As the anti-graft war by President Muhammadu Buhari is intensified, reports before the President has revealed that ex-governor of Ogun State, Chief Olusegun Osoba did not collect any funds from the former President, Goodluck Jonathan to campaign at the 2015 polls.
This was disclosed by a national chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC yesterday, during an interactive session with selected journalists in Lagos. This came barely few days after the former governor returned to APC, few years after dumping the party.
The Chieftain noted that the reason behind the former Ogun State governor’s return to the APC was aimed at building a united political front in the South-west considering his previous experiences in the region.
He alleged that some political interests within and outside the region, who did not want Osoba in the APC sponsored media reports that he collected one million dollars from the Jonathan campaign organisation.
The Chieftain added that President Buhari believed initially that Osoba “benefitted from Jonathan’s campaign largesse and was just using him to forment political crisis in the region.” On the assumption of office on May 29th, he stated that Buhari had access to all security information and reports, which according to him, revealed that Osoba did not benefitted from the distributed funds.
He added that the President also discovered “from different security information, reports and manifests that Osoba did not have political relationship with the former president.
If Osoba had relationship with Jonathan or collected campaign funds from his campaign organisation security reports would have shown it.” The chieftain sad it was after the President assumed office that it “became obvious that Osoba was simply fighting on principle and that some political interests actually sponsored media report to discredit him.”
On the Sunday’s reconciliation meeting, the chieftain disclosed that Osoba’s return to the All Progressives Congress (APC) had been going on underground long before the party’s National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu led other party leaders “to prevail on him to return to the party last Sunday.”
He also said the northern leaders from the APC had been engaging Osoba to return to the APC, which he said the former Ogun governor contributed so much to make it happen despite pessimism in some quarters. He added that the process of what happened last Sunday actually did not start on the same day, noting that what culminated in the Sunday reconciliation meeting “has been going on a very long even before Osoba finally decided to leave the APC for the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
He explained that the return of Osoba “has nothing to do with Ogun politics or Ogun State Governor, Sen. Ibikunle Amosun. Rather, the monarchs were motivated to ensure unity in the rank of the South-west APC leaders because of the antecedent of the region. Our political antecedent shows that the South-west will suffer if it does not have a united political front.
His words, “It happened between 1964 and 1965 during the federal parliamentary elections. It also happened in 1993 before and after the annulment of the June 12 presidential elections. Among others, these antecedents motivated the monarchs to reconcile the APC leaders so that the region will not lose out. “The Sunday meeting was a formality.
The issue is not about Amosun and Osoba. Amosun was not part of us. But Osoba worked with the progressives.” He said the whole process was kept secret from some political interests within and outside the geo-political zone, explaining that the reconciliation process was “kept secret because those who did not want it happen would have scuttled it for their selfish political advantage or gain.”
He also explained the central roles of South-west governors, even before he finally decided “to leave the APC for the SDP. Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola and former Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi started it before other governors from the region eventually joined them.”
On these grounds, the chieftain pointed that Osoba’s exit from the APC was a terrible blow on the Progressives because it caused division in the South-west, noting that it was imperative to forge a united political from in the South-west in order to make inroad into South-east and South-south.
