‘You remain sacked’ — PDP tells former LG chairpersons in Osun

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has cautioned the sacked local government chairpersons in Osun against causing political turmoil in the state.

In a statement issued on Monday, Debo Ologunagba, PDP spokesperson, accused the former LG chairpersons of instigating violence in the state by attempting to resume office despite a court order sacking them.

Earlier on Monday, five persons were reportedly killed when supporters of the All Progressive Congress (APC) and those of the PDP clashed over the attempted resumption of sacked APC LG chairpersons who claimed to have been reinstated by the court.

The Osun state caucus in the national assembly and Ademola Adeleke, governor of the state, had accused Gboyega Oyetola, minister of marine and blue economy, and the APC of backing the resumption of the sacked LG chairpersons.

However, Ologunagba asked the local government chairpersons and councillors to “perish the thought of forcing themselves back into office, as such will amount to a futile venture with dire consequences”.

The PDP spokesperson asked the APC to “accept the reality and end its resort to self-help, misrepresentations, vituperations, violence, and killing with the aim to trigger crisis and destabilise the state, having realised that it has irredeemably lost”.

He said the fate of the ousted politicians was “sealed by the judgment of the court of appeal which nullified the unconstitutional attempt by the then Governor Gboyega Oyetola to illegally plant them as local government officers in the guise of an election”.

“Having been roundly rejected by the people of Osun state in the Saturday, July 16, 2022, governorship election, the then Governor Oyetola and the APC ought to have known that attempting to sidestep the laws and manipulate the process to illegally foist APC members and apologists as local government chairmen and councillors was an exercise in futility which was bound to fail ultimately,” the statement reads.

“The APC is the architect of its misfortune. It should have known that disregarding and refusing to comply with the provisions of the Constitution and the Osun state local government election laws with respect to the requirement on notices, processes, and procedures of conducting local government elections is destined to be fatal and irreparable.

“We counsel the Osun state APC to stop playing to the gallery by trying to bring in the exalted office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria into disrepute by hopelessly dropping the president’s name at public spaces in their desperate but pathetic and unrealizable attempt to garner undeserved sympathy.

“The APC should note that our nation operates a federal system of government with clearly entrenched devolution of powers among the federating units as well as the various sub-national tiers of government.

“It should therefore desist from the fruitless attempt to drag President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the federal government into the issue of local government elections, which, under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), is within the purview of the state and has no connection whatsoever with the federal government.

“If the APC believes that it is truly popular in Osun state as it claims, it should rather get ready for the election as already scheduled by the Osun State Independent Electoral Commission (OSSIEC) instead of holding onto an imaginary strand of straw and instigating violence and killings in the state.”

Ologunagba called on security agencies to ensure the perpetrators of the crime are brought to book.