Wonders shall never cease to happen in the political firmament of Osun State since after the declaration of the winner and the loser of the governorship election in the state. Untoward incidents hitherto alien to the State of the Virtue have strangely crept in, becoming a source of worry to the discerning members of the public both within and outside the state.
The first noticeable incident on 17 July 2022, immediately after the announcement of the results of the governorship election, was that some political characters suspected to be sympathetic to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) went into a wide jubilation and pulled down the campaign billboards of the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Governor Gboyega Oyetola in Osogbo, the state capital in particular, and across the state in general.
The suspected PDP thugs were sighted moving violently across some major streets in Osogbo dangling cutlasses, cudgels and stones with which members and perceived supporters of the APC were glaringly threatened or attacked.
Extra judicial killings and harassments of innocent people of the APC extraction across the state, especially in Osogbo, Ede and Apomu have become a common occurrence in the state.
Just last Saturday, the convoy of Alhaja Kafayat Oyetola, the wife of the sitting governor, was attacked at Owode-Ede, a stronghold of the PDP by suspected hoodlums of the party to the extent that some of the vehicles in the convoy were vandalised, while some other security officers in the team were also wounded.
Owode-Ede, which hosts a periodic market for the locals, has become a rendezvous for audacious political thugs who hide under being loyalists of the reactionary political party in the state in order to be fugitive to justice.
I also witnessed an unsavoury incident at this same Owode-Ede three days to the last governorship election when an apparently old couple’s car’s windscreen was smashed into smithereens by the political thugs to the consternation of the members of the public. The victims, who were in shock by the sudden incident and unsure of where to get a replacement being retirees, intuitively started crying and cursing the daring vandals.
In my own case, I was lucky as my own vehicle following the smashed one was spared by the suspected PDP thugs who only ordered me to remove the Oyetola branded fez cap that I was putting on, failure of which might spell doom for me.
I wonder if the police authorities are not passing through this den of fierce-looking political thugs who smoke Indian hemp and gulp hot drinks openly by the road side with reckless abandon. Or, have the Owode-Ede political thugs become untouchable and above the law to the extent that they cannot be dealt with by the police and other statutory security agencies in the state?
The time is now auspicious for the police in Osun State and their sister security agencies to swing into action with a view to performing their statutory duties of effecting security of lives and property of the inhabitants of the state.
Another anomaly being witnessed in the state is the flagrant evasion of service of the governorship tribunal process by Senator Ademola Adeleke, who was announced as the winner of the July 16, 2022 governorship election by the Independent National Electoral Commission. Adeleke, who has been evading the service of the court process with impunity since about two weeks ago to the chagrin of right-thinking members of the society, has no tangible reason for embarking on such endeavour.
Why would a supposed winner of an election who is a second respondent in the election petition against him by Governor Oyetola be evading a court process? Could it be that Adeleke has something to hide about the controversial governorship election that has been making him to be inaccessible to the court bailiff for the service of the court process?
There is more to the evasion of the service of the court process by the “dancing Senator” than meets the eyes.
Olabisi is the Media Adviser to the Osun State APC Chairman
