The Governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde has tackled the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Ganduje, over his declaration that the ruling party aims to achieve political homogeneity of the South-West by further displacing the Peoples Democratic Party from Oyo and Osun states.
Recall that after the Independent National Electoral Commission declared the APC candidate, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, as the winner of Saturday governorship election in Ondo State, Ganduje had boasted that the party’s next target is the South-West geopolitical zone.
The national chairman stated that the party would do everything possible to clinch the states.
Ganduje had said, “Our next target now is the South-West geopolitical zone, and you know we are good at hitting the target, and this is Osun State and Oyo State. We will do all that is possible to bring them into the fold so that we have political homogeneity in the South-West geopolitical zone.”
However, the Oyo governor, through his Chief Press Secretary, Sulaimon Olanrewaju, in a conversation with Punch, said the government and the Oyo PDP would not surrender the state to the APC.
Olanrewaju said the Oyo governor aligned with a statement by the acting Publicity Secretary of the Oyo PDP, Micheal Ogunsina, who condemned Ganduje over the takeover plot.
Ogunsina, in his statement, said it was unfathomable for the APC to believe that the people of Oyo State would abandon the “oasis of peace, ease and good governance under the Makinde government for “devastation, pain, sorrow, and tears.”
“Rather than talk about state capture, the Oyo PDP said it would have expected the APC-led Federal Government to preoccupy itself with how to ease the burden imposed on Nigerians through their alleged wrong policies.
“It is a shame that instead of easing people’s burden, what preoccupies the mind of the APC and its leadership are the capture of states and the abduction of people’s destinies. Where then is the difference between what the APC does and what forest bandits do?
“Our people are tired of a party and people that are progressive only in name. Ganduje and his cohorts who want to extend the pains of APC to Oyo State should stop plotting against God and the people. We reject the curse from Ganduje and his APC; our God, who hates the wicked, rejects them too.
“Our state has been an oasis of peace, ease and good governance in the midst of the ruins wreaked by the APC across the country. We do not intend to surrender our freedom to predators. And we will not.
“Perhaps we should let the APC people know that no sensible person in Oyo State wants to be inflicted with greater pains than what the people bear now from APC’s misrule.
“A ruling party with a conscience would, by now, be working very hard to repair the damage it has done to the economy of our country and the finances of the people. But, because APC cannot give what it does not have, it is not concerned at all about the people’s plight. Its politics is solely about grabbing power, capturing states and snatching people’s joy,” the Oyo PDP said