is about a party leadership that has submitted itself to the whims and caprices of a faction in the party and will stop at nothing to satisfy the insatiable appetite of such leaders to expand their political tentacles even to where they have no political capital.

It is unfortunate that commentators like Oma Djebah allowed themselves to be fed by the lies from the national secretariat of the APC rather than put on their thinking cap to interrogate the claims in the disputed gubernatorial primaries in Ogun State to arrive at their conclusions. Governor Amosun and his group contend that the only gubernatorial election was held on 2 October,2018 while Oshiomhole based his own claims on a primaries reportedly held on October 3,2018.Governor Amosun has provided pictorial evidence and video footages as evidence to back his claims. Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and Prince Dapo Abiodun did nothing of sort.

Amosun argued that the government extended the October 1, 2008 public holiday by one day to accommodate the new date for the primaries because such primaries are held in public schools as no other space in the state could accommodate thousands of party members who traditionally participate in the exercise. Oshiomhole and Dapo Abiodun have not told us where they held their primaries on October 3 when there was no such holiday.

Two weeks after the disputed gubernatorial primaries, the party held primaries into national and state assemblies under the supervision of Col. Ali Ciroma panel set up by Oshiomhole. Governor Amosun and his supporters won all available 38 legislative tickets contested while supporters of Dapo Abiodun did not win a single ticket. Is it possible that someone who won a gubernatorial primaries will not win a single legislative seat out of 38, including the one of his state constituency, two weeks after? Did it occur to those arguing the Oshiomhole and Dapo Abiodun case that Abiodun and his patrons like Chief Olusegun Osoba had not been part of the party activities since 2015 when Osoba led them to the SDP and Abiodun lost the senatorial election to Buruji Kashamu? How could a returnee to the party after three years have won gubernatorial primaries against a state governor who funded the party in the preceding seven years?

These are questions that people like Oma Djeba ought to have asked instead of accepting hook, line and sinker the narrative of Oshiomhole and his gang. The unfortunate reality coming out of the APC is that the framers of the constitution of the party had invested the national chairman of the party with important powers on the assumption that the office will always be occupied by responsible people. Where the occupant of the office falls short of such high standards, the party is bound to suffer as it is doing now.

It is lazy, mischievous and clearly irresponsible to make public commentary based solely on the account of a party in a conflict rather than undertake an interrogation of the contending accounts in the dispute. This is more so when such commentary is made by an otherwise respected journalist of Oma Djeba’s status.

When the history of the APC is written

Oshiomhole can engage as many writers as he wishes. What is certain is that when the history of the APC is written, copious reference would be made to the damage he has done to the party. The likes of Oma Djeba write history in a hurry and can gloss over the atrocities of Oshiomhole because they fall to interrogate the issues.

https://newlive.vanguardngr.com/2018/10/the-case-for-dapo-abiodu/

The consequences of the damage Oshiomhole is doing to the APC will force historians to be more circumspect in their assessment of the APC crisis, not only in Ogun State but in other states like Rivers,Ondo, Oyo,Zamfara, Adamawa,Bauchi, Kogi, Lagos,Osun,Plateau,Sokoto and Benue states etc.  where the party is bleeding and is only hanging on to the electoral value of President Muhammadu Buhari for its  hope of winning the 2019 elections.

Adedapo Fagbemi is a journalist and he writes from Abeokuta, Ogun State.