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The Action Congress (AC) has called on Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State to immediately resign from office following the revelation that he was compulsorily retired from the police in 1995, after his indictment by a police Administrative/Investigation panel for 'serious acts of misconduct."
It's a smear campaign - Oyo gov's aide
The Action Congress (AC) has called on Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State to immediately resign from office following the revelation that he was compulsorily retired from the police in 1995, after his indictment by a police Administrative/Investigation panel for 'serious acts of misconduct."
In a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party also said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the police, the State Security Services (SSS) and former President Olusegun Obasanjo should bury their heads in shame for their failure, whether deliberate or otherwise, to discover that Alao-Akala was previously indicted and recommended for dismissal, before it was commuted to compulsory retirement.
'It is more shameful for the law enforcement agencies and INEC that it took a non-governmental organisation, Campaign for Integrity (CI) to unearth a 12-year-old public document that is critical to Alao-Akala's qualification to contest an election in the first instance.
'Alao-Akala swore to an oath in his INEC form that he had never been indicted by any administrative panel before. Therefore, with the revelation that he was actually indicted and compulsorily retired from the force, he has lost every reason to remain in office," the AC said.
According to an advertisement in the Daily Sun of August 16, 2007 by the Abuja-based NGO, the governor's name was Bayo Alao until 1995, when he adopted 'Akala" to allegedly cover up his past.
CI said though the panel that investigated the 'serious acts of misconduct" against the then Bayo Alao found him guilty and recommended him for dismissal from the police, the recommendation was reduced to compulsory retirement because he was a former Personal Assistant to the former Inspector General of Police, Sunday Adewusi.
'The challenge facing the law enforcement agencies, including the police which have been celebrating Alao-Akala's election as governor, is to find out and tell the world what he did that amounted to serious acts of misconduct.
'Beyond that, Nigerians can now see that PDP is not just a nest of killers but a network of the most corrupt people in Nigeria, a cult of people with an unsavoury past, whose ‘esprit de corp' is the fact that each knows the other's dirty little secrets."
In a swift reaction, the Special Adviser to Govenor Akala on Public Communication, Prince Dotun Oyelade, described the call on the embattled governor to resign as preposterous, saying, 'it lacked any modicum of merit."
According to Oyelade, 'The authors have failed woefully to prove any genuine case against the governor beyond their usual smear campaign. In short, it is a bundle of lies cooked up by desperate politicians who want to get to the Government House through foul means and through the pages of the newspapers.
'If their intentions were not to malign the person, the election petition tribunal has been sitting in Ibadan for two months now, yet they are not bold enough to tender such evidence before it. They know exactly what they are doing."
Oyelade wondered why the Action Congress that is calling for the resignation of Governor Akala did not ask former Governor Ahmed Tinubu to resign when he was accused of certificate forgery.
'The perpetrators themselves know that this is just another of their fluke game and they are either too desperate that they did a hasty job or are just being simply mischievous. We suspect the latter," he said.
He advised the AC to go and seek redress at a proper place, which is the tribunal and stop being 'minority irritant."