Controversy in Osun APC over plan to expel Rauf Aregbesola

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has been charged with plotting to expel Rauf Aregbesola, the previous interior minister, from the organization.

The claims were made in a statement released on Thursday by Abosede Oluwaseun, a former head of the Osun APC’s breakaway youth group.

Oluwaseun also expressed concern over the possibility of Aregbesola’s suspension.

“The plot is being orchestrated by ousted former governor Gboyega Oyetola and five of his loyalists, among whom is a Senator and former Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly who lost their re-election,” he claimed.

According to reliable sources, Aregbesola’s ward, Ilesa Ward 8, APC executives were forced to sign a blank piece of paper on Wednesday under the false pretense that the party’s state leadership needed their commitment to the party’s advancement.

We have reliable information that an emissary dispatched by Oyetola and other conspirators recently gave the ward executives a significant sum of money.

We see that after failing in their several attempts to blackmail Aregbesola, Oyetola and others turned to unfairly suspending him in order to prevent him from making amends with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The Osun APC, however, has refuted the accusations and denied the widely circulated rumor that it intended to suspend Rauf Aregbesola due to anti-party activities.

In a statement released on Friday in Osogbo, Tajudeen Lawal, the chairman of the APC in Osun, referred to the accusation as untrue and fictitious.

He claimed that the rumored plans to suspend Aregbesola by some persons are absurd and can only be accepted wholeheartedly by a deranged person.

Whether the aforementioned former minister is still legitimately eligible to be referred to as a member of the APC in Osun State and elsewhere in Nigeria, having expressly satisfied all the requirements to tag him as having technically left the party for many years, is the question that should beg answers from right-thinking members of society, according to Lawal.

“It is no longer a secret that Aregbesola and his allies have persistently worked to harm the interests of the APC and its candidates in Osun State through The Osun Progressives, TOP.

“It is known that Aregbesola and the TOP members, of which he served as a patron, converted into an opposition group within the Osun APC and held meetings every Thursday at the Oranmiyan House, which serves as Aregbesola’s campaign office in Osogbo, where they hurled insults and criticized the Oyetola administration.

Apart from the fact that Aregbesola did not cast a ballot in the recent presidential election, which President Tinubu won, or the National Assembly or governorship elections, he did not participate in any APC candidate’s campaigning either during the state’s series of elections last year or this year, respectively.

Lawal further asserted that to the detriment of all the APC candidates, Aregbesola and his supporters have been socializing with Senator Ademola Adeleke, the governor running on the PDP platform.