It has become a routine every Thursday in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, when the Centre For Hostility Against Oyetola’s Government (CFHAOG) otherwise known as Aregbesola Campaign Office (ACO) or Oranmiyan Campaign Office (OCO) hosts a set of disenchanted members of the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who freely assemble to outdo one another in needlessly heaping all manners of insults and abusive words on the sitting Governor Adegboyega Oyetola.

The prerequisite for the membership of this infamous and antagonistic group is simple. It’s leadership is largely peopled by the immediate-past members of former Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s cabinet who had served for eight years of the two terms of the former governor who is now the Minister of Interior.

Also found among the principal members of the leperous group which visibly hobnobs with the Pathfinder faction of the PDP in the state to unsettle, distract and subsequently hijack the government for the reactionary party in the state via the 2022 governorship election are the immediate-past local government chairmen who were denied perpetuity in the office by the current sitting government.

The self-styled TOP is also a veritable safe haven for any member, ward, local government or state officer of the APC who is queried for one misdemeanor or the other ranging from misappropriation of fund and visible anti-party activities.

One noticeable strange thing about the said TOP is that majority of its members don’t know the reason why they are members of the obnoxious group other than the fact that there has been a perceived crack in the relationship between Governor Oyetola and his predecessor, Ogbeni Aregbesola. Such posture instantly translates to an express inheritance of another person’s enemy without any just course which should not be a desired attribute of a rational human being.

Each time I listened to the contributions of the actors of this pressure group which fraudulently addresses itself as an undeserving caucus within the APC either on the radio, television or write-ups, I marvel as none of them has ever touched the main course of the obvious frosty relationship between the two leaders of the APC in Osun State. It is either that they lack information or not imbued with moral strong will to hit the nail on the head.

The mundane reasons being canvassed by the hostility group against Governor Oyetola like modification and restructuring of Aregbesola’s policies by Oyetola’s Government could be likened to a mere ploy to call a dog a bad name in order to hang it.

It is only God that is perfect. There is no human arrangement that is not susceptible to improvement. Why won’t Oyetola change some of the immediate-past policies that are no more in tune with the current situation? It’s only a dummy who allows rigidity in the affairs of men. Dynamism is the hallmark of any purposeful and visionary leader. This is exactly what Governor Oyetola has been dutifully serving the people of the state in his three-year-old administration.

The foootsoldiers in the needless Osun State APC intra-party debacle should go back to their drawing boards and devise a reason for fathoming a meaningful truce where permanent peace will perpetually reign in the party in order to avert the wish of the political vultures desperately waiting in the wing, thinking that they can take an undue advantage of the ostensibly family rift in the progressives fold to fraudulently secure the tenancy of Bola Ige House, Abere, Osun State, in the next year’s governorship election.

Aregbesola should worry less about any modification of his policies being carried out by Oyetola; after all, it is the latter’s government which he is absolutely responsible for just the way Rauf had all the latitude to do and undo anything constitutionally allowed during his eight unbroken years of his governorship reign in the state.
The Interior Minister should know that if he were to have been succeeded by his son, Kabir, there was every propensity that the brilliant guy would have modified, restructured or outrightly cancel some of the former policies that are not in tune with the current mood of the moment. It is also apposite for Governor Oyetola to have it at the back of his mind that if Femi, his equally lettered and urbane son, should succeed him after his two terms in the saddle, the young man would have a substantial reason to modify some of his policies too. This is far from insurbodination but the prevailing reality attributable to human beings.

Based on the foregoing, it won’t be an overstatement or an hyperbolic expression to conclude that there is a serious crisis between Oyetola and Aregbesola. Afterall, the self-identification with the APC rebellious group by Aregbesola had taken place on two remarkable occasios in Lagos and Ilesa.

It is strange that Aregbesola could allow his property and name to be associated with the formation and fortune of the infamous TOP when it is obvious that Aregbesola could not, I repeat, could not, entertain any of such glaring ganging up against his administration by anyone or body under any nomenclature when he was in the saddle as the state governor.

All efforts by the TOP handlers to dissociate Aregbesola’s input and involvement in the formation and affairs of the infamous body which its self-acclaimed chairman, Elder Lowo Adebiyi, had once pronounced the Interior Minister as its patron, have been falling flat as such could only be believed by a moron.

It was reliably learnt that the plan for the formation of TOP was initially scheduled for the second anniversary of the Oyetola government when the anti-Oyetola elements had fraudulently sold the celebration of 10th anniversary of political government in the state which was prompty bungled by the vigilant security officers in the state.

If not for any other reason, for the mere fact that Ogbeni Aregbesola surrenders his Oranmiyan Campaign Office for the weekly lampooning of Governor Oyetola’s government and his person and other visible circumstantial developments in the polity of the progressive extraction, it would not be out of tune for any analytical mind to submit that the Interior Minister is both the founder and financier of the infamous TOP. It’s this conviction that necessitates my bold pronouncement of Ogbeni Aregbesola as guilty of grossly masterminding the APC intra-party crisis in Osun State.

OLABISI is the Media Consultant to the Governor (Office of the APC State Chairman).