Oyetola lost due to dispute with Aregbesola — party members
NEWS DIGEST – Members of the All Progressive Congress said on Sunday that Governor Isiaka Oyetola lost his reelection bid because of the ongoing dispute with his predecessor, Sen. Rauf Aregbesola.
According to them, Oyetola’s “politics of segregation” soon after he was elected as the governor of Osun state in 2018 cost him the support of Aregbesola in the build-up to Saturday’s polls.
“But it is an obvious fact that Governor Isiaka Oyetola came to destroy our party,” said Rasaq Salinsile, factional chairman of the Osun state APC.
At Saturday’s polls, Sen. Adeleke Ademola, the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, polled 403,371 votes, twenty-eight thousand more than Gov. Oyetola’s 375,027 votes to emerge as the new governor of Osun state.
Both parties were previously enmeshed in a controversy in 2018 when a re-run election saw Oyetola defeat Adeleke with little under 500 votes, thanks to the support of the Governor, Rauf Aregbesola and Mr Bola Tinubu, APC’s candidate for the 2023 presidential election.
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“We all worked as a united family to install him as governor in spite of all odds,” Salinsile said. “But the moment he got there, he started politics of segregation and divide and rule tactics which he thought he could use to whip everybody back in line.”
Salinsele said Oyetola was particularly against anything that had to do with Aregbesola.
Oyetola’s animosity towards party members, particularly Aregbesola, strikes Salinsele as a surprise because Oyetola had served as Chief-of-Staff to Aregbesola.
“How on earth can you be a Chief of Staff to a sitting governor for good eight years and pretended to him to be what you were not,” Salinsele said, trying to make sense of Oyetola’s actions. “I have never met that kind of person in my life and I am not a young man.”
The humbling loss on Saturday now means the party chapter, mismanaged by Oyetola, according to Salinsele, will need to return to the drawing board.
The Publicity Secretary of the Osun state APC, Abiodun Agboola, said this was particularly to avoid complications at the 2023 presidential election, which is only a few months away.
“No organisation can go into an election with division without suffering a humiliating defeat the progressives suffered in Osun on Saturday,” Agboola said.
“The remaining leaders must act now,” Salinsele added.
