As controversy rages over the role that the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, played in the loss of his successor, Adegboyega Oyetola, in Saturday’s governorship election, the minister’s faction of the All Progressives Congress have been expressing its stand.
The Chairman of the Aregbesola’s APC faction in Osun State, Rasaq Salinsile, recalled a truncated effort made by the party’s leader and presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, days before the election won by Senator Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party.
According to him, he sent the politician he appointed as his placeholder during the search for the running mate, Ibrahim Masari, to the faction, towards striking a reconciliation but he did not conclude the assignment.
According to a report in ‘The Punch’, Salinsile said, “How can the leader of a house behave that way and you think that house will be peaceful? We said it severally without mincing words so that those who have ears will hear. We went to our leaders starting with Baba Akande to the national chairman of the APC. Asiwaju (Bola Tinubu) sent one Alhaji Masari from Katsina state to us; he was the place holder for the APC presidential candidate.
“He said our resolutions should be written that he would come back the following day to collect it, saying Asiwaju gave him that assignment. Up till today, we have not seen him. He never came back. Three times, Oyetola sent words to me saying if he calls me will I pick his call? If he invites me, will I honour the invitation? And I said he was still my governor and that I owe him a lot of respect.”
He added that he had seen the electoral defeat ahead of time and ran to party leaders, including the ex-national chairman of the APC, Chief Bisi Akande, for help.
“It is an obvious fact that Governor Isiaka Oyetola came to destroy our party. We all worked as a united family to install him as governor in spite of all odds. 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; particularly, he was against anything 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. I have never met that kind of person in my life and I am not a young man.
“He was not yet sworn in when he started the segregation, politics of hatred. Anybody that has anything to do with the immediate past governor of the state, Aregbesola, automatically, you become one of the members in his black book,” he said.
