The Osun State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party has raised another alarm over what it described as indiscriminate arrest of its members across different local government areas of the State ahead of the governorship election.
The party during a press briefing addressed by its Caretaker Chairman, Dr Adekunle Akindele demanded public explanation from the Osun State Command of the Nigerian Police on reasons for embarking on mass arrest of PDP members in the state for some days now.
The PDP issued Osun State Command of the Nigerian Police 24 hours ultimatum to release all PDP members picked up in various local governments and detained unlawfully to avoid untoward reaction from the good people of the state.
Akindele said, “Osun PDP reminds officers and men of the Nigerian Police as a very important institution of government that their core duty is to protect lives of all citizens irrespective of race, gender or political affiliation. It is therefore a compounded aberration for such Important institution of government to turn itself to attack dogs in the hands of the ruling All Progressives Congress in Osun State.
“Reports reaching the state secretariat of our great party, the PDP, especially in the last two days confirmed that One Remi Omowaye, a serving Commissioner in the government of Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola has been taking police operatives to private homes of PDP members in some local governments in the state to forcefully arrest them without any just cause.
Specifically, police were reported to have invaded private homes of innocent members of our party members in Ijebujesha and Eti Oni in Oriade and Atakumosa East local governments respectively, effecting forceful arrest of our members and inflicting on them bodily harms, even without any warrant of arrest to justify such cause of action against harmless citizens.
More worrisome is the fact that, the police chose the dead of the night to invade citizens homes, embarking on sporadic gunshots, thereby subjecting the victims and their relatives to unnecessary psychological trauma. This is height of abuse of office by the cabinet member of Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola’s government and acutely unprofessional on the part of the police for making themselves available for unjust harassment of citizens they are being paid to protect.
What more, operatives of the South West Security Network (AMOTEKUN) set up after a massive call by sons and daughters of Yoruba land to ward off external aggression against our noble race, have also become another tool for harassing the good people of Osun as against the primary objective for which the security outfit was established.
Today, AMOTEKUN Corps in Osun provide veritable cover for notorious political thugs to kill and maim their own kinsmen. This is against the massive support Yorubas threw behind the security outfit. It is also a summary mess of patriotic calls for establishment of State Police to curb rising wave of crime in Nigeria. The Osun experience with AMOTEKUN has indeed made absolute nonsense of such calls.
Although, we, in this circumstance, wish to cut the Osun State Commissioner of Police, Mr Wale Olokode some slack of the fact that perhaps he didn’t give the horrendous directive for the reckless and unprofessional invasion and arest of citizens in the dead of the night and taking them to unknown destinations as the whereabouts of those picked up remained unknown, but his silence and obvious failure to stem the tide has put paid to all doubts about Mr Olokode, being a principal accomplice in the criminal activities of his men.
Needless to inform Mr Olokode that tension is high already and tempers raised especially in the Ijesha axis of the state in the last couple of days the police have been dancing around with the crude absurdly. It is also needless to mention that human beings are moulded with limits of edurance elasticity, after which reactions may no longer be bottled up.
As a law abiding political party, we have had it as part of our management ethics to prevail on our members to exercise restraints in the face of crass provocations as we currently have on our hands, but we must warn, we are not God with absolute capacity over breaking points of adults, men and women, after long suffering in the hands of political bullies.
The PDP also accused APC of trying to coerce civil servants to vote for them
“In furtherance to our earlier allegations against the APC which have not been refuted till today, we wish to further inform Nigerians and indeed the whole world that leaders and members of the ruling party are not preparing for a fair electoral contest on July 16 in Osun State.
wnThe APC have intensified their subversive intents by coercing civil servants and other vulnerable segments of our society to surrender their permanent voter’s cards, take down the details before returning same to the owners or in other cases, withholding the cards for obvious reasons. These the APC are perpetrating with looted resources of the state, offering each victim of the coercion, monetary inducements ranging from N20,000 to M50,000.
Gentlemen of the press, we have it on good authority that the Independent National Electoral Commission, the institution saddled with managing elections in Nigeria, is already providing fraudulent technical assistance to either render those PVCs inactive by deactivating them ahead of the elections, and or get the cards cloned for use of Apc poll mercenaries in active connivance of INEC top echelons.
Credible intelligence at our disposal suggests that INEC, in collaboration with jittery APC, are plotting to flood the July 16 governorship election with fake or doctored Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS). This is with a view to disenfranchising as many voters as they can, especially in areas considered to be PDP strongholds.
We wish to put INEC on notice that we are on the trail of this dangerous dimensions being introduced to to satisfy unpopular Candidates in elections, and we will in due course, provide more stunning revelations about the times bomb being set in Nigeria by INEC, which to us, is advanced mockery of the gains the multi billion naira tax payers money INEC has expended on supposed smart innovations on our electoral system.
We, by this briefing wish to alert Nigerians, especially at this time people are clamouring for leadership change in the country that INEC seems not ready as election management institution, to make votes count.
It is noteworthy that Osun is just being used by seemingly compromised INEC as a test field for the big fraud being planned for the 2023 general elections.
Extensive findings by our party have uncovered a grand plot to build on the planned electoral sacrilege in Osun to disenfranchise millions of prospective voters in the 2023 Presidential election, especially in the northern part of Nigeria.”
When contacted, the police pubic relations officer, SP Yemisi Opalola said the the police is only arresting the criminals regardless of political parties affiliation.
Opalola, “we raided some black spots and arrested some criminals. We don’t know which parties they belong to as that is immaterial. So it’s a lie that we are arresting members of a political party.”
