One of the governorship aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Oyo State and a member of the coalition group against the second term ambition of Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala, Elder Wole Oyelese, yesterday, declared that President Goodluck Jonathan should be blamed for the unresolved crisis rocking the Oyo State chapter of the PDP.
He said the national executive of the party has taken sides with Governor Akala despite of the reported cases of illegality against his administration.
According to him, “we have said there is problem in Oyo PDP and the national has taken sides with a group. Is that how to go about things?” he queried.
“We are going to fight this fight to a logical conclusion. We have been cheated and we are not going to stand and fold our arms when only one person lords over our party in this state.”
Oyelese who had declared that he would not participate in tomorrow’s governorship primary of the party, said Governor Akala must be day dreaming to be thinking of returning to Agodi Government House on May 29.
Speaking on a radio programme monitored in Ibadan, the former minister of power and steel said it was wrong for the governor to believe that the party belonged to him alone and that he could solely control it as he wished, saying Akala had demonstrated total lack of respect for party elders.
But in a swift reaction to the former minister’s outburst, Governor Akala, through his Special Adviser on Public Communications, Prince Dotun Oyelade, challenged Oyelese “to prove his commitment to the success of the party in the state .”
Akala advised Oyelese “not to attempt a futile journey to destroy the party that built him, rather he should test his popularity or otherwise at the gubernatorial primaries tomorrow as he did four years ago.”
All the governorship aspirants of the party, who include Oyelese, Alhaji Yekini Adeojo, the former deputy national chairman of the party and former deputy governor to Alao-Akala during their illegal 11-month interregnum, Alhaji Azim Gbolarumi, have all picked nomination forms to contest against Alao-Akala but have, however, indicated they would not participate in tomorrow’s primary since to them the congress held on December 24, 2010 at the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium in which the Chief Dejo Afolabi-led party executive emerged was “illegal”.
To Oyelese, Governor Akala had demonstrated dictatorship in the administration of the state by foisting on the entire members of the party, the party executive, which was chosen at a congress not observed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials, the State Security Services (SSS), and the panel sent from Abuja.
He stressed that the governor would not have had any problem with him or other members of the coalition led by Senator Lekan Balogun, if he (Akala) had shown respect for them as elders he met in the party and who also have a stake in the running of the affairs of the party in the state and were instrumental to his attaining his present position in the party and the state.
“When Alao-Akala was just a council chairman in Ogbomoso North, I was already a minister. I was a minister twice and later I was appointed special adviser to the head of state. Though he is now the leader of the party, we deserve his respect because he was nowhere when we brought PDP to Oyo State. I was second to the late Baba Lamidi Adedibu in the campaign train where in 2003 we chose Akala to be deputy to Senator Rashidi Ladoja. If we had not made him deputy then, he would not have become governor today.
“You cannot build something on nothing. He built on the foundation we all laid including Chief Richard Akinjide. But I will not eat my own words because the matter is that of honour and integrity. Akala was not part of the group that brought PDP to Oyo State in the first place but that he becomes the leader of the party is his fortune and we are not quarreling with that but he must do things properly,” he said.
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