Unholy Marriage Between Ayu, Adelekes: Recent happenings in the People’s Democratic Party(PDP) and especially as it affects Osun chapter of the party, calls for sober reflections. To this end, this is a clarion call to leaders of thoughts and right-thinking members of our party to save our state and the party from pathological liars and wheeler-dealers as represented by the National Chairman and his cohorts who are selfishly playing with the chances and the opportunities for Osun PDP to take over the mantle of leadership in the state from APC, come July 16, this year.

Indications have emerged that our number one PDP member is at it again in his typical sleazy manner,this time around, toying with our future and those of our children yet unborn in Osun State by taking gratifications to sell out Osun State and impose Senator Ademola Adeleke as the party’s gubernatorial candidate. Our national Chairman has been bought over as encased in the “gift” of a jeep which worth hundreds of millions accompanied with some crispy thousands of dollars. Hmmm….,he and his co-travelers should remember that conscience is an open wound.

It is an open secret that taking bribes is stock-in-trade of Dr Iyorchia Ayu.Examples abound! One can not forget in a hurry, his involvement in the Dasukigate saga where he allegedly collected the sum of N345m from the controversial arms deal fund; again, remember,he was hurriedly and disgracefully dropped from the Obasanjo cabinet for similar self-gratifying scandals,not to talk of his impeachment as Senate president in 1993. Surely, when the head is rotten, the whole body becomes useless. Any wonder that other members of the executive of our great party are now on bribe-taking spree from one “baba olowo” just to truncate the wishes of the people of Osun?

REVEALED
1. Senator Iyorchia Ayu met with Dr Deji Adeleke, the billionaire, a self-professed member of PDP and brother to Ademola Adeleke, one of the six PDP aspirants in Osun, in his house at Maitama, Abuja, on Monday, 31st January, 2022.This was a day before stakeholders from Osun which included some elders, had meeting with the National Working Committee NWC,in Abuja. On that fateful Monday which preceded the stakeholders’ meeting, Ayu, the man we collectively entrusted with the destiny of our party, clandestinely held one hour meeting alone with Dr Deji Adeleke in his Library (Ayu’s) at his Maitama home in Abuja. The begging question is:Was Osun PDP ticket sold and bought that day?

2.The Iyorchia Ayu team appointed an Appeal Panel and in their reports, warned that Senator Ademola Adeleke’s credentials should be rechecked and thoroughly scrutinized before submission to INEC. Was this not the job the Screening Committee ought to have done with utmost sincerity and seriousness? The Screening Committee failed in this regard as it was perfunctory in its approach. Does the fear in some quarters that a well-woven script was already in place to ensure that Ademola Adeleke’s name will be the one to be sent to INEC, not confirm that the ticket had already been sold and bought before the party primaries by Iyorcha Ayu’s PDP Working Committee?

The recent court judgement which joyously prompted majority in the party to heave a sigh of relief that they have been freed from the bondage of imposition being hatched by our national party leaders who are hell bent in foisting the candidature of Ademola Nurudeen Ifeayin Jackson Adeleke on discerning and already agitated members of PDP in Osun.

That Adeleke’s emergence will automatically spell doom and misfortune to our party and its teeming members,is non-negotiable. Worse still, determined to shipwreck the yearning aspirations of thousands of people of Osun to see the PDP enthroned in the state later this year, out of the blues, came the appointment on Thursday, 16th February, 2022, of the Osun PDP PRO, Sunday Bisi, who has been acting as Senator Ademola Adeleke’s Campaign Manager for over two years now, touring all local governments in the state in Adeleke’s campaign paraphernalia. Yet, the same man(Sunday Bisi), is who our almighty national leadership is insisting must be our acting Chairman in the state a development that is antithetical and flagrant disobedience to what court judgement says. Is this not enough proof that Iyorchia Ayu and the PDP NWC have sold out the PDP governorship ticket before the party primaries? Can a leopard ever change its spots?

The good people of Osun are calling on the PDP Governors across Nigeria as leaders of the party, to rescue us by not allowing Iyorchia Ayu to sell our future for the sake of dollars to a person who can neither read nor write. A proper screening to evaluate the six PDP aspirants vis a vis their abilities, competences and capabilities to govern Osun was never carried out because Iyorchia Ayu chose to sell the ticket to the highest bidder after collecting N21M each from 6 aspirants. Self-serving and pecuniary gains on the part of leaders, will only take us to a dreary destination if we fail to chart the right course.

Our respectable leaders,elders and party faithful should rise against the tyrannical antics of these conscienceless and unrepentant money- for-posts politicians.Unfortunately, this is why Nigeria has continued to move in a spot without making any progress because we prefer with glee, to always sacrifice merits on the altar of greed.

Is the PDP, particularly at the national level, seriously desirous of winning Osun at the forthcoming polls? Then, those saddled with this responsibilities must choose right and with the fear of God too.

Taofeek Adegoke writes from Ikire