Comrade Timi Frank, the former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), urged President Bola Tinubu on Monday to summon former Governor Gboyega Oyetola, the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, and his APC goons to Osun State.
Following skirmishes between APC and PDP supporters over control of local government areas in Osun State, which have reportedly claimed many lives, Frank said in a statement released in Abuja that the appeal is now required to restore calm in the state.
The fight between the PDP and the APC for control of the local government secretariats became violent on Monday in Osun State.
The APC and the PDP have conflicting interpretations of a Court of Appeal ruling.
Oyetola, the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, and Governor Adeleke have been at odds with the Court of Appeal’s purported restoration decision.
Citing security concerns, Governor Adeleke insisted that the fired council chairmen could not take their places again.
Oyetola did, however, state that the legal tools would be used to carry out the Appeal Court’s ruling.
The council executives should have resumed yesterday, he added.
“The current strategy and plan by Oyetola is to make the state unmanageable for Governor Ademola Adeleke, so they can hide under the guise of crisis in the state to declare a state of emergency in Osun State,” Frank said, lamenting that after Oyetola and his APC thugs orchestrated crises, Dr. Ajibola Basiru, the APC’s national secretary and an Osun State native, urged the federal government to declare a state of emergency in the state to prevent further violence.
He reported Basiru as saying: “I will suggest that perhaps it will be necessary for the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency. It has gotten to that degree that helpless folks coming from farms are attacked by unrestrained PDP thugs.”
Frank stated: “They know that Governor Adeleke will still win if the elections are permitted to take place today, so their main goal is to declare a state of emergency.”
Therefore, they intend to use crisis and violence to end his second term in order to make room for the proclamation of a state of emergency.
Despite the fact that Osun is his home state and place of origin, the PDP currently controls the state, and Governor Adeleke was elected by the people, the president is hereby called upon to speak out.
As the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, we are using this platform to inform him that he and Oyetola would be held accountable if the current crisis continues to worsen beyond what has already occurred.
“Oyetola is currently using federal power to sow chaos and evil in Osun State, and this nonsense needs to end immediately.”
“Because what is happening in Osun State is sheer impunity, dictatorship, and arrogance on the part of the APC that is trying to capture every part of the country at all costs—not through the ballot but through impunity and criminality,” Frank, the ambassador of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) to East Africa and the Middle East, urged all well-meaning Nigerians to speak up in order to save the country’s democracy.
We urge Osun residents to support Governor Adeleke in the face of this violence, which is being supported by Oyetola and the APC.
Instead of being intimidated, they should fight back against the ex-Governor and his party’s rascal use of federal power, as they have done in the past.
“Now that I think about it, Adeleke has been governor for the past two years and has accomplished a great deal that has had a significant influence on the lives of the people, but Oyetola served as governor for four years with no development initiatives to show for it.
We urge the people of Osun State to be steadfast in their support of Adeleke in spite of the intimidation in order to avoid any kind of diversion from his electioneering pledges to provide good administration in the state.
They know that Oyetola or any other APC candidate cannot win an election in the state to unseat Adeleke, so they must equally oppose any plot by Oyetola and the APC to declare a state of emergency in the state. Through this declaration, they hope to topple Adeleke’s government and seize control of the state by any means necessary.
Because they think the state is the president’s hometown, Oyetola and the APC are determined to seize it by force.